Martyr by Jean-Pierre Chapoteau - Short, Thriller - A group of terrorist force a student to kill an innocent person in cold blood, or a bomb strapped to his chest will take out an entire building.  14 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey

Nicely written. Couldn't see any spelling errors or formatting mistakes so great job on that =D.

SPOILERS

The thing that bothered me the most was that this wasn't even remotely close to a happy ending. I know this type of stuff happens in real life, but at least give some hope to Kenneth. At the end you are guaranteed that he will die and his son too. Maybe just a little hope for him would be better, but the story made me tense up and that overall is a good thing. So great job on that.

Writers don't try to tackle this topic and when they do, it turns into a one-sided disaster. But you didn't. You got the story bang-on. This wasn't one-sided and that was the best thing about it. You never really know why they are doing this and who is responsible. The government just blames a country in the middle east.

This was just my bad reading but before Kenneth said he had a son I thought Kenneth was also a student. Had to scroll up the page to see it says he is in his 20s.

Overall, this was really good. I enjoyed it a lot. Somebody has got to film this and send it to a film festival. Worthy of winning an award. This definitely needs more reads.

Also. Change the name of script, most people don't even know what Martyr means(I know I didn't :().

This could be really - good - I've now looked at it about five times - but I can't get the premise. If the premise is a miss, then it ain't going to hold... I just can't get over Zoe going " screw you!" and walking away - suspension of belief. If he had a gun on her, then he'd have a hold - that would give him an edge, but I just keep going back to - he's a loser - walk away.

Hello Jean Pierre,

This was a good read, well written and generally flowed well. Does it work as a tense short, yes  it does. Does it finish well, I'm not so sure.

a few small issues;

# why does he give her a despised look at the beginning. Doesn't he need to find someone?
# i couldn't understand her first line. I wasn't sure what this applied to.
# p7 is unit meant to be unite?
# he sweats due the heat under his coat. I read this as something was happening under his coat rather than general heat. You may want to clarify.

At the end I found her a bit preachy. Ok you could have the terrorist wanting to explain why they do this, say a guilty conscience, but something didn't quite feel right. Also it appears they want it to go off, so why put him through the task? What do they gain? Why test him? If taken as read, they want him to persude another person to kill an innocent victim and if achieved they then won't detonate the bomb? If achieved their plot would be exposed without an explosion. Why not plant one that doesn't go off, but still gets the message across?

I maybe over doing this, I just feel this needs to be tied off a bit, but don't get me wrong, this is good writing and good make a gripping short.

All the best.