Hook 'Em Contest 2022: Entry #1 - Soliton

[Caulder Melhaire]

Title: Walk the Radcliff Wave
Genre: Sci-Fi
Trigger Warnings: World Building
Words: 24




“I was 95% walking dead. Who survives ejection over an alien world? Then it got worse.”

“Aha! You found my Token. Hi, Flynn,” Monique said.

[rim07]

Technical writing elements: I am intrigued by the opening. But I'm not sure if the second line helps me to get more insight on the first one.
Score:2

Artistic writing elements: Based on only the two sentences, I am more confused than I am intrigued. It is my personal opinion but I think that maybe with the use of bit of more words, I would be more intrigued.
Score:1.5

Prompt: It does convey the sense of abandonment experienced by the person who had the first dialogue. I would love to have a little bit more context.
Score:2

avg=1.8333

[Alatariel]

Technical Elements:

The first part is in italics and I'm not sure why because we don't have any information as to who/what is speaking or any sense of setting. Is it in italics because it's a recording or computer speaking? Not sure. It sounds more like internal dialogue, but there are quotations which means it's spoken aloud. It's a bit confusing. As for the 95%...I'm not sure if this should be spelled out like ninety-five percent or if the numeral is acceptable, but I am leaning toward it needing to be spelled out. Wish I had more info, here. You have plenty of words to spare. Give us some sense of setting and character. 

2

Artistic Elements:

There's not much to go on...

We need more for there to be anything artistic to grade. We know there's an alien world, but have no idea what it's like and it feels like a teaser. We need to know who/what is speaking, the setting/atmosphere, and the situation. I'm not grounded in this yet, I don't know if these are people speaking or aliens or AI or sentient plants. Honestly, could be anything. In order for the reader to care, we need to be given some basic information. We have two names. Next, attach them to a character and put them somewhere. Floating in space? Falling through the air? Laying on the ground? Buried beneath rock? In water? After that, I'd love to see some emotional language so I know what to feel while reading this. Suspense, curiosity, fear, anguish, pain, elation, adrenaline...? Since you have many words to play with, you could easily add those necessary elements and give us something to sink our teeth into. What is the Token? Why is it important? Why does the first italicized part sound so different from the second? We need some connective tissue.

1


Prompt:

Abandoned. I'm not sure I see much of that. We have a reference to ejection over an alien world. But there are two characters present: Flynn and Monique. I suppose they can both be abandoned together but once again I really need more info. I don't know if they were abandoned or if there are others or if their ship is nearby or not...I can make assumptions but it's the job of the writer to give us that info. Am I hooked? No because I'm confused. Confusion turns off the reader. It's a fine line between intrigue and confusion.

1

TOTAL:

1.33

[pelwrath]

Techincal Aspect:

  Good first line, an unexpected second and then nothing. Yes, I'm interested but nothing else there. Using the 200 words is important in an openeing. World/character/stry building to bring the reader in.

SCORE:2

Artistic Aspect:

What you have is good and I'm interested but it disappeared, that shouldn't have happened. You created more questions than you ansered.

SCORE: 2

Prompt Use:

Okay, the MC is abandoned on an alien planet. Ejected from a ship. An unusual method but also intriguing.Was he abandoned, like a captain of a mutinous ship? Nice but lacking.

SCORE: 2.5

Final score: 2 + 2 + 2.5=6.5/3=2.13

[RAVENEYE]

Jun 18, 2022 11:46:05 GMT -6 Caulder Melhaire said:

Title: Walk the Radcliff Wave
Genre: Sci-Fi
Trigger Warnings: World Building
Words: 24




“I was 95% walking dead. Who survives ejection over an alien world? Then it got worse.”

“Aha! You found my Token. Hi, Flynn,” Monique said.

Where's the rest? I'm wondering if some of the text got lost during posting or submitting...

Technical: 2

Hook: The first sentence is intriguing, and a great opening sentence should spark all kinds of fun questions. For instance: How can a person be just 95% walking dead? Is this literal or figurative? This would entice me to read on. After this first sentence, however, the opening unravels into a disjointed mishmash of things. Given that the author has 200 words to give context to what's happening in these 5 sentences, why not take advantage of that space and connect the dots for the reader?

SPaG: This is the highlight. I can't find anything technically wrong with the sentences. Each is constructed and punctuated properly. By the by, why is the first paragraph italicized? If this is someone's thought, then the quotation marks aren't needed, just the italics. If this is someone's statement, the italics aren't needed but we desperately need a dialog tag or dialog beat to know who is speaking. In other words, these are the kinds of questions the text should address and not inflict on the reader from the get-go. 

Artistic: 1

There's not much to go on, honestly. I think the problem lies in the artistic choice to write so slim that the excerpt doesn't make sense. I mean, there's so little to grab onto here that I can't get a handle on setting, character, or plot.

World-building: Though the template mentions world-building as a trigger warning (I'm assuming this is a joke), the excerpt here doesn't accomplish any world-building. An alien world is mentioned, but what kind of alien world? I want to be sucked into the setting with rich details. A glimpse? What's a Token?

Prompt: 1

What or whom has been abandoned? Who is the lone explorer? Given the dialog, there are at least two people here.

Total: 1.33

[Soliton]

Technical Writing Elements:
The first line appears to be a thought. Monique identifies the POV as Flynn. 

The brevity of the entries gives little to critique.

Perhaps you misunderstood the requirements of the assignment. We would like more about your ideas you are developing.

Score: 1.0


Artistic Writing Elements:
Since the first line was a thought, I see you used the second line to identify who it was. You could not use Flynn said. Flynn thought would have been awkward. Many questions were raised? What is a Token? Was there a battle and why? Rescue seems unlikely. Flynn seems resigned to his fate. What is the relation to Monique? What is the Token?

I wanted to learn more about this situation, but it just stopped. You could have benefited from using the whole 200 word limit.

Score: 1.0



Prompt:
The prompt “a lone explorer finds an abandoned…” was addressed. Unfortunately, only that.
The seating, the sitting, character hints, and intrigue are missing.

Score: .5


Total Score: (1+1+.5)/3 = .8

[FoxxGlove]

Technical:
I can find nothing to criticize in terms of spelling, punctuation or grammar. However, this piece is so very short that it's no easy task to comment on its worth or quality. It does spark curiosity and works well as a hook but seems to fall apart after that.
2.00

Artistic:
Again, the brevity of this entry leave small room for comment. It does work well in terms of evoking an interest to know more, but such interest is fleeting given there is not much to go on that will set the imagination in motion. The italics signify a quote but I wonder who is speaking. Is it Flynn internalizing or somebody yet to be named? It's all a tad ambiguous. The title was intriguing and my research revealed this is an actual Milky Way structure, so credit for that. I would also like to applaud the attempt to compose something within the confines of so few words. Unfortunately, we can't all possess the consummate genius of Hemingway's "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
1.50

Prompt:
I'm assuming this deals with some type of abandonment but it's far from clear, although there is a reference to ejection. Regardless, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt.
1.50

TOTAL: 1.66

[ScintillaMyntan]

Technical

I think what happens here is that the first line is spoken by the Token? So Flynn finds the Token, and it starts to narrate what happened to Monique.

It's pretty confusing, though. Is it indeed the Token speaking in the first quote? Or is it some narrator in a framing narrative introducing the story, and then the quote from Monique is the first sentence of the actual story? Either one seems plausible. And then, how and why does Monique appear the moment Flynn found her token? I feel like these opening paragraphs aren't as unambiguous to the reader as you might have expected unfortunately. A short bit of narration up in the first paragraph would help establish who's speaking and what sort of thing the Token is in general before you get into more details later. But really, these starting sentences would be just fine as the beginning of a story if the piece were longer and you gave us context in the next couple paragraphs. While there aren't a lot of technical issues in this short excerpt, not being sure literally what the story is about is a pretty severe one.

Looked up the Radcliff wave; it's spelled Radcliffe, apparently.

I guess the italics are on the first line because it's the Token speaking rather than a person. Works for me as long as you're consistent. In fact, it's the italics that made me interpret from only two lines that the first quote is said by the Token rather than Monique herself.

2.5

Artistic

It hooks me with the suggestion of an exciting adventure — I'm interested to see what the ejection into space was like and how Monique or whoever it was managed to survive. Whoever said the opening quote has a strong and witty voice, too, making them seem like a fun character. I do feel like their phrasing is a little bit on the silly or bombastic side; would someone really talk about their ordeal in an entertaining way like that? But the important thing is I would read on if these were the opening paragraphs of a story. 

“Aha! You found my Token. Hi, Flynn,” Monique said.

And why yes, I am quoting this for a line edit. The dialogue tag at the very end of the quote is somewhat awkward, like we have to wait all the way till then to know she said it. With the shortness and lack of detail of the piece so far, I think I would rather have a bit more detail than "Monique said," anyway, something that establishes where they are, what they're doing, how Monique encountered Flynn, or anything along those lines. For example, Monique poked her head around the corner from the next room at the sound of her own voice. "Aha! You found my Token. Hi, Flynn." Or Monique came running from the cliffs. "Aha!" But I am suggesting these things within the context of the piece being two lines long. If the piece were just expanded, this wouldn't be a problem. 

Honestly the more I say about this story, the more curious I am about what you really meant to be happening. 

Anyway, yeah. While our contest submissions are supposed to be beginnings of longer stories, I would say that within the contest, an entry is a piece in itself. It's a 'finished' piece in that it's intended to be consumed and evaluated by us by itself, without us having read without the rest of the story. So in a way it's supposed to stand alone. It's of the "max-200-word hook" genre, the way there's a tweet genre, an instruction manual genre, and so on. With that in mind, I find this kind of lazy, and incomplete even among stories that are supposed to be incomplete.

2

Prompt

I'd call it a partial match. Flynn is probably an explorer, but he's not alone if Monique's there talking to him. I suppose Monique abandoned her Token and Flynn found it, if that's indeed the correct understanding of it. I guess she might be speaking to him remotely? In any case, there's definitely some kind of exploration, since someone was ejected over an alien planet, and there's some kind of abandonment, because the Token could be "found."

3

Score: 2.5

[Ruhaab]

Technical -
“I was 95% walking dead. Who survives ejection over an alien world? Then it got worse.” This line is good but too short to get a concrete idea of what's going on. Maybe, you can use some words to convey the beginning.

Score - 1.5

Artistic -
Nothing can talk about it. Though 95% walking dead is an intriguing line.

Score - 1.5

Prompt -
I didn't get the lone explorer feeling.

Score - 1

Total - 1.33

[labrat]

Technical - SPAG looks ok I guess, but I feel like there's something missing here. The way the first sentence is italicized makes me think it's an internal thought, but we don't know whose. Sometimes brevity can be powerful, but here it's just confusing.

Score:2

Artistic: Again, not much to go on here. So much can be done with 200 words, even a little bit of world-building would help this so much. In the end I had more questions than anything, which I guess is one of the points of a good hook - to leave the reader asking questions and wanting to read further for the answers. But this had me scratching my head more than anything.

Score: 2

Prompt: The explorer isn't really alone since there are two people here, but perhaps the alien world is abandoned? Not sure.

Score: 2

Average score: 2

[Bird]

Jun 18, 2022 11:46:05 GMT -6 Caulder Melhaire said:

Title: Walk the Radcliff Wave
Genre: Sci-Fi
Trigger Warnings: World Building
Words: 24




“I was 95% walking dead. Who survives ejection over an alien world? Then it got worse.” [[Who is talking?]]

“Aha! You found my Token. Hi, Flynn,” Monique said.

I can't make sense of how these two sentences relate. Or why the first is in italics. I'm so confused.

Technical:

No Technical issues found. I do think the italics is a possible technical issue since it feels randomly applied. Maybe it can be an artistic choice, but there's not enough here to evaluate that as an artistic choice. Technically italics isn't needed. Because it is fairly technical sound, I can't justify given this less than a four here.

Score: 4

 Artistic:

I don't know who is speaking in the first line or how it relates to the second. I am unsure what "Token" is and why it is capitalized, or why Monique is glad Flynn found it. Also, unsure of POV character (is Flynn the narrator? Is this third person limited or third person omniscient?) There's not enough here to evaluate that.

Next time, try to utilize more of the word count to give us more meat to chew.

Score: 1

Prompt:

I... don't see the connection to prompt? Nothing seems abandoned. Unless the first line is supposed to reference that, but the second line then refutes that assumption.

Score: 1

Total Score: 2