This is Snapper, presenting you with the latest hook challenge. If you are unfamiliar with this writing challenge allow me to explain.

The theory is most editors, due to the volume of submissions they receive, will reject the majority of the submissions based on the first page. With the title, information required, and guidelines (double spacing, size font) the first page is usually the first 13 lines of your story. This exercise is to see who can write the best opening with the same story synopsis.

Each challenge a new synopsis is presented. This weeks is written by Tiergan. Other future synopsis writers are...

LAJD
Crank

If you like to provide a future synopsis copy the list above and add your name to it in your post in this thread.

If you are not sure what '13 lines' is, it is Courier 12 pnt in a 65 character line. (Kathy will probably provide a template). If your submission is longer than 13 lines it will get cut down to size (whining will do you no good).

Now here are the rules.

1) All submissions are based on the synopsis below. You can start anywhere you like in the synopsis as long it is how you would start your version

2) All submission are to be sent to me (my email address is up there) Send your email in the subject line
13 line hook challenge
and place your submission in the body of the text. Please write your submission as such

Your hatrack name

Entry # (I'll fill it in)

Title

Your wonderful 13 lines etc, etc, etc...

3) I will start posting submission when I get a sufficient number. The competition will last about a week after I post this message.

4) Voting will begin after I close the submissions. Please do not post anything in that thread until I close the submissions and open the voting. Everyone that submits an entry is encouraged to vote for your top three and favorite title (which can be part of the hook). All that did not submit an entry but would like to vote are encouraged to do so. And no voting for your own (that's lame)

5) At the close of the voting I shall tabulate the votes. First gets 5, second 4, and third 3. Winner is declared and you get to wear a pirate hat and say ARRGGH all week.

Now for this weeks synopsis...

quote:

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It is the year 2207, and the future is what you make it.

Jason was born and raised to be a killer since an infant, chosen at birth to be part of Project RAZOR. Or so, that was what he thought. But now at the tender of age 20, he has begun to doubt his whole existence. In the past, every mission, every memory is wiped clean once the mark is terminated. He has had no recollection of his age, his number of kills, anything, just the latest face and data file that flashes through the chip ingrained in his head, viewed like a screen through his left eye, leaving the right eye vision clear for the scope of his rifle. Though the RAZORS are known and feared more for their personal kills with the knife, and horrid interrogations where the mark has been known to be flayed alive until all secrets have been told.

But at 20, Jason begins to have flashes of his past, his interrogations, nightmares of his marks being terminated, but nothing of the life before 15, the life when he was young. At first, he believes his chip has faltered. But when he schedules an update, instead of a technician, another RAZOR tries to kill him, a flash from his past, a lover who doesn’t recognize him. He begins to doubt that he has a chip in his head and begins to wonder if he is human, and worse he fears that he is. For if he is an android or has a chip in his head, then he can accept the horrors he has committed, the lives he has taken, its in his programming. But if he is human, he doesn’t know if he can live with the atrocities he has committed. But if he isn’t human than his life can never change, where as if he is flesh and blood then he can change, and maybe, just maybe, make amends for the lives he has destroyed.

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