Insensible by Mark Ndlovu - Short, Action, Adventure - Conner, an 18 year old boy, has an out-of-body experience after being put into a coma. Little does he know he is being hunted down for his morally wrong actions. 35 pages - pdf, format 8)

Interesting premise but I can't make sense of Insensible.

Your world needs to be more defined with what Conner can't and can't do. No one can see him and Conner can interact with the physical world like knocking the controller out of the kids hand and getting hit by the car, yet a woman runs right through him without noticing.

Action and dialogue do not pop for an action thing.

One trick is to print and read only dialogue and see if it sounds like something you want to see.

Look at dialogue like:
Sir
Don't move or I will shoot you!

Not exactly jumping off the page.

Then print and read only scenes and action with the same intent.

The Reapers don't communicate with anyone. They are here for a purpose. They are after something.

If they don't talk while assault the hospital, we get they don't communicate. The next two lines we already know about because they are decked out in combat gear and we've seen them before going after Conner. The upshot? Don't write that stuff. That's why you need to print out just action and read it so you don't get bogged down with dialogue, and in your case, dialogue that doesn't jump off the page or sound natural.

I think you need to imagine what you're writing and get rid of intent in your action lines. If you write what someone is doing, we get the intent, like Sir pounding his hands on the table...we get he's pissed...but at the same time Sir comes of as a child throwing a fit when I think you want him to be cool, like Agent Smith. Agent Smith doesn't pound his hands on a table, he zips Neo's mouth. Darth Vader doesn't tell Admiral Motti to shut up, Vader chokes Motti with the Force. Agent Smith doesn't say "Don't move or I will shoot you!" Smith shoots without asking questions. Those are good bad guys and it's shown by action, not talk. Even tough good guys are like that.

The ending doesn't do it for me at all. Conner is free but for what? Because he beat the Reapers? Beating the Reapers is not a good reason to be free. A better reason is for Conner to reunite with his family. Beating the Reapers would be your A story, the one with the main plot. The B story is your moral: that Conner wants to make amends and be with his family. Without a good B story, even the best A story fails miserably. It's the B story we relate to on a deeper level.

Your mentor Claire and the Villain, Sir, don't pop either. They come off as props to support the action, not real characters. I mentioned a bit about bad guys above but Claire, if she is anything, should be attached to Conner in some way so when Conner is gone, there is pain in separation, but there isn't any. There is no closure with Conner to Claire to Conner's parents.

Interesting premise though. Needs better execution.

Clorox