[JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" & “Completed”Category Announced!
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I have no idea how many entries there were, but I'm almost certain there were a lot. So, whoever passed the first round can already be very proud. Congratulations to everyone!
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awww man, I guess I wasn't lucky this time.
anyways though I didn't make past Round 1, my webnovel is still available for free (read to only those who are interested). It is available also on internet (maybe 3-4 sites total? Idk.)
just search "The Ability to Shift Anything is Convenient, Even in Another World!" on google
btw congrats to the winners! 🎊
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Damn it sucks I didn't make it through, but I've learned a lot. I want to thank the staff of JNC and Kadokowa for giving me the opportunity to present my story to you guys. For everyone that made it through congratulations and good luck I'll be reading and supporting!
P.S. keep an eye for The Final Resting place for those of us who lost don't be discouraged. Keep writing there is always a next time! 😁
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I don't see my novel on the list... I hate to be that guy, but this just makes me really depressed.
Is it possible to know why our novels didn't pass if we ask? I really want this series I wrote to get an anime adaptation, so if there's something I can do to improve the chances of that happening by improving the writing of my story, I'd really appreciate knowing what it is.
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@AuthorMN said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
I don't see my novel on the list... I hate to be that guy, but this just makes me really depressed.
Is it possible to know why our novels didn't pass if we ask? I really want this series I wrote to get an anime adaptation, so if there's something I can do to improve the chances of that happening by improving the writing of my story, I'd really appreciate knowing what it is.
From what I saw last year, the best feedback for people who didn't make it past the first round came from people who shared samples and snippets of their entries on the JNC forums or on the JNC discord for other people to peruse and review. I know at least one author who took advantage of that style of community sharing and managed to get their entry past the first round this year.
The forum threads used for this last year were https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7938/jnc-writing-group-feedback-thread and https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7788/jnc-writing-support-group, I think offering to trade a review for a review might be the best way to go about it.
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@Hylebos I actually did submit my ongoing entry there for feedback about a year ago. I got some feedback, but then the threads pretty much went dead. I don't have discord, so I couldn't access the server either. I did get feedback from friends and family on said entry though, and they all seemed to like the story and writing. There was also a unique premise, but I can only infer that the judges weren't impressed, which simply leads me to want to know why that was the case. Was there something in the writing? Was the outline not up to par, or was everything fine, but the story just not what the judges wanted? I really want this ongoing series I'm writing to become something big, thus, I want to get any and all feedback on it in order to increase the chances of it getting an anime adaptation.
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@AuthorMN The judges made it clear they will not give feedback to those who don't pass round 1. Begging here won't do anything.
You should consider joining the discord channel where people are active almost daily. Request feedback, trade stories for feedback, discuss what to improve, etc. Many seem to have found it to be very helpful. -
@mononyan Hey there! I can't find the Discord invite... Could you please send it here?
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@mononyan I don't have Discord though, and I'm sure many others don't either. Can I post my novel elsewhere for feedback?
I also don't see where the judges stated they won't give feedback. Last year, even if we failed, we could request to know why in the email we received confirming the fact. Not having that feedback in my opinion is detrimental, as without it, writers truly can't tell what was wrong. Sure, peer review can possibly point to why, but other times it can't, because sometimes peers could say everything looks good, but the judges say otherwise.
On a different note, I do feel there need to be better opportunities for writers outside Japan to get a chance at getting a publishing deal with Japanese companies. I'm pretty sure the main reason many join the contest is to eventually get their work adapted into manga, anime, and/or published in Japan, something publishing with a Western-based publisher often times can't guarantee. The contest practically ensures that there will only be a small handful that even get the chance, which in turn can lead to many good series missing out, not necessarily because they're bad, but because they simply lost out to novels the judges would rather see get adapted over them, or they just weren't said judges' cup of tea so to say.
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@AuthorMN said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
I also don't see where the judges stated they won't give feedback. Last year, even if we failed, we could request to know why in the email we received confirming the fact. Not having that feedback in my opinion is detrimental, as without it, writers truly can't tell what was wrong. Sure, peer review can possibly point to why, but other times it can't, because sometimes peers could say everything looks good, but the judges say otherwise.
I agree that it's very much in J-Novel's best interest to provide a sentence or two summing up why the story was rejected. When I wrote asking for the reason last year, I was told the judge left nothing in my case. I wrote a brand new story based on the limited peer review feedback I received, and the new story was also rejected. What I need to know is why J-Novel thinks my work won't sell, and that's not something peer reviewers can necessarily identify. I essentially wasted my time writing something that was rejected yet again, when I could have written something that would've passed had I only known what was wrong with my entries.
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@Alfaerin There were over 600 plus entries in the 2024 light novel contest and it sounds like there were as many, if not more entries this year.
Of those 600 plus entries, they selected only 32 so they would have to write 1,000 plus sentences on why they rejected various book ideas.
The reasons publishers have for rejecting a book are varied and different. For example, what is a solid reason for rejection at J-Novel could be vastly different at Seven Seas, Random House, or Simon and Schuster.
J-Novel is a business and if they have information showing that they make no profit on certain genres of stories they won't license it, no matter how good it is.
Ideally, a publisher should take every manuscript sent to them and evaluate it with a pass through their editors. Find weakness in writing, suggest ways of firming up the characters, help fix plot holes. But that is dedicating literally hundreds, no thousands of hours. For 30 manuscripts, that is hard, but doable. For 600 plus? It is impossible.
So it's up to the author to take their story and improve. Take writing classes, join writing groups, read and study other stories in the genre that they are writing.
The writing space is chocked full of authors trying to get their stories published. You have to stand out and keep writing, editing, and revising your stories. The publisher doesn't have the bandwidth to do it for you.
And you will be rejected. 30, 60, some times more than 100 times by different publishers before someone says "Yes."
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@Alfaerin Don't say that you've wasted your time. Well, I get it, writing a story only to oneself is probably not worth all the hard work and effort. But now you have something that you've created, something special that is dear to you, isn't that right? I've already read the first page of your story and it appears to be very well written and promising. Give me some time to read the rest, I'll give you my thoughts then. But it's like AuthorMN said, maybe there's nothing really wrong about it, maybe all the other entries were just way too good, or more mainstream and the editors thought they can be more profitable with less risk, or just not the cup of tea of the judge. Who knows? One thing is certain, there is no formula to success.
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@Alfaerin Exactly! Not to mention, things were pretty vague in regards to the guidelines for the ongoing series at times. The 10,000 word limit for both the outline and character descriptions was also a hindrance at times as there were quite a few people who had plans for lots of volumes, which naturally means you're not going to be able to fit everything there. As such, we also had less room for going into detail on some of the more complex things about the world we sought to build. I heard that the outlines were supposedly the big thing the judges were looking for.
Peers can't properly give you feedback on that, as they could think it looks good, but the judges don't like the direction. I believe one of the staff even said the outline was to be our "sales pitch" further enhancing the need for feedback as there's no way we can know what really cost our novels a spot in the finals without it.
And while I'm on the topic, it's also worth wondering if the judges checked out your ongoing series if it was posted and being uploaded, to see how well it lined up with the outline. I don't think this would happen, but anxiety can sometimes lead you to believe that's the case.
My ongoing entry is also an ongoing webnovel series, which is more often than not updated with new chapters daily. While my entry was an improved version of the first season of said story, I worry that with the current season I'm writing, the judges might have taken a peak at it and said, "Wait, this guy sounds like a major character! Why wasn't he in the outline!?" or "This story arc wasn't in the outline!" And in my defense to that, the reason they weren't is because I hadn't even thought of them until after the deadline for submitting the story had passed.
That's the other thing I didn't like about how vague the guidelines were. With long ongoing series, you don't always know everything that will happen, or who will become a major character or not. Things can change at the drop of a hat. It makes me wonder what some of the outlines were like for those that passed. Did they have clear visions for every story beat? A definitive ending? This is why feedback is necessary.
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@morbelek It's not impossible; they gave such reasoning upon request last year. The avenues you've proposed for improvement only help if the work was failed for lack of quality. They cannot help a writer whose work was rejected for being deemed unprofitable. By letting contestants know why their works are being rejected, JNC judges will waste less time reading works that will never pass and writers will waste less time producing and submitting works that will never pass. If nothing else, it would be extremely helpful if JNC could at least release a list of the most common reasons why works were rejected.
Edit:
@shiratori-keira I normally write for the sake of writing, because I love my craft, but long story short, I am running out of time to make a writing gig work. Either I find a way to pay for my insulin or I will most likely die. -
@morbelek said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
@Alfaerin There were over 600 plus entries in the 2024 light novel contest and it sounds like there were as many, if not more entries this year.
Of those 600 plus entries, they selected only 32 so they would have to write 1,000 plus sentences on why they rejected various book ideas.
Last year, I believe all the judges wrote feedback on the entries they reviewed, and if not, it was stated that they didn't.
@morbelek said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
The reasons publishers have for rejecting a book are varied and different. For example, what is a solid reason for rejection at J-Novel could be vastly different at Seven Seas, Random House, or Simon and Schuster.
J-Novel is a business and if they have information showing that they make no profit on certain genres of stories they won't license it, no matter how good it is.
And that right there is the conundrum. Even if your novel is unique, thrilling, and well-written, it's uniqueness could also be it's undoing if it's not part of the "genre that sells". And I hate to be that guy, but to me that says that if your story isn't isekai/fantasy, it means you've got a much higher hill to climb compared to others. Looking at the finalists, it's clear isekai/fantasy is the prevalent genre. I'm glad there are some non-isekai/fantasy novels amongst them, but still, it's clear isekai/fantasy is the preferred genre. The thing I like about the JNC contest is that there's no theme/genre restrictions/requirements, nor are you required to create an entirely new story from scratch simply for the contest. This allows authors to submit stories that aren't confined to strict guidelines, allowing for more creative works. But if there is a preferred genre, then I feel either it needs to be stated that it's the case in future contests, or two separate contests, one specifically for stories of the isekai/fantasy genre and one for those that aren't, are held in order to give those other novels more of a chance at passing.
@morbelek said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
So it's up to the author to take their story and improve. Take writing classes, join writing groups, read and study other stories in the genre that they are writing.
The writing space is chocked full of authors trying to get their stories published. You have to stand out and keep writing, editing, and revising your stories. The publisher doesn't have the bandwidth to do it for you.
If the judges' main reason for rejecting a novel is not because it's bad, but solely because they don't think it will sell because it's not of the "most profitable genre" or lacks any metrics to show it can sell well, then no amount of writing support groups will solve that problem. In this case, your main issue will be showcasing to the judges that your work can in fact be profitable. But on that note, just how are you going to convince the publisher to take a chance with it? My only guess would possibly be popularity. This is why I believed that the judges would check out your ongoing works, in order to see how popular they are. But if they don't do that, then do we ourselves need to provide such metrics?
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I pressed the copy link button and that is what came up. Hope it works!
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@shiratori-keira To be honest, it can be a really hard pill to swallow. Not getting official feedback on why your novel didn't pass is one thing, but to find out that the reason it might not have made it was solely due to the fact that it wasn't part of the "genre that sells" stings even more. That means no matter how good the writing is or how unique and fresh the story is, the judges will reject it simply because they really don't want to take a chance with it or publish it. The problem many authors outside Japan face is that contests like this are seemingly the only surefire way to increase the odds of their novels getting an anime and/or manga adaptation. And to be honest, knowing that no amount of work or refining will get your work a publishing deal, just makes you want to stop writing.
Hearkening back to a point I made in an above post, isekai/fantasy is heavily preferred by the judges. Taking a look at last year's finalists, it looks like most if not all were of said genres. My ongoing entry was not an isekai or fantasy, it was a sports series. And since there are no other Japanese series out there with a primary focus on said sport, I fear that was what ultimately made the judges pass it over for a more surefire isekai/fantasy seller. With how open the guidelines are in regards to what your novel could be about, I was under the impression that series from a variety of genres would be considered, but it sadly seems that might not be the case.
Thus, my question would be what avenues should we take to try and get a non-isekai/fantasy series published and adapted into an anime/manga?
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@AuthorMN You don't need to tell me. I do understand you way more than you think. That despair you are feeling, I've been feeling it for a decade. After all, I wrote a light novel in 2014, but I couldn't even submit it to a publisher for appreciation. I searched every corner of the internet. Eventually, I just gave up. Only now, a decade later, did I write my second story, and it's thanks to this contest. Neither story is fantasy/isekai.
This is probably the only opportunity that we foreigners have to have our works be seen by a Japanese publisher. So we should at least be grateful that such a contest is being organized. I don't think the judges are only considering fantasy/isekai novels, it's probably that most submissions are in that genre, so the passing ones will reflect that. And of course, given two great works, it is only natural that the one with more potential to become popular is picked.
The tips I can give you are:
- You can dream about it, but you have to understand that having a manga/anime adaption is not a realistic goal
- Write about what you want and love in whatever genre you feel comfortable (and have fun while doing it)
- Even if you force yourself to do a fantasy/isekai, your path will be just as hard (and probably just as hopeless)
- Trends come and go. Now fantasy is all the rage, before it was all about superpower heroes fighting to be the strongest, next year it might be that sport, who knows?
- Even if the judges told you about your weak points and you worked on those, there is no formula to success. You just have to keep trying and always do the best you can
- Always believe in and love your own works
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Since you passed the 1st round, I was wondering if it would be possible to give some insight into what your outline was like. For example, how close were you to the 10,000 word limit? Did you include other notes in it besides just the story outline and character profiles, for example, notes explaining how things like a magic system or tidbits on the geopolitical state of your world? And finally, did you have a concrete ending for the series stated, or was it more of a proposed ending or lack of one. I don't think the judges would have a problem with anyone that passed answering these questions, but if you or any others here that passed, don't feel like answering these questions, I respect that.
@shiratori-keira said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
@AuthorMN You don't need to tell me. I do understand you way more than you think. That despair you are feeling, I've been feeling it for a decade. After all, I wrote a light novel in 2014, but I couldn't even submit it to a publisher for appreciation. I searched every corner of the internet. Eventually, I just gave up. Only now, a decade later, did I write my second story, and it's thanks to this contest. Neither story is fantasy/isekai.
This is probably the only opportunity that we foreigners have to have our works be seen by a Japanese publisher. So we should at least be grateful that such a contest is being organized. I don't think the judges are only considering fantasy/isekai novels, it's probably that most submissions are in that genre, so the passing ones will reflect that. And of course, given two great works, it is only natural that the one with more potential to become popular is picked.
The tips I can give you are:
- You can dream about it, but you have to understand that having a manga/anime adaption is not a realistic goal
- Write about what you want and love in whatever genre you feel comfortable (and have fun while doing it)
- Even if you force yourself to do a fantasy/isekai, your path will be just as hard (and probably just as hopeless)
- Trends come and go. Now fantasy is all the rage, before it was all about superpower heroes fighting to be the strongest, next year it might be that sport, who knows?
- Even if the judges told you about your weak points and you worked on those, there is no formula to success. You just have to keep trying and always do the best you can
- Always believe in and love your own works
While I appreciate the tips, it's sadly stuff I already know. Thus, I want to try and forge my own path to success. I may be dejected right now, which is only worsening thanks to Mario Kart World's $80 price tag (and Donkey Kong Banaza's $70 one), but I'm not giving up on my ongoing series. Thus, I'll ask, care to give it a read? I don't have Discord, but even here, there is an old thread with some old drafts of it in the "Other Discussions" area, not to mention it is being uploaded with new chapters on a webnovel site, but I think it's against the rules to directly link it, so you'd have to find it on your own. Currently, the version up there isn't the version I submitted to the contest, but it is similar at it's core. If you don't want to check it out though, I respect that.
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@AuthorMN said in [JNC LIGHT NOVEL CONTEST 2025] Round 1 Judging for "Ongoing Series" Category Announced!:
Since you passed the 1st round, I was wondering if it would be possible to give some insight into what your outline was like. For example, how close were you to the 10,000 word limit? Did you include other notes in it besides just the story outline and character profiles, for example, notes explaining how things like a magic system or tidbits on the geopolitical state of your world? And finally, did you have a concrete ending for the series stated, or was it more of a proposed ending or lack of one.
Sure, I could share a little bit about that.
My plot outline was 8,094 words and my character profiles were 1,237 words for a grand total of 9,331 words. I started the plot outline with a brief, ~200 word abstract to introduce the core premise behind my story as well as some of the inspiration that led to its creation, with the hopes that it would align and focus the judges on the central goal of the story. After a quick paragraph to summarize where the manuscript had left off with regards to the main characters, their last location, and their current objective, I launched into a high level walkthrough of the main story of my series, arc by arc.
I tried to keep the tone brief and productive—similar to what you might find in a plot synopsis on a wikipedia article for a game or movie—though looking at the plot outline I submitted I was not nearly as abridged as a true wikipedia article would be. To break up the tedium of the back to back paragraphs of exposition, I would occasionally throw in a few lines of dialogue between the characters.
"Something like this, I think. Written in our voice, so you can probably tell who's talking, but without speaker tags or any other embellishments because that would take up space and we have far too much ground to cover."
"That's right. Although it was a bit more hokey than what the actual dialogue in a finished product might look like, these snippets helped to emphasize brief flashes into our character's thoughts and personalities, and captured moments of wit and humor."
"Plus—don't you reckon some things are just plumb easier to introduce by just spittin' it out? Imagine something like... 'Hey guys, aren't we forgettin' about something?' rather than dryly saying 'The party members neglected to think about X'? It's conversational and stuff!"
"Indeed. Far more organic."
...Anyways, things roughly progress like that from plot point to plot point. I slowed down whenever there was a particularly dramatic, funny, or impactful moment I wanted to cover in detail, but otherwise tried to be as light as possible with the explanations so as not to burden the judges. The most important thing for me was to share my vision for the story and connect for them how different developments spill into one plot point after the other in a natural, reader-focused way.
My story does not have much of an elaborate magic system nor great geopolitics, but if they did, I would have only mentioned them when they became relevant to the story and probably no more than a sentence or two per point. To make something contrived up on the spot, something like:
Cauldronville is full of witches who settled in the depths of the woods after being hunted down by the knights of the neighboring kingdom. Johnny decides that he wants to learn how make potions from the elder witch Carla, but is turned down both because of his knightly lineage and also because he doesn't even have any skill slots left with which to learn brewing. He finds and eats a mushroom of forgetting to delete his chivalry skill to demonstrate his resolve to Carla, who begrudgingly accepts him as her newest pupil.
Keep in mind, I should have already done some of the groundwork explaining how things function in the 35k-60k words that preceded this plot outline so anything introduced in the plot outline should nicely slot into the judge's existing knowledge base. I guess you have a slightly harder task ahead of you if you're a truly slow burning series like Bookworm that buries a lot of starting explanations fairly deep into the story, but even still, I would still take this same approach. Paint in passes. Keep it brief.
Generally speaking though, I would feel very hesitant about including separate notes about any aspect of my series that were unmoored from its story or characters—no matter how cool it might be, even in isolation, I would want to clearly show how it fits in and enhances the plot inline. Otherwise it becomes a matter of "Oh okay, cool." that will quickly slip from the judge's mind.
My series does have a concrete ending to the main story where I would be okay with ending things and moving on to writing something else, and so I detailed the ending from the perspective of how I would envision the epilogue chapter would play out, touching briefly on the immediate fates of each of the main characters before ending with a final scene with the immediate fate of the protagonist. While I do have some ideas for how the story could be continued beyond this point, I decided to omit them this time around. With 8k words in the bank, I was worried that I had written far more than enough already, and I also figured that the degree to which my story could be continued would be a natural conversation to have with the folks at JNC should I ultimately find success in the contest and there was no sense in rushing things just to fill the word count. Had I taken up less space and had those ideas been slightly more concrete (I would want something on the level of a <200 word volume blurb like what you see on the series pages rather than the scattered sentences I currently have in my
Sequel Ideas.md), I might have included some of them at the end of the outline in their own section.With regards to the character profiles, if the character was important enough to be named in the plot outline, I included them in the character profile list. Ultimately fourteen characters made the cut. Each character profile was a paragraph or two at most—I gave a brief one sentence introduction to who the character was but beyond that I sorta just said whatever came to mind. I usually tried to summarily call out how the character changes or develops throughout the series (which was particularly useful for characters with more subtle or gradual developments) and included one or more interesting facts or details that wasn't covered directly by the outline, in particular focusing on facts or details that would be extremely difficult to fit into the outline otherwise. Some of the characters even have almost authorial musings like "I thought it would be really fun to write an X character," or "I really like this aspect of their character."
I imagine there are many ways to go about writing these things, but hopefully my anecdotal explanation might give you an idea of how you could go about it in a hypothetical future contest.
