Battery Life by Axel Klevenhaus - Short, Action, Adventure - A strike team storms an apartment building to locate a malfunctioning android. A chase ensues. 13 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi. I just read this and thought I'd leave you some feedback.

I really enjoyed your action scenes, they reminded me of a video game of sorts.

I thought the inception of your protagonist battery girl was delightful and would like to have known more about her, before her dysfunction.

I got a feeling there is a lot more to this than you have uploaded.

Nice work.

Axel, this has a good gritty futuristic feel to it.

The writing needs to be pared back a lot however - there's too much micro-describing of every action and description.

I'm not convinced the Vagrant storyline is necessary either - unless he plays a part in the plot he seems redundant. It would be easy to begin your narrative on page 4 - okay, maybe page 3 to establish the environment.

Whatever has afflicted these people - virus perhaps, is very well detailed, creepy and revolting, it has a sinister REC feel to it, but you do need to edit a lot of this for it to be more effective.

I have no idea why 'the woman/android' was shut down. A clear connection between her and the resulting havoc would probably be more satisfying.

Overall you managed to create a dark and grim world with an apocalyptic feel very well. I'm just not privy to the 'why'.

@Stoneyscripts

Hey, thanks for reading. Glad you enjoyed it.

I wrote this as an exercise to show backstory through action some time ago, but really liked it and polished it a little before posting here. I started with the idea for the chase and the reveal at the end and then built the world around it.

I thought it would be kinda cool as an animated short, so that's the style I was going for.



@LC

Thanks for reading and the feedback.

As I said above, I was trying to tell the backstory through the details during the action. I think that's why I overdid it and some of the info got lost on the way.

Essentially, the idea was that the "THRONE" organization produces and operates androids as a contractor for the "higher ups". The android is an autonomous infiltrator to the terrorist group in the apartment. Its leaking nuclear battery has poisoned the humans around it, hence the signs of radiation sickness. It has powered down, since the group is inactive and because it tries to conserve its energy. The agent that monitors the android's activity noticed the battery leak and called in the strike team to get it out to prevent further contamination and to hide the traces of the operation.

On second thought, you're right. The vagrant story could be omitted. I thought I'd better start slow and then pick up the pace in this kind of script, but the arriving bus is probably a better pick for that. I wrote the vagrant as a kind of "normal person", inhabiting the world and ending up as collateral damage. The people in the train station that end up on the tracks serve that purpose as well.