A Slow Dance of Death by Steven Wood - Short, Thriller - A Sheriff must deal with an out of town hitman and his botched kill. 22 pages - pdf, format

So, it is very over written and I was going to throw in the towel early but didn't and I honestly quiet enjoyed it.

Needs a lot of work, formating, grammer, spelling, the over writing but I think this has potential.

Steve,

Some notes.

This one begs for trimming and consolidation.  I don't quite get why we go 5 minutes before we get the killers inside the house. Their dialogue isn't that entertaining, and the story lags.  Put them at the back door already, or breaking in.

Then, we spend more time killing off people and jump to the Sheriff waking up.  Sorry, we don't need to know this stuff.  Toss in the old lady's complaint that the Sheriff has to answer.  Nope.  Ain't gonna happen.  So, the story flags at that point and doesn't get better.  When you said a slow dance, you meant it.  Needs some revamping.

Best
Richard

It felt like you were settling down for a feature. You have a story fit for a short here, an experienced hitman and a rookie getting his first kill go up against an unexpectedly dangerous target. You don't need the Sheriff or anything after that.

And, as mentioned by others, get them in the house ASAP.

You don't need him talking on the phone with his employer. He reports he's with the new guy and they're sitting and waiting. Well, we already know that because we just watched a scene of them doing that. If you want to reveal that they're hitmen, just show a gun peeking out a holster and that'll be enough of a clue (you show that later anyways).

And you don't need a full night to day stakeout replete with dirty joke conversations. The second conversation is in my opinion actually a massive detriment to everything you just set up. You establish a tension between rookie and pro in the last scene and suddenly now they're best buddies eating hamburgers telling jokes. I thought Morris was a cold-blooded, silent but deadly type? I thought Joe was an antsy rookie about to go into a house and commit murder for the first time in his life?

So, overall, just my opinion, but I'd stick with Joe and Morris and their assassination attempt. Tighten it up a lot and find a way to end the story there.

Actually, I am in the middle of converting this into a feature, but am considering having another version as the short.

I don't want this story to just be about the botched hit, there is no conflict if they just get in and screw it up.

I do agree I could cut up the bits about the sheriff.