Edition 6 - The Judgment Post by Medha Kapoor

Sorry to keep you waiting for so long.

Judging is a tough task! One would think that setting concrete guidelines and making use of a known story would have made it easier to compare the entries, but the sheer creativity of the participants in terms of interpreting the exercise surprised me. I would, firstly, like to applaud all the the participants for attempting to adopt the conflict-resolver technique in the story. The truth is, I was/am not to clear on the differences in the different opening styles either and every attempt brings us one step closer to nailing it. Also, maybe this wasn't the perfect opening style for this particular tale. In hind sight, the mystifier or puzzler would have worked better. Nevertheless, the correct application of conflict-resolver to this particular exercise left me mystified and puzzled.

The other criteria was creating a contemporary setting for the classic tale, keeping the plot intact. Here, I was amazed by the creativity the participants brought to the table! All the permutations and combinations were taken care of, complete with a gender interchange and chemical treatment for the magical tranformation of Beast. They were all a treat to read, and, hence, a horror when it came to judging. Going by intuition alone wasn't helping so I had to employ a process in which I specified three criteria: opening, narration and plot and assigned points on a scale of one to three to each entry.

Deepa and Jayashree's entries, though among the top scorers, had to be eliminated to avoid redundancy as agreed to in the format of the workshop. Following which, The Fool, Nabanita Dhar and Mixi made it to the top of the list. A brief feedback on the entries:

Deepa Duraiswamy: Faltered at the opening, but brilliant narration and stuck to the plot.

Jayashree Srivatsan: Brought in mythical characters and kept the fairy tale element alive. The narration was splendid.

The Fool: Established conflict in the opening, narration was great with smooth transitions between the two POVs, stuck to the plot too, but failed to give it a contemporary setting.

Nabanita Dhar: Established conflict in the opening, wonderful narration, experimented a little with the plot but maintained the essence.

Mixi: Failed with the opening, but did justice to the plot and narrated it nicely.

Snuffles Jay: Stuck to the plot in a creative manner, showed the physical transformation of Beast without using magic.

Animesh Mishra: Ingenuity shown with the gender interchange. However, missed the guidelines on alternating POV and opening style.

Harshal Gupta: Developed a good plot in contemporary setting, used magic creatively.

Sanhita Baruah: Nice narration, gave a new angle to the story of Beauty and the Beast.

Without much ado, over to TF, Naba and Mixi to come up with an exciting challenge for the next edition. Congrats to the winners! And also, congrats to everybody who participated! It was an enjoyable exercise.