As an unpublished writer, I spent many years (and dollars!) entering contests.  Apart from charging the creative batteries and meeting deadlines, contests gave me feedback from my fellow writers.  Some of it was glowing, some fit for lining the budgie cage, but most helped me improve my craft.

The key rule to contest feedback is YOU ARE TELLING YOUR STORY.  Only you, the writer, can decide if you need to change anything.  For me, I generally went by the numbers: if more than one judge has drawn my attention to something, then I think about it.  But what if the judge says something like, "lacks emotional punch" (a typical reason for rejection by publishers!) without suggesting how to fix it?  Here's where my handy-dandy Contest Code Sheet comes in! 

What They Mean: Exactly that

Solutions: Get a good grammar book. I use The Writers Handbook for Editing and Revision (Wilber) and Eats Shoots and Leaves (Lynn Truss).   You can also find grammar and spelling websites links here.

Turn on spell and grammar checker on your computer.  In MSWord it's Tools > Options > Spelling & Grammar, then tick the boxes "check spelling as you type" and "check grammar as you type".

Read published novels to see how it's done.

What They Mean: Reader can't empathize or get involved with characters' situations - they don't seem real.  They're not emotionally invested in the story.

Solutions: Use character charts and/or GMC charts (email me for a copy!).

People are motivated by two things - desire for pleasure and fear of pain.  If you don't have a basic understanding of how people tick, then you can't create believable fictional characters with believable motivation and internal conflict.  You have to know your characters inside out, what their desires are, their dreams, their family life, their conflicts and what they love and hate the most.  You can do this in a variety of ways:

Give your characters problems, faults.  Torture them.  Find out what pushes readers' buttons in order to give characters empathy.  Some examples are:

It all depends on your character's situation and your story which button pusher to use (for example, if you're writing a light romantic comedy, human tragedy may not be the way to go!)

Other ways of heightening the emotion

By 'deep' I mean being inside the character's head, thinking what they're thinking, reacting how they do so the reader can feel it.  Here's an example of a before and after: 

Before:

  Shelley felt bereft.  She could hardly control her breath, it was shaking so much.  With a small gesture she brushed her hair from her eyes with one hand as she felt the tears begin to fall.  She'd told Jack she'd loved him but he still continued to stare at her in silence.  Why didn't he love her back?

The downfall of this passage is the 'telling' of Shelley's reaction.  She'd just told a man that she loved him and he'd said nothing and now she's supposed to be devastated.  But the reader doesn't feel it.  What stops the connection is the abundance of 'she', as well as the sentence structure.  It doesn't flow - rather, it feels like someone's impartially telling a story, not as if the reader's an active participant.   Also, unnecessary words make the sentences too long. For e.g. "she brushed her hair from her eyes with one hand" could be simply "she brushed her hair from her eyes."

After:

  Shelley dragged in a breath, sharp and jagged, proof positive that Jack was right once again - she wasn't nearly in control of her emotions than she'd like to think. 

   Jack.  Last night.  His hands on her body, his lips on her skin. 

   The one man I can't have.

   A deep, aching pain tore through her chest as she dragged her eyes from his.  Yet even under his silent scrutiny she felt that familiar self-consciousness creep up to flush her face.  Her belly fluttered with a thousand buzzing flies, all of them a reminder of what they'd shared last night, and what would never happen again now she'd done the unthinkable.

   "I told you I love you and you've got nothing to say?"  She choked out, her throat dry as parchment.

In this rewrite, I've included some dialog, the heroine's physical reactions to the hero, deep POV, emotions, back story and some of the senses. 

What also 'personalises' deep POV is adding your character's personality, background or occupation to the analogies, stuff that makes it feel as if the character is really thinking it.  For example, if your heroine was an architect or historian, "her throat as dry as parchment" would be a good analogy for her.  In my first book, my hero was the owner of an international jewellery chain, so "he studied her as if she were a cubic zirconia in a diamond line up" fitted well.

What They Mean: It's about pacing

Solutions: Decide what is important for your scene - is it the first chapter?  Is it further on?  Is it a high-stakes one, a chase, a one-on-one verbal exchange, a description?  White space equals pace because your eyes move along quicker

Popular ways of starting a story are:

To really hook your reader, start with point of change - the point just as (or just before) everything in your character's ordinary world gets flipped.  This is the opening from my first Silhouette Desire, Forgotten Marriage.

    Married. 

    Finn Sørensen had a wife.  And apparently she was living in Australia.

    What a god-awful mess.

Other examples:

  His little sister was about to plummet to her death on the cold, gray cobblestones at his feet!

  One hot August Thursday afternoon, Maddie Faraday reached under the front seat of her husband's Cadillac and pulled out a pair of black lace underpants.  They weren't hers.

~ Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie (St Martins Press)

Use short sentences, emotionally intense and high-stakes words to impart urgency (especially true when writing a synopsis where you need to capture the editor's attention NOW!) e.g. passion, revenge, desperate, intense.

In my second Silhouette Desire release, Boardrooms & A Billionaire Heir, I had to cut the first 17 pages.  In retrospect, I can see why - too much internal dialogue, too much setting the scene, not enough immediacy/action.  By cutting those pages (and keeping pertinent paragraphs to put elsewhere!), I achieved a few things:

Harlequin SuperRomance author Karina Bliss has a great example of editing for impact.  Here's the original and the published versions of the opening lines from her second book, Mr Imperfect:

Original:

    Summer and Autumn had begun their squabble over April, and summer had won on a day that was still and clear, warm enough to draw Auckland's office workers to the city's parks and outdoor cafes.

Published version:

   Scandal.

  The fashionable restaurant reeked of it, along with Chanel, the fruitiness of Chianti and mouth-watering stone-grilled meats so calorie-loaded Kate Brogan tried not to inhale too deeply. She was saving herself for the tiramisu.

What they Mean: Lack of sexual tension

Solutions: Read other author's books where the hero and heroine are together and highlight the 'passion' words.  Learn how the characters interact and react to each other. 

How are your hero and heroine aware of each other?

Touch - the way they feel, or the way they imagine they feel.  Hair, skin, fabrics

Smell - cologne, skin, hair, even sex

Taste - lips, mouth, skin, intimate bits

Hearing - their voice, cadence, rhythm

Sight - the way they look, act, walk, characteristic ticks and expressions

What do all of these senses do to their own?  Show the reader via a physical and/or mental response. 

This response can be expressed within that character as bodily description (Sally felt her insides tense) or internal thoughts (Damn, the mere whiff of his freshly showered skin turned her on!).  Or within the other character as description (John watched her pupils dilate) or internal thoughts (She may deny it, but I know she's interested).

So there you have it - the most common contest downfalls and my interpretation of how to fix them.  The bonus of having these solutions is you can also use them to fix up those rejected manuscripts!