It was a pleasant surprise to receive an email recently telling me I'd been shortlisted in a competition. That's as far as I got, and that's fine, but there was only one winner - no second or third place. Nothing on the organiser's website listing those five short-listees. Just the winner.
Neither was there a longlist.
Now that might sound like sour grapes, and maybe it is one small sour grape, but I've organised several writing competitions and insist on publishing a longlist, as well as a shortlist. There will be three top placements and if the judge is so inclined maybe some Highly Commended slots too. Once judging is complete we display the listed authors' names too.
In the most recent competition I organised, I received an email from an entrant who'd made the longlist but not the short. However, she was thrilled because this was the first short story she'd submitted to a competition. It validated her work and encouraged her to continue submitting.
One competition that ran for some time but is now sadly defunct even published a 'just missed the longlist' list too. I was in that list once which was validating especially as this competition received a high number of entries.
For competitions that attract emerging writers, as many do, it's heartening to know that your hard work has been read, appreciated and considered worthy to be in the top twenty or thirty entries.
I've posted about this before but here I go again, another downside for me is those competitions who inform only the short-listees, leaving the rest to assume they've been unsuccessful. One competition where I was in the unsuccessful category did not publish the winners for some time after the apparent date they said the judging would be complete. I had another competition lined up for that story if it wasn't selected but didn't want to risk my entry fee in case I was still in the running, so I missed the second comp's deadline. I certainly won't be entering that one next time!
I'm not keen on those competitions who don't tell you who's judging it either, although I entered a couple recently including the one in my opening paragraph. If I'd known who the judge was, I wouldn't have entered. I'll be keeping my eye on competitions, but I now have a much stricter set of rules they must follow to gain my entry fee.