What I learn from judging contests

I've been judging some fiction writing contests lately, and I find that I can easily spot the newbie writer from the nearly published one. New writers tend to make similar mistakes, no matter they type of story they're writing.

Admittedly, it feels a bit arrogant to comment on it because I, myself, am not yet published in fiction. But I've been at this a long time and have a 12-year professional writing and editing career backing me up, so I'm not exactly a neophyte either.

So with that little bit of "so there," I'm going to outline two of the common newbie mistakes I keep seeing in the contests I've been judging...

1. Conflict that could be easily solved. I've been seeing a lot of contest entries in which the writer has confused CONFLICT with WORRYING. They try to sustain a book by having the heroine (usually) engage in a lot of handwringing about a problem that really wouldn't be all that hard to solve if she just stopped whining and took action.

More often than not, this kind of mistake usually stems from weak internal conflict, which in turn is usually the result of the writer not spending enough time fleshing out the character's backstory. The master of this process is a screenwriting coach named Michael Hauge. His workshops on character identity and essence completely changed the way I write.

2. Emotionless love scenes. I see a lot of love scenes that sound something like this: He touched her arm. She arched her back. He kissed her neck. She squeezed his ... Love scenes should never read like a play-by-play. Good love scenes should be less about the physical act and more about the emotional component.

To get more emotion into the scene, writers should keep two questions in the front of their minds as they write: How does this make them feel emotionally, and why does the act leave them feeling conflicted? If you can make sure both of those issues/questions are front and center during the love scene, the entire scene will be much stronger and more relevant.