Quicksilver Quill Awards 2016

Hello, and welcome to the eleventh annual Quicksilver Quill awards!

Everyone’s favourite MNFF awards ceremony has rolled around once again. Since 2006, the Quicksilver Quills have celebrated the best writing MNFF has to offer. Each year, stories are nominated and judged by our members. Some of MNFF’s finest readers and writers assess each nomination and decide upon the winners.

Like last year, there will be a few changes. Rather than having the traditional twelve categories, we have condensed the categories to six. In each category there may be one or two winners, and winners may be separated into one-shots and chaptered.

Categories

• Best General Story (contains best General, Mystery, History, Marauder Era, Humor, and Alternate Universe fics)
• Best Dark/Angsty Story
• Best Canon Romance Story (contains the SSP of Dumbledore/Grindelwald)
• Best Non-Canon Romance Story (contains all other SSPs)
• Best Poetry
• Best Post-Hogwarts/Next Generation Story

Nomination threads are currently open and will close June 30th. Judging will begin soon after. Anyone is welcome to submit a nomination either via the forums or as a comment on the archives. We are looking to find the absolute best stories from the last twelve months. They should be well-written, have engaging plots and characters, and be a good representation of the category for which they are nominated (though they don’t necessarily have to have been submitted to the corresponding archive category). In short, they should be the stories that make you go WOW.

The rules are similar to previous years but please refresh yourself with them anyway to make sure you nominate the right stories in the right categories.

Rules

+ Only stories written (or, in the case of chaptered fics, updated) since the 1st June 2015 are eligible to be nominated.
+ Stories do not have to be in the corresponding archive category to be nominated. For example, a story may be in a romance category but if you think it is particularly dark, it can be nominated in Dark/Angst.
+ An author or story can win more than one award in the same year. We reserve the right to place a cap on the number of awards given to any one author/story at a later date.
+ An author is eligible to win in a category they have been either winner or runner up in before.
+ Winning stories from previous years may not be nominated again in any category, though with the twelve month rule, we do not expect this to be an issue.
+ Please use the form provided in the first post of each nomination thread and ensure you provide a working link. Nominations that do not follow the correct format will be removed.
+ Do not second nominations - seconding clutters up threads and gives an unrealistic indication of how many stories have been nominated. Having more than one nomination does not increase a story’s chances of winning.
+ Any author can be nominated, including moderators.
+ Each person may only nominate a maximum of FIVE stories across the six categories. Please try and keep all your nominations for a category in one post to make it easier to keep track of how many stories you have nominated.
+ There is a cap on the maximum number of stories able to be nominated this year at thirty-five. Again, due to the low estimated participation of judges it is simply not realistic to judge more stories than this. This means that nominations
will be done on a first come, first serve sort of basis.

These are changes from 2014's rule of twenty-five per member and no limit on total stories.
+ The judging committees reserve the right not to present an award in any categories where they do not feel the standard of nominations is high enough. However this will only be done as a last resort.

Judging

There is a thread open on the forums for members to volunteer to be judges. This can be found in Fiction Junction. Judging can be demanding but also fun, and we really value the input of as many members as possible in the judging process. You can find more information on judging in the sign-up thread. We do require that one be a member of the forums in order to judge, as judging does take place within the forums.

Finally…

If you have any questions, please post below! Any nominations, also post below, using this form:

Nomination Category: (Best General, Poetry, etc.)
Story Title:
One-Shot/Chaptered:
Reason for Nomination: