Well done to all the winners, I especially enjoyed reading first place Brendan’s entry because of his many fun uses of alliteration with D’s:

“The place was a Dump: Dark, Damp, Dingy, Dusty anD Disgusting”

“he accepteD the Dark LorD’s biDDing, Dreaming incessantly of the gooD fortune that woulD be bestoweD upon him once the DeeD was Done”

I’m honored to have won this contest—the other winning entries were TERRIFIC and I enjoyed them very much (I’m sure there were a lot of other great entries as well). Thanks for all the kind comments and thanks to the judges for selecting my story as a winner. I had a blast writing it!

@Freds_ear, I made it clear that the piece I wrote was based on the ballad ‘Lord Randall’, and the repetition is part of that genre. I was trying to imitate the original in cramming an awful lot of plot (and a lot of suggested emotion) into those two spare lines. The information I was trying to convey was not so much about plot detail as about the emotions of the characters. All the winning entries had different ideas about this, but for me Draco was in a bad way (probably suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and Snape was just about managing to hold himself together enough to look after them both. We see all this through the eyes of a worried mother and a not very communicative teenage boy.

I’m also not sure what you mean when you say that I wrote my entry as a ballad ‘instead of a story’? Do you mean ‘instead of in prose’? Poetry is the oldest way of telling stories. For me, J K Rowling’s characters and situations have the power and resonance of ancient myth, and I was trying to convey something of that by putting her characters into a mythic situation and using timeless language.

Whether or not I succeeded, and whether anyone likes it or not, is of course entirely a matter of taste: and I am very grateful to posters who have said kind things about it. But, for the record, I do not think a two-year-old could have done it.

@Freds_ear: The thing about ballads is that they are poems which tell a story, so that immediately complies with the story writing competition. More was changed than just the names, it’s not actually easy to work with an existing format, you have to get the rhythm to work which takes some thought. I also don’t think you can say Narcissa knew where her son was at all times, and Valeria-Johanna’s work speculates on where they might have gone before returning to Malfoy Manor.

You can like or dislike something, it’s all a matter of taste, but you don’t have to be rude about it.

@Freds_ear, are you actually familiar with ‘Lord Randall’? If you were, you couldn’t reasonably say that nothing was changed but the names. It’s about a young man who is coming to grips with the realization that has just been poisoned by his ‘true love,’ and how his alarmed mother gradually worms the information out of him. The structure of Valeria-Johanna’s filk is the same as the ballad, but the content is vastly different.

And have you ever tried to write a filk yourself? Sounds like not. Having written quite a few myself, I can testify to the fact that it is NOT ‘something a two-year-old could do.’ In fact, if you think it’s so easy, then I invite you to visit the ‘Filkers and Folkies’ discussion group via the link below and post a few of your own efforts. I think that you will find that the Leaky poetry aficionados who post there are much more civil in their comments about submissions that may not be to their particular taste.

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/myleaky/groups/10224

LOL you guys are a hoot! Thanks for the laughs :)
luv ya!

@Freds_ear – I didn’t find anything to “LOL” about, you were actually quite rude to Valeria-Johanna and I personally think you owe her an apology.

Congratulations to all on their submissions and to V-J, I know how much effort and heart you put into your writing, thank you for sharing your entry with everyone, it hopefully will enlighten a few to the different ways of telling a story!

All the winner’s did a lovely job! Thanks for picking mine as the second honorable mention! I really appreciate it!

I’m on V-J’s side for this one….

Excuse the Contest Team for jumping in here very late, but real life has managed to overcome most of us and this was brought to our attention a few days ago.

I want to make clear a few things:

1) There is no “ranking system” within the honorable mentions. They are a blanket system unlike 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. Evidence of this would be the fact all HMs get the same amount of MyLeaky points (50), whereas the others get different amounts. Just a random side note.

2) We would like to remind everyone that how we score is based on a number of difference factors. Some of which are creativity, grammar, canon, originality, and content. We like to award creativity, which is why the ballad made a HM, despite the fact it has less information to it as the prose counterparts. You may disagree, and that’s fine. We’re not saying it does not have a power of its own as the prose winners because, regardless of it being a ballad or not, if it lacked that sense of power and feeling, we would not have awarded it anything. However, please remember we take into account a variety of things when we pick our winners and the winning entry tends to cover all the things I listed earlier and more.

3) We don’t mind if you guys disagree with us or even each other. Everyone has their opinion and it is the world we live in now that allows us to properly express our opinions without any retribution, but - and it is a BUT -- we ask that everyone please be respectful of your fellow Leaky members and us as a team. We don’t take judging lightly and we try to be as fair as humanly possible. We don’t mind you standing up for your (or other) entries either (it’s what we naturally do), but please do it in a manner that is not putting down another member against another. Let’s not get hurt feelings over something that should be a joyous occasion to congratulate and celebrate the winning entries. :)

With that…Congratulations to the winners (once again!). :) You all very much deserved your recognition and should be very proud of it.

mjk
TLC Competition Team Manager

Figures my post would have a strike through on it. :P That is NOT meant to have that there, but rather dashes on either side of the phrase that is strike throughed. :)

Thank you, mjk. That’s very helpful.

My entry, ‘Young Draco’, can now be heard sung on the Singing Crones’ band profile at http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/myleaky/p/the_singing_crones-2.