Welcome to the Mastermind Season 8 Results Thread! Please note that the judges have only graded submissions that were submitted to the SUBMISSION thread before the deadline. All graded submissions are accompanied with constructive feedback below in the comments section.
RESULTS
Congratulations to Kane AND Alex Coates for receiving the highest average with a score of 95 out of 100!
Congratulations to Stepan and M-Moya for receiving the second and third highest averages with scores 78 and 72 out of 100, respectively!
All prize winners will be contacted via email from info@mastermindbp.com shortly after this thread is posted.
All prizes come in the form of PayPal donations so you need to have an email that is connected to a PayPal account to receive the award(s).
Please keep in mind that the judge(s) have assigned grades based on the following marking criteria:
Once again, congratulations to BOTH Kane AND Alex Coates for winning this season!
Thank you to everyone for participating in this season and we hope that you will come back for future seasons scheduled once every few months!
Finally, please stay up to date with us on our Discord Community for updates about our future competitions. Note that you need a Discord account to do so and you can create one for free.
Link to our Community Discord: https://discord.gg/xkXqs7YwhF
Chris' Review Scores and Notes
(Note from Chris: I want to congratulate everyone who participated in MM8! It's always difficult to put one's writing out in the wild and even harder to have some random dude judge it. I found all of these pieces to be fun reads and no matter what score or place you got, I strongly encourage all of you to continue writing!) Alex Coates
Creativity and Originality: 27/30 pts
Structure and Organization: 23/25 pts
Engagement and Impact: 25/25 pts
Grammar and Spelling: 10/10 pts
Prompt Adherence: 10/10 pts
Total: 95/100 pts
Notes:
Creativity and Originality: The idea of having a seemingly innocent character secretly being a villain is not unheard of, but the way in which you build the story around how they act in a dream without revealing what they actually did, put a refreshing twist on the theme.
Structure and Organization: Your formatting was excellent and did not pull the reader out of the story. The story structure itself was fantastic. From an innocent beginning to the twist at the end, everything was very well put together.
Engagement and Impact: Change nothing here. Your story is the kind that will stay with a person long after they finish reading it.
Grammar and Spelling: I could not find any errors in your grammar or spelling.
Prompt Adherence: You did an excellent job of addressing the prompt.
Overall:
At first, I wanted to know more about what the narrator experienced in the dream world. The way you handled it without revealing any details was nothing short of masterful. The way you tied in the opening and final lines gave the piece a beautiful symmetry.
The sense of mystery and excellent use of keeping things vague are the stars of your story. It forces the reader to keep guessing and try to fill in the gaps with their own possible narratives. You tend to see that in the best kind of writing.
If I had to give a criticism, it would be that the characters are a little flat. I understand that keeping the main character’s traits a secret are integral to the story, but the supporting cast felt like they could have used more attention. Maybe highlight a few of them individually and use them to drop a hint or two about the true nature of the main character. The story still works wonderfully as is.
M-Moya
Creativity and Originality: 25/30 pts
Structure and Organization: 14/25 pts
Engagement and Impact: 17/25 pts
Grammar and Spelling: 6/10 pts
Prompt Adherence: 10/10 pts
Total: 72/100 pts
Notes:
Creativity and Originality: Low stakes stories involving cooking or baking were all the rage for awhile, but your story is able to incorporate the theme of dreaming quite nicely.
Structure and Organization: This piece felt like you were holding too much back in order to preserve the reveal at the end. It made for some disjointed portions that could leave the reader confused. While the main character was dreaming the future, it felt like there wasn’t enough contrast between the dream state and reality.
Engagement and Impact: The food-themed description of the dawn was the star here. It was a great hook that compelled readers to continue the story.
Grammar and Spelling: There were too many easily fixable mistakes throughout the piece. An editing pass through with MS Word or Google Docs could have solved many of the issues here. Grammar and spelling are invisible when perfected, but mistakes shine bright enough to take most readers out of the story. And that is not where you want them to be. Here are a few examples of what I noticed:
Capitalization: Dostoevsky, New York
Double word: was was in 2nd paragraph
Prompt Adherence: This piece did a good job of following the prompt.
Overall:
This piece felt like it had a couple of interesting ideas that needed to be better connected in order to form a cohesive story. The surrealism of the breakfast dawn was intriguing, and the cooking competition setting was unique and compelling. Despite the dawn sequence, the synesthesia twist at the end felt like it needed more explanation.
However, the main thing that this piece needed was some editing and formatting. There were several words that needed capitalization, some word repetition, and some of the sentence structure didn’t flow as well as it could have. There was also inconsistent indentation throughout. Issues like these take the reader out of the story. Instead of admiring the excellent description of a rising sun, I’m wondering why New York isn’t capitalized.
Still, some of the concepts were compelling and there is an excellent story in there with a little editing.
Kane
Creativity and Originality: 27/30 pts
Structure and Organization: 23/25 pts
Engagement and Impact: 25/25 pts
Grammar and Spelling: 10/10 pts
Prompt Adherence: 10/10 pts
Total: 95/100 pts
Notes:
Creativity and Originality: Everything from the timer to the increasing violence of the titans fighting was incredibly creative.
Structure and Organization: Formatting was on point along with the structure of the story. Everything flowed smoothly until the end. If anything, the ending was a little too jarring, but that could come down to individual taste and preferences.
Engagement and Impact: From the opening hook to the end, this is the type of story that holds the readers attention and makes it difficult for them to put the story down. Pager turners are worth their weight in gold and this is one of them.
Grammar and Spelling: No noticeable grammar or spelling mistakes were found.
Prompt Adherence: This piece did a good job of keeping to the prompt.
Overall:
This story grabbed me from the beginning and did not let go. There was just enough ambiguity to keep the reader guessing as to who was dreaming, or whether or not they were sharing a dream. That sense of unknowing was present right up to the moment the dreamer woke up. That’s tough to do, but you pulled it off fantastically.
There was also the content of the dream. The reader expected some sort of relevance and meaning of the dream. The tenseness and the conflict reflected the dreamer’s inner turmoil.
The only criticism is the ending. While shocking and impactful, it felt a little too abrupt. The reader was on this excellent ride and then it just stops. Maybe a hint or two before the reveal or a small reaction after could ease some of that abruptness. Or just leave it. Either way, it’s still an excellent story.
Stepan
Creativity and Originality: 21/30 pts
Structure and Organization: 19/25 pts
Engagement and Impact: 18/25 pts
Grammar and Spelling: 10/10 pts
Prompt Adherence: 10/10 pts
Total: 78/100 pts
Notes:
Creativity and Originality: I enjoyed the originality of a supernatural entity that caused someone to get stuck in a dream. It took me awhile, but I finally realized that the entire sequence had the main character gong back and forth between two different dreams until they finally broke the spell at the end. Nicely done.
Structure and Organization: While the structure of the story was fine, the formatting was unnecessarily distracting. The lack of traditional paragraphs and indentation drew the reader’s attention away from the story.
Engagement and Impact: The story did a good job of keeping the reader invested. The uncontrolled floating and loss of time created a sense of mystery that begged to be solved. Although, I did find a lack of contrast between the two dream states. While I understand it was intentional and integral to the story, I believe a couple more hints and cues could have gone a long way. Also, the characters had muted reactions to what was going on. One of them flew and the literal reaction was “Huh. That’s new.” Dreaming or not, I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t freak out if they suddenly floated up to the ceiling.
Grammar and Spelling: There were no noticeable errors in grammar or spelling.
Prompt Adherence: This piece did a good job of following the prompt.
Overall:
Even though I could see it coming, I still enjoyed the reveal at the end of this piece. However, I felt like the lead up lacked something. Perhaps some more nuanced characters?
I also found the dialogue to be a bit dry. For a person who was losing days and weeks at a time, the main character was sort of blasé about the whole situation. Granted, he did have a couple of outbursts, but the reactions from both him and his friends could have been amped up to give a feeling of immediacy and help the reader have the feeling of increased stakes.
You didn’t use traditional paragraphs or indentations. This was an unnecessary distraction that takes the reader out of the story. I mention this because if this story had been submitted to a magazine for publication, this would give them cause to send it back without reading any of your story.
The overall concept was solid, if not a little familiar. With a few tweaks, this piece has a lot of potential.