Derringer Awards Policy (2018)

This is outdated but is being kept up for archival purposes. The current policy is here.

2020 Derringer Awards Coordinator Anthony Rudzki

ABOUT THE DERRINGERS

• SUBMISSIONS (January 1–30, 2020)
• Who can submit?
• Story eligibility
• Limits
• Format and Address

• SUBMISSIONS COLLATED (January 31, 2020)
• JUDGING (February 1–March 30, 2020)
• FINALIST SELECTIONS VERIFIED (March 31, 2020)
• FINALISTS ANNOUNCED (April 1, 2020)
• VOTING (April 1–29, 2020)
• POLL RESULTS VERIFIED & ANNOUNCEMENT PREPARED (April 30, 2020)
• WINNERS ANNOUNCED (May 1, 2020)
• MEDAL PRESENTATION AT BOUCHERCON (October 15, 2020)

ABOUT THE DERRINGERS

Since 1998, the Short Mystery Fiction Society has awarded the annual Derringers—after the popular pocket pistol—to outstanding published stories and people who've greatly advanced or supported the form.

As of 2004, an annually-elected Coordinator administers the regular Derringer process. Detailed below, the process runs January 1–April 30, recognizing stories published the previous year.

The current regular Derringer Awards are:

• Best Flash Story (Up to 1,000 words)
• Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words)
• Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words)
• Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words)

As of 2009, a committee of the sitting SMFS Officers, Derringer Coordinator, and two regular members selects a living writer whose outstanding body of short fiction merits the Society's Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement.

In addition to the May 1 winners announcement, as of 2009, winners also receive physical medals at a presentation during Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention. To donate toward the medals, contact Vice President Larry W. Chavis.

Further reading:

• Previous Derringer Award results

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SUBMISSIONS (January 1–30, 2020)

Who can submit?

With the exceptions of the Society President and Vice President, who have neither authority over the Derringer process nor Derringer eligibility, and the Awards Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator, who have authority over the Derringer process but no Derringer eligibility,

Shortmystery members who joined by December 31, 2019 can submit eligible stories written by anyone, including themselves

and

Editors of venues featuring mystery or crime short stories can submit eligible stories published in those venues.

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Story eligibility

To be considered for the 2020 Derringer Awards, a submission must be:

a) a mystery or crime story up to 20,000 words,

b) in a paying or non-paying venue,

c) which may be an irregular/single publication, periodical, collection, or anthology,

d) in print or electronic form,

e) originating from any country or location,

f) published in English for the first time in 2019 as determined by the the venue's cover/front page date or story's timestamp ending in 2019 (e.g. Dec. 2018-Jan. 2019, March 2019, etc.),

g) with the story's appearance decided by the venue's editor(s), not the author (i.e. neither self-published nor submitted to a non-edited venue).

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Limits

• SMFS members who joined by December 31, 2019 are allowed to submit up to 2 eligible stories.


• Editors:
  
  3 editorial submissions are allowed from venues featuring up to 25 eligible stories;
  
  4 editorial submissions are allowed from venues featuring 26–50 eligible stories;
  
  5 editorial submissions are allowed from venues featuring 51–75 eligible stories;
  
  6 editorial submissions are allowed from venues featuring more than 75 stories.


• For multi-editor venues, the editors split the number of submissions determined above.
  
  (e.g. 4 editorial submissions are allowed from a four-editor venue featuring 26 eligible stories. If one editor makes 4, the other three editors cannot make any.)


• Editors of multiple venues:
  
  3 editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total up to 25 eligible stories;
  
  4 editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of 26–50 eligible stories
  
  5 editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of 51–75 eligible stories;
  
  6 editorial submissions are allowed if they edited a total of more than 75 stories.
  
  The number of submissions allowed from any one venue remains bound by the venue's total eligible stories.
  
  (e.g. An editor who worked on 100 stories across 5 venues would be allowed 6 total submissions. If one of the venues featured only ten stories, the editor could submit 3 from it, but then would have only 3 submissions left to split among 90 stories and 4 venues.)


• Editors who are also SMFS members by December 31, 2019, in addition to their editorial submissions, may submit two eligible stories from venues other than their own.
  
  An editor may decide not to submit his/her venue's stories. S/he cannot prevent other Shortmystery members from submitting them UNLESS s/he acquired such controlling rights over the stories.

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Format and Address

To make the judges' jobs as easy as possible, and to prevent having to reformat an assortment of submission layouts, there has to be a standardized format for submissions. The 2020 Derringer competition uses William Shunn's more-or-less industry-standard layout linked to below, except that (a.), the manuscript should use 12-point Times New Roman font, and (b.), the personal contact information normally included at top left of page 1 may be omitted.

William Shunn's short-story formatting page can be found here. Remember, the personal contact information at top left is not required for Derringer submission. If inadvertently included, it will be deleted before forwarding to the judges:

William Shunn : Manuscript Format : Short Story

Please use .doc (not .docx) file type and Times New Roman 12-point font for your submission file. Please include the number of words in your submission as shown in the format.

Please remove all of your personal information from the ms. Any personal information found will be stripped from the ms before it is placed into judges' packages. This is to encourage open-minded judging.

If any format adjustments need to be made, you will be contacted ASAP.

When submitting your stories, please include "[Derringers]" somewhere in the subject line. This will make it easy to spot your submission so that nothing is lost.

Include your personal information in the body of your submission email, particularly:

• whether you are submitting as SMFS member, publication editor, or are both;
• the story title, author's name, and, if applicable, the pseudonym used for the story;
• where and when the story was originally published in 2019; and
• the URL to the published story if applicable.

Email prepared submissions to tony.rudzki@gmail.com.

Anyone submitting someone else's work must have and is presumed to have acquired the proper permissions from the author. By submitting someone else's work, a submitter assumes responsibility for having the proper permissions.

The Coordinator posts updates of the stories received throughout the January submission period. This avoids duplicate submissions and serves to check that stories submitted are received. If any story submitted does not appear in an update and you have met the listed eligibility requirements, follow up with the Coordinator.

All submissions must be in by January 30, 2020. January 31 will be used to prep submissions to be sent to the judges.

Please direct any questions or issues to Anthony Rudzki at tony.rudzki@gmail.com.

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JUDGING (February 1–March 30, 2020)

The Coordinator assigns eligible submissions to award categories by length:

• Best Flash Story (Up to 1,000 words)
• Best Short Story (1,001 to 4,000 words)
• Best Long Story (4,001 to 8,000 words)
• Best Novelette (8,001 to 20,000 words)

Each category requires three primary and one alternate SMFS members to judge the category down to five finalists. To protect their identities and the privacy of the judging process, members sign up to judge by contacting the Coordinator directly by December 31, 2019.

Volunteers can specify which category they wish to judge, subject to availability, but they cannot judge categories including stories they wrote or published as editor. The Coordinator keeps this in mind when assigning judges, but any erroneously-assigned judges should inform the Coordinator, who decides how to rectify the error.

Before sending the Derringer submissions to the judges, the Coordinator ensures the manuscripts show neither the author's name nor the details of publication. This is not to mandate blind judging, but to encourage open-minded judging. Judges may recognize authors and publication details but are nevertheless expected to score all stories in their rightfully assigned categories regardless.

The Scoring Guidelines below have been used for over a decade as a way of encouraging a measure of commonality among different judges' approaches. They are not litmus tests to be applied in a cookie-cutter manner by all judges to all submissions, but are rather a source for general areas of consideration that can be used to the extent considered appropriate in conjunction with a judge's individual experience, acumen, and skills.

Using the Scoring Guidelines below as desired, each judge rates each of the four larger general areas of:

1. OVERALL WRITING
2. CHARACTERS
3. PLOT
4. OVERALL FEELING.

A judge assigns each of these areas a score of 1 to 10. The judge should note these individual scores but need not formally record them. The judge then adds the four individual areas' scores together to arrive at a cumulative score of 4 - 40. For each submission, each judge in the category reports this single, cumulative score on the scoring sheet provided by the Derringer Coordinator.

If, at any point during the reading of any entry, a judge concludes that the impression formed thus far is final and without reasonable expectation of change regardless of what remains to be read and evaluated, the judge is not bound to continue reading that entry.

SCORING GUIDELINES

1. OVERALL WRITING

• How well does the writing grab and hold your attention?
• Do the prose style and dialogue serve the story well?
• Does the story's setting or overall atmosphere draw you in?
• Does the story rise above others in the category for the way it's written?

2. CHARACTERS

• Are they well developed and convincing?
• Is there good interaction between characters?
• How well does the writer handle viewpoints or inhabit each character?
• Do the characters serve the story well?

3. PLOT

• How well are the story events structured from beginning to end?
• Does the story rise above others in the category for its plot?
• Does the story set up and then meet or cleverly subvert expectations?

4. OVERALL FEELING

• Did you have a good reaction to the story not described by the other elements?
• How memorable was the story?

The alternate judge in a category is called if one of the primary judges is unable to serve to completion for some reason. The alternate will be asked to read and evaluate only the portion of the category's entries that the primary judge was unable to get to.

All stories must be scored and returned to the Coordinator by March 30.

March 31 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the outcome of scoring. For each Derringer category, the five stories with the highest averages become the Finalists.

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FINALISTS ANNOUNCED (April 1, 2020)

On April 1, the Coordinator announces the Finalists on Shortmystery and announces them publicly here on the blog.

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VOTING (April 1–29, 2020)

On April 1, the Coordinator uploads the finalist manuscripts to Shortmystery's Files section and creates polls to conduct the vote. All members as of December 31, 2019 are eligible to vote. No new memberships are approved during the Derringer process (January 1–May 1).

April 30 is reserved for the Coordinator to verify the poll results and prepare the announcement of winners. The Coordinator then deletes the manuscripts from Shortmystery's Files section.

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WINNERS ANNOUNCED (May 1, 2020)

On May 1, the Coordinator announces the Winners in Shortmystery and publishes the official announcement here on the blog.

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MEDAL PRESENTATION AT BOUCHERCON (October 15, 2020)

Winners will be presented with Derringer medals during Bouchercon 2020 opening ceremonies Thursday, October 15 at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento, California. Any unable to attend will receive their medals by mail.