I like working with my Usual Suspects (beta/first/test readers), because since I’ve known most of them for years, I can usually tell when they’ve hit something that’s a real problem vs. when it’s more a matter of taste. That’s hard to do with contest judges!

I have to be careful not to fall into disembodied talking heads syndrome. I write skeletal versions of the critical scenes first. At that point, it’s virtually all dialogue with notes on stage direction, backstory, setting description, and character feelings/thoughts scribbled in the margins. I may not USE all those inputs when I flesh out the original draft, but they’re available if I need them.

I guess you could say I’m more of a layering type. I’ve had to learn to trust my instincts on how much setting description to add. Back when I was still entering RWA writing contests, I got a few criticisms that I wasn’t describing the scenery thoroughly enough. In fact, one judge insisted that I spend at least one paragraph, preferably two, at the beginning of *every* scene detailing what the room looked like. This was a published author judge, too.

So…I got all paranoid about that and started scraping the stuff on with a palette knife. I quickly discovered that it blew the pacing and messed with my voice. Although other contest judges (published, unpublished, editors, agents) had had no issue with the level of description in the original, I didn’t want to be the kind of writer who only listens to praise and tunes out criticism. I went overboard, though. At any rate, I haven’t done contests in years. Nowadays, I’ve got great beta readers who tell me what is/is not working for them, and they don’t try to muck around with my writing style.