What Did You Learn from Judging Contests?

It’s contest season, so lots of us have been judging manuscripts, both unpublished and published, for the Golden Heart and the Rita and other awards.
I always find that judging clarifies “craft” for me. Reading a stack of contest entries, I see patterns in what works well, and what doesn’t work well, and notice how subtle factors can make the difference between a merely-competent entry and one that’s truly award-worthy.

This year my experience was much like last year–the entries I judged in the...