[Quite different from my earlier attempt, since we have a bit more information now about how this works]
I think it is going to turn out that
all the answers have a lot of letters in common, either each with each or each with its neighbours. Perhaps the changes between successive solutions will be informative. Perhaps the common letters, or the letters added/removed, will yield our final answer.
Some specific conjectures that may illustrate why I expect this:
2 TRACING ICON (or maybe NOTICING ICON?)
3 CITING COON
4 something involving COINING (maybe OTHER COINING? doesn't seem like quite the right letters)
5 something involving TIC (CONTINUING TIC has good letters but is rather long)
6 something involving TONIC; perhaps NO-GIN TONIC which has the right sort of letters)
7 maybe TELESCOPING (better letters than TELESCOPIC)
8 maybe COTTON GIN (but GPR's comment to Dan suggests this can't actually be right)
I don't have any good ideas about 1 but will probably feel stupid when I get it (or someone else does) :-).