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Protocol Sixty
How It Rates
Description
A man is sentenced to death in a future desolate wasteland.
Comments
Hey there, your writing style is very poetic and enjoyable to read. However, the story itself felt like it was incomplete and relayed in confusing order. The final paragraph drops a bomb that doesn't really make sense because there's no context established or elaboration because the story just ends. I'm intrigued by your decision to leave out quotations for dialogue. I definitely don't want to tread on your artistic license, but it did make some portions slightly disorienting in terms of who was speaking. I will give you a thumbs up because I'm not into the whole thumbs down thing, and I was impressed by some stylistic elements.
Hey Anthony,
Thanks for your quick reply and insights.
This piece was an experiment and it was a really hard write for me. So I really appreciate your candid feedback.
What I was trying to create here was a non-scifi riff in a scifi world and I kinda ran out of time trying to get the right emotional through-line for this story. Hence the emotional resonance and ending just seem to be so blunt and half-hearted. Something to look at in the next draft.
The lack of attribution was a part of my experiment. I need to work on this more.
Thanks for all your help.
-Chi
Not bad. It seemed to go a little all over the place, especially towards the end, and I think this could really benefit from a quick edit. There are important bits most likely mistyped that really took the punch out of what you were going for sometimes.
I also agree about the stylistic choices you made and think it detracted rather than added anything. The reason it works so well with other authors is because of the sparing use of dialogue and the simplicity of their words, along with how well those short lines flow with the previous and following text. I'm admittedly not very good with that sort of thing, I think, so it may take a bit more work. Keep at it!
I liked it, the execution scene was riveting, it needs a proper ending tho. Thumbs up.
To think, had you just added six words, you'd be leet.
Form-wise, you tell a pretty engaging story with the execution. Dystopic, to say the least. It kind of feels a bit rushed, though, as if you don't believe in your own story, or don't care.
I find it hard to connect to the dialogue without better dialogue formatting. Quotation marks would help a lot.
You get through this one very quickly, and the story may benefit in places from slowing down a little. If you want an execution to have resonance, then the reader needs to be more emotionally invested. Jack is an interesting character, but there is little here to make me care for his ending. In the entire piece we get little character development, and not much of them comes through. Your ending seems more than a little out of place. It is not entirely clear what is going on, and looks tacked on to fit submission criteria. It get that this is an experimental piece, but a little more of a traditional writing style (quotation marks especially) would make this a smoother read.
Other than finishing out that last scene a little more and editing stuff, Excellent work!