A Fiction Rubric

Several months ago Roland was asked to judge some living history projects at our church’s school, and he was given a rubric to use. It got me wondering what makes good fiction and what type of rubric I would use if I had to come up with one. So for my own enjoyment—and hopefully yours—I am writing a series of blog posts to answer that question.

The word rubric is commonly understood among educators to mean a document or system for setting expectations and evaluating students’ work. In many cases the factors have points associated with them so that students understand how important each one is and to make grading or judging more uniform and objective.

No rubric is perfect, and each reflects the creator’s own biases to some extent. This is especially true for something as subjective as fiction. It is also impossible to cover everything in a general fiction rubric. For example, speculative fiction usually requires the author to create an imaginary world that is both believable and consistent within the framework of the story. Even contemporary fiction must have a believable and consistent setting, but world-building is easier when the setting is one we know personally or through research. Similarly, research is important for historical fiction but less so for a contemporary romance. My general fiction rubric does not have scores for these genre-related issues, but they would be considered as part of other elements.

To score the rubric, I looked at how much the various elements of fiction affect reading enjoyment or—more specifically—the desire to keep on reading and, conversely, those elements that make someone want to put the book down if they are done wrong. For example, point of view errors make me crazy, and yet I continue to read if the plot and characters are interesting. So plot and characterization should carry higher values than point of view does.

Ideally, a typical reader would select the elements and assign the scores for the rubric. Unfortunately, there is no such person, and reading tastes vary widely. So in creating this rubric I looked first at my own reading practices, but I tempered the result with comments I have heard from other readers over the years.

It’s impossible to take all the subjectivity out of creating and scoring a fiction rubric. Still, I’ve done the best I can. And after all, I’m doing this for fun rather than to judge an actual contest. But I’d like to think it would work for that, too.

The basic rubric goes like this:

                I.          The Art of Story—40 points

a.      Plot—20 points

b.     Characters—15 points

c.      Opening chapter—5 points

              II.          Point of View—10 points

a.      Identifiable?—5 points

b.     Consistent?—5 points

           III.          Creating a Movie with Words—20 points

a.      Show, don’t tell—10 points

b.     Action—5 points

c.      Description—5 points

           IV.          Dialogue—10 points

a.      Attribution—5 points

b.     Naturalness—5 points

              V.          Language Use—20 points

a.      Clarity and conciseness—15 points

b.     Grammar and proofreading—5 points

My May blog posts will fill in the objectives for each category. So join me next week for The Art of Story.