Deciphering contest results

I have now revised one of my contest-finalist entries and will be sending it back after one last read. For this contest, eight finalists in all were chosen from across the eight entrance categories, rather than the top three from each category. It's the only contest I know of that does it this way. But hey! It's the way they choose to do it and I'm not complaining. I love that they gave me a week to revise my 10,000 word entry.

It's also fairly rare for a contest to allow the finalists to revise their entries before being sent to agents and editors. In the other contest in which I am a finalist, my entry went to them exactly as I had originally sent it in.

So it was a busy week of looking at each and every statement made by a total of eleven judges; I combined the results of all into one file and saw a fuller picture of the questions that came up as judges read the entry. For example, here is a sample of nine concerns that I decided I needed to deal with. Judges wanted to know:

1.       what made the hero and heroine fond of each other, after an exchange of only three letters (judge needed that answer, in order to have more sympathy for the heroine)

2. why the heroine trusted that the mail-order marriage was God’s will

3. To have another sentence of specific information about one of the villains, without taking away the mystery

4. why the heroine longed to be a mother

5. why the heroine wanted to be married, and why, specifically, the hero is the right man for her

6. To be shown something that allowed the reader to believe the hero was indeed of a higher station than the heroine

7. To read more of the hero’s thoughts, in order to make him more likeable, despite his harsh actions. If she hadn’t read the synopsis, and learned the motivation for his behavior, she said she would’ve hated him.

8. Pointed out that a certain situation (birth of twins) which I used as a motivator, and the way I dealt with it, was out of the time period in which I am writing, and mentioned also that servants had to give notice, even in Georgian and Regency era books

9. Pointed out that the trunks of early motorcars were non-existent or very small, and so I should rethink whether the heroine’s bags were strapped on the car, or small enough to fit in a shallow trunk. Also, that cars were exceedingly rare in 1912, and if I want to have a few cars parked along the street, meaning that they were accessible to the common man, that I should bump my date to 1915  

These are some of the problems I addressed. Some just needed a sentence or two to fix. Number eight took rethinking and rewriting an entire scene to make it work for my Edwardian time period.

Here's a sample of what six of my pages looked like, after I had inputted the comments from eight of the eleven judges. There were places that universally stumbled the judges, and also places that were universally liked. Not all of the comments are critical: 

That's a lot to digest, isn't it? It was quite a learning experience, and I am sure that my manuscript is now far better grounded than it was before, having answered reader concerns. Their questions forced me to go deeper into the characters' motivations. Now I understand more fully the themes and conflicts that I will carry throughout the book. 

As a result of the streamlining (several judges suggested that I reduce the total number of conflicts), at least one conflict was completely eliminated. My hero no longer walks with a limp as a result of childhood polio, which removes him feeling he's less of a man because of it, and me having to deal with that specific conflict. 

Interestingly, while continuing to write the book, I kept forgetting to have him grab his cane, and so yes, it really wasn't an issue for him, or me. References to it were easily dropped from the story.

I still have plenty of conflict, perhaps too much for the projected word count . . . I'll discover that as I continue to write the novel. I will be so happy when I can start making forward progress again.

How was your week, reading, writing, or otherwise?