Naughty or Nice by Richard Russell - Short, Christmas Story - A female CEO meets an elf who wants to put her on the 'Nice' list. 13 pages - pdf, format

Richard,

Not a bad short here at all for a Christmas tale. I liked your dialogue a lot. It read well. The only nitpick is you could've had more going on in the background. Otherwise you just have two talking heads. You did it a little, I noticed, but you probably could've used a little color.

I'm not a fan of the ending. It was kind of abrupt, jolting. The set up took a lot to get this woman to believe, and we see her actions are already paying dividends. I just feel it could've been a trifle more personal. We started to like your antagonist towards the end. I think it should've come full circle and get up to love her. I dunno really. But I liked this.

Good job!

Steve

I like the premise here of a funny elf visiting people to convince them get better to make the nice list. And I enjoyed the way he did it - reminding her of people she knew that got on the naughty list and listing their misfotunes.
I don't like the fact that Santa lashes out on people's children and I didn't like the way Santa plays God. Maybe just me and clearly it's personal but I don't like it at all.

However, this is a round strory with the beginning, middle and end. I think you should work on your dialog - you can minimize and trim a lot of it. I also think she got convince a bit easily. And I don't think she should say "I said I believe" before getting out the room.
I think she needs to really believe only at the end.
I liked the ending. It's very punchy for me.