@Hylebos Thank you so much for sharing all this. Thanks to this, I now think I have a better idea on how the judges graded things. For me, I was struggling to get things UNDER the 10,000 word limit. I also started the outline from season 2 of the story, since the manuscript ended with season 1 at just under 60,000 words. From there, I basically did what you did and did an arc by arc walkthrough of the arcs in the story. Since I had Seasons 2-6 already written, I went into great detail on most of them, but lightened up on Season 6 in order to still have room to talk as much as possible about season 7, the current arc of the story, which I consider to be the series' biggest selling point. I did manage to fit in all the key points of season 7, and even some bits of season 8, before listing my proposed ending, as currently, I have plans for far more arcs than were showcased in the outline, heck, I even decided against including some of the side stories, all of which are canon to the main plot, in order to avoid going over the word count.
I feel me not having a concrete ending might not have been appeasing to the judges, but in my defense, this is a series that really could go on for years, since all it takes for new inspiration to hit me is for an IRL tournament to give me some inspiration. Heck, this current arc of the series all came to be because of a real-life tournament, which naturally led to me creating various characters to represent the nations competing in it. And that perfectly segways into my next bit, the characters.
I also felt that if the character was named in the outline, they needed to be given a profile, but I ended up limiting that when it came to certain characters, mainly the ones in Season 7, as at the time of writing the outline, my only vision for some of them was to simply have them be opponents for the main cast. And the worst part is that if I tried to do an outline and character profile page, I'd be completely screwed as with how many characters and plotlines I've got going now, there's no way I'd fit everything in 10,000 or possibly even 20,000. My series actually has over 500 named characters, and while not all of them are major, a good chunk of them are recurring and important to the overall plot, meaning that unless the judges allow for 30,000 words total or at the very least, 10,000 word limits on the outline and character profiles each, there's no way I'll be able to include everything about my story in the next iteration of the contest.
That kind of is a shame, since I do feel my series has to potential to not just bring in a big audience, but also boost the worldwide popularity of the sport it centers around ten-fold, which is another reason I feel that if pitched properly, it could get an anime. That's why I want to know if my main flaws with my entry were more with the writing or the more technical stuff like the outline and/or judges simply not being interested in the genre. Thank you very much for sharing this information once more, and best of luck to you in the contest. And if you ever feel like checking out my work, feel free to. I promise that if you do, you'll be greeted with peak chess.
