The sixth judging criterion for the Writing Challenge is did the entry have a clear point or message?
When I was teaching Language Arts to high school students, we frequently used what I called a ‘story map’ to analyze short stories, and one of the items on that worksheet required my students to identify the theme of the story. I explained this as the lesson that the author wanted his readers to learn from his story, the ‘take-away’. Why did he write this thing?
Students had varying degrees of success in identifying the theme (which is the same as the ‘point’ or ‘message’ in this criterion). The very literal thinkers would look at a story—let’s pick one that’s familiar to everyone, The Wizard of Oz—and identify the theme as something like “Don’t trust someone just because he says he’s great and powerful.” Deeper thinkers would recognize the theme of “There’s no place like home”, or even something about friendship and overcoming obstacles. Those who were willing to really dig might uncover something like “You may already possess the thing that you desire the most.”
Whether the point/message/theme is shallow or deep, the reader should be able to locate it. If the reader gets to the end of your entry and wonders “what was that about?” or even worse, shrugs and immediately forgets what she’s just read, you may be faltering on this criterion.
There’s a continuum of clarity of themes—let me set it out here, then I’ll have a few things to say about it.
1. The entry has a very obvious point; in fact, the point is actually written out. This is common in devotionals or Bible studies, but even in fiction or poetry, a clear point can be articulated by a character, or even set aside by a phrase like “The moral of the story is…”
2. The entry’s point is some significant realization that is grasped by the main character and the reader at the same time.
3. The point is something that the MC never figures out, but the reader does—usually because the MC has failed to grasp it.
4. The reader has to think a little bit about the theme, but eventually has an aha! moment.
5. The reader has to think about what the point is, but isn’t entirely sure, because the entry lacks focus.
6. The reader has no idea why that entry was written.
Now this may surprise you, but 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all fine for Writing Challenge entries, and could possibly earn full points for this criterion. In fact, the point doesn’t have to be shouted from the rooftops; subtlety is a literary skill that many readers appreciate. It’s entries that fit into #5 and 6 in the above list that score poorly.
#5 is more common in nonfiction entries, where the writer skitters from point to point, never really focusing on one idea. #6 is more common in fiction and poetry, where some entries just seem to occupy space.
A good way to be sure your entry has a point/theme/message is to be sure there’s conflict there. I could have written a story, for example, for the ‘body language’ week, in which my MC sits in a meeting and observes the various positions and gestures of the people there. It’s on topic, but what’s the point? To bump it up, I might have the MC gradually realize that people are using their body language to try to tell her something (perhaps that her blouse is disastrously unbuttoned). That’s conflict, and it gives me a reason for describing all these desperately gesturing people.
Now you might be saying, what’s the clear point there?
Well, that leads me to my second surprising statement of this lesson: the point of your entry need not be spiritual to be clear (it does, however, still have to reflect a Christian world view). It also need not be something that the reader can specifically articulate as ‘the moral of the story’. In fact, it may be that the point of your entry is simply to be very entertaining or compelling—and if you’re successful at that, then you’ll still score highly in this category.
Ask a question, make a comment, give an example of one of the numbered points above, or add your own insight into writing an entry with a clear point or message.