Braton: Hell's City by Joshua A.B. Hinke - Action - In a city of crime and corruption, a young woman discovers a horrible truth of her past and the only way to survive is to trust a killer. 146 pages - pdf, format 8)

I got about 14 pages into this when I decided I was done.

Firstly I didn't think this was awful by any stretch of the imagination, but if the first 14 pages are anything to go by I think it needs a lot more polish before I'll sit down for another 132 pages along the same lines.

The opening voice over is just too much. It's three pages of solid back story told through voice over and it just seemed so unnecesary when you could do it with more impact through implicit visuals. The hot dog seller transaction would work well enough without a voice banging on about how no one cares about corruption in the city, the actions speak for themselves. And telling you her parents were killed doesn't have of the impact of seeing this in flashback.

The main problem however was that the characters just talk in exposition all the time.
"this wonderful story of this woman who conned hundreds of thousands of dollars off of rich white bastards"
"Mario Salatori, the son of Don Salatori, the biggest mob boss in Braton.  The king of the greatest crime family and the most feared mobster ever."
"You have to stop pulling me off duty all the fucking time."
"I'll create a distraction so you can slip past the counter and into the back. "
"Well in that case welcome to X's Braton location.  The best choice when it comes to cyber terrorism and embezzlement."
"Do you remember when you first came to my father? ...You were lost, alone, and confused. Now look at you. The best damn hit man Braton has ever fuckin' seen. Your ma would be proud, fucking proud."
I think most of these lines could have been implicit in things characters say to each other, I personally can't stand it when all the dialogue is people explaining the plot and backstory to each other all the time.

e.g. Why reveal her backstory and why the mafia are so interested straight away, keep it as a mystery. Why explain who the mob boss is, her reaction alone and when we see im later will make his importance obvious. If the cop just said, "not again I'm not your errand boy" it would achieve the same without the intrusive explanation. The distraction plan in the game store is obvious, why explain it and then show it, do one or the other. Why have a character explain they do terrorism and embezzlement when you could have background characters just doing it without explanation. And finally... "do you remember when" lines are just the ultimate cliche of exposition.

It's not all bad though, the script was well formatted, description, action lines etc... were all concise and painted a clear picture of the scenes. And when you're not in exposition mode the dialogue was reasonably natural.

I think that kind of stuff would all have to be fixed in a redraft before I'd read through it all. However at this point I'm very concerned that the mob boss will be responsible for her parents death and the whole tihng is going to descend in a series of action movie cliches.

Hope you'll find these comments constructive.