The Fourth Annual Writer Games: Canon

The Tributes - Scores and Notes

Hello all, and thank you for such a great turn-out and a phenomenal batch of entries! Below are your scores. Thanks to the two people who wrote the Training Scores task, lol. A lot of these scores may be lower than you are used to. I used only half intervals. The majority of you fall from 8-10. This is normal. There's lots of room for all of you to work with and continue to improve. I look forward to seeing your entries for the Bloodbath. Now, without further ado, the scores...

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District 1 Female – Dioria Rose, with a score of... 11!

NOTES: "It is much better to cut a beautiful flower and see it die than to see it wither." Wow. A quick spelling thing: looses instead of loses. There were only a few spelling mistakes. And while I would question slightly the characterization of Faust, the entire entry was wonderful. You really gave me who Dioria is. You let me see her thoughts, and you interspersed it with some nice description. I would, however, warn against the almost...convoluted? way, in that you really lay on the long sentences. Maybe long sentences isn't the right word, but while I loved the aestheticism of the entire thing, I didn't feel I could completely let myself go while reading the entry, because it was just so heavy. It was prose-like but still was weighed down a bit too much by that. However, that and the spelling errors were minor flaws enough in comparison to the entry overall that I still feel confident with the score I've given.

District 1 Male – Faust Chapman, with a score of... 8!

NOTES: Did you convince me that no one else in District One would have volunteered? Not really. I don't believe for a second that District One—after last year, of all years—would allow another tribute to be so easily killed, not after they were bested by District Twelve of all places. Let's just start at that. Your dialogue and interactions were pretty solid, though. Several errors with capitalization, but especially with tenses. You switch a lot between the different ways to write past (or it feels like it, because I am pretty sure there's, like, a direct past, and a limited past? Yes? No? Either way, the past tense kept feeling disjointed), but then you occasionally switched into present, like when you have the mother and 'She looks at me...' Examples of other grammar is when you wrote 'greasy, little heads,' where it should be greasy little heads. Aside from the grammar stuff, I enjoyed the self-deprecation, but it was made a bit...well, I would appreciate the character and his self-deprecation if he was a tribute not from One. But we can't change that now, so my advice in future tasks is to make him more believable, more fleshed-out. And maybe weave me a good story.

District 2 Female – Pandora Underwood, with a score of... 8!

NOTES: This was average. There were some spelling mistakes. The dialogue was what made this entry, and while your description was okay, she seems very one-dimensional. Yes, she was abused. But that does not define a person. That does not eliminate other personality traits. I get it, she wants death, she wants to fight, she wants to win. But what else? Overall though, this was a very decent entry. Working to make the character more than just a character and more into someone you want to read more of and working on balancing description and dialogue and aesthetics together will help your mark improve.

District 2 Male – Maur Verrill, with a score of... 10.5!

NOTES: I am confusion, because the one flaw I had is also one that influenced the entry to make me love it so. I'm sure you can guess—the Peacekeeper. First of all, what happened? Where's the weapon? Why? How did no one see him and why were they in a hallway and not a room? This entry though, wow. It blew me away. Besides the one issue, I got everything else. I got him, I got a mystery to be explored while not feeling forced or cliche. I got wonderful writing that really served to delve into Maur. The ending began to draw Maur to become more distant, at least with my connection reading it, but I look forward to reading more. The entire beginning part though, hot damn.