For the second year in a row, I will be part of the Judging Panel for one of Africa's leading awards for comic creators, The Comic Con Ibadan Awards. It is quite an exercise I do not take lightly because, as a creator, I am well aware of what this means for the writers and artists whose works are entered into this award. For the next year or many more thereafter, the nominees and winners will hold that honour so dearly as a milestone in their creative journey. For some, the award might be the biggest singular achievement of their careers, although I wish they all go on to achieve bigger things.
The Nigerian comic space has, in the past year, especially more than in other years, achieved lots of inspiring feats from collective and individual efforts, and particularly from a rich pool of creators making and putting out works that arguably rival the finest works from any studio anywhere in the world. Two or three winners from the last edition of this same award went on to end the year with further global accolades where books from Marvel and the like were considered.
So, as we get ready to start looking at entries, I ask myself, what should I be looking out for? What makes a book worthy of an award? What element makes a story stand out from the rest?
As I have discovered, the answer isn't as straightforward as I would prefer.
Art is subjective. One cannot say a book is better than another and hold that to be a universal fact. A story is told to a unique audience, and the genius of storytelling is how well it speaks to its target audience. Unless you belong to that audience and understand the subtle innuendos of that audience's language, you would be a bad judge of that story. I have read several award-winning books that turned out not to be my cup of tea, but I know enough to appreciate that I was simply not in the audience to whom the writers sought to tell their stories. Beauty, after all, is in the eyes of the beholder. What makes a great story to one reader may not cut it for the other.
I would say, that once we get past the general standards of a book, i.e, plot, grammatical and technical accuracy, proofreading and editing quality, etc, hurdles that most books that make it to the long list of most awards cross, everything from then on comes down to chance. How many of the judges does your book appeal to? And your book not appealing to a judge doesn't make it bad. It's not just their thing.
For instance, I think Flora Nwakpa's Efuru is far more stunning a read than Things Fall Apart. But many would disagree. I read The Man Died by Wole Soyinka the same year I read The Concubine by Elechi Amadi and thought Elechi's book was ten times a better story, but guess which won the Nobel?
What I am trying to say is, as a writer, write to tell a story to your audience. If you are able to do that to the best of your ability, you have won. Every reader that connects with your story is an award won. They may not come with a plaque but in the hearts of each reader, you won something.
If you are a writer whose work is entered for an award, understand that whether you get a nomination or a win or not most likely has absolutely nothing to do with whether your book was good or not. It doesn't even mean the books that won were any better. If you are lucky to win, recognize that it's most likely not because your work was a better piece of art than the one that didn't make it. You just happened to have told a story that caught most of the judges inside its audience net.
Whatever it is though, stay writing, and stay happy.