Who Should Judge Writing Competitions?

I have been writing for more than 50 years, but I still consider myself new to i t, because I have written only one book. However, I have written thousands of le tters, more than a hundred ebooks and literally millions of words for the Intern et on hundreds of web sites. I have also been taught and have learned seven languages and am now on my eighth . Studied French, German and Latin for six years at school and Russian for four years at university, yet none of these acts was as hard as writing a book of suf ficient quality. And I am only talking about language here not plot, although th at is obviously important too. I think that my particular weakness is 'mapping dialogue to the page' (as I call it). By that I mean where and how you should close and re-open paragraphs of di rect speech. I only became aware of this deficiency when writing the book. There is no direct speech in ebooks that deal with "How To ..." ebooks and neith er are there paragraphs of it on my web sites or in my letters. I only noticed o n re-reading (editing) my book that there was no consistency in my direct speech . So I consulted other novels but could not really define a 'correct' method of do ing it there either. Different authors, editors and publishers used different st yles. Some were similar but not identical. However, having been taught by English teachers, I am sure that there is a recog nised way of doing it, but it seems that not many writers know what it is. And n or do I. Being consistent is the best I can do. Rules change in languages. The strict rules of the Nineteenth Century were large ly broken down over the following 100 years by mass education. However, some rul es remain and that is how it should be too. Rules or conventions in writing necessary as is the key or legend to a road map. The reader needs to know that "..." usually indicate direct speech, for example . So, who should judge writing and book competitions? And what should the criteria be? Readers buy more books than writers and language experts put together. Not only that but writers write for readers, some of whom might be other writers or teach ers. I recently read one writer boasting that e Internet and that he had stopped using ng them for emphasis. That seems daft to maybe rogue writers should put a key or he had written millions of words for th " " for direct speech - he was now usi me if no-one knows what he is doing. Or legend in the foreword?

Similarly, there has to be a storyline or plot that is of interest, but should b e the judge of that? There is an author, John Locke, who sold a million books in five months yet he was criticised for his style and content by experts, but sur ely he must have been doing something right. Or was it because the ebooks cost less than $1 each, as the experts said? Currently, most writing competitions are judged by writers and this seems wrong to me. I suggest that if there are five judges on a panel, three should be avid readers, one should be a writer and one should be an English teacher.

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