I was a little concerned about this part...

Grammar and spelling, as it says on the 
rules page, aren't terribly important, as 
they can be fixed by prereaders. That said,
Montae, you should probably try to get 
prereaders for your future parts.

A more important point was characterization.
In previous parts, Drake didn't seem to
have even one gun: he hit one goon with
a chair instead of shooting him, and he
ran away from the dog in Scene 5 rather
than shoot it. Maybe this is an indication
that he just doesn't like killing. 
Either way, he didn't seem quite the
type to be killing people in a hail of
bullets.

Hack... Hmm. I suppose getting periodically
attacked is an occupational hazard for
an information broker. I'd expect that,
in general, he'd be smart enough to avoid
that sort of thing. In this case, though,
he miscalculated the situation badly (not 
realizing that Tanner was planning a whole
slew of kidnappings), and now it looks 
like he's paying the price. So, that's fine.

The last few lines, though, contained
what looked to me like a severe plot
twist:

:"Your boy Robbie played us both!"
:
:"What do you mean by that?" Drake said, hoping it wasn't what he though it was.
:
:"They want to take out people that are giving them trouble, your number one on the list.
They came after 
: me because they think I had some `book'."

The trouble is, we have clear evidence
that the kidnapping scheme is real.
The book, from Scene 4, refers to 
kidnapping, and the raid on Hack in
this scene demonstrates that the book
is for real. If Robbie's girl was
really kidnapped, then in what sense
did he "play" Drake and Hack?

(Montae? Any thoughts?)

I think the moral here is that it's not
good to introduce major plot twists
without thinking very carefully about
the effects on continuity. For that
matter, it's better not to introduce
major plot twists at all. Scenes in
which somebody reveals "the REAL villain
behind all this" should be few and
far between.

My two cents,
-Platypus


M.E.T.A. 1, Scene 7 Review
http://www.chaoseed.com/btr/meta/
4/16/00