Pirate Treasure by Andrew Lightfoot - Short - A family tries to hide stolen treasure from a pirate by burying it on a beach.  3 pages - doc, format 8)

Hi Andrew,

Not a bad little tale.  I like the turnabout, and I like the switch of someone burying treasure to hide it from pirates, rather than the other way ‘round.  I also like that you hint at there being a wider story behind this scene, but don’t go into detail about it.

I did find the writing to be rough in spots.  For example, you tell us at one point. “...no shot rings out.”  You don’t need to explain what doesn’t happen, since it doesn’t happen we know it doesn’t happen.  You might also want to consider giving the Mother character some dialogue to spice things up.

One other big problem is with the logistics of your twist.  What kind of gun is the pirate using?  I’m guessing it would be some sort of double barreled flintlock.  This would take a long time to load (powder must be poured down the barrel, tamped down, the bullet dropped in and tamped down, then wadding stuffed in and once again be tamped down, then repeated for the other barrel), but you have Greeley manage this very quickly.  Then, once loaded, it would then take a while, and require some sort of tool to unload it.  Since Mother ends up with the bullet in her hand, she would somehow have to fish a tool down the barrel, pull out the wadding, then tip the bullet out, and replace the wadding so the powder wouldn’t spill out.  I see no way that she could have done this while she had the pistol behind her back.  It would also require that she had the wherewithal to remove the bullet from the correct barrel (the one associated with the forward most trigger).  

Format/Mechanical Notes:
Pg. 1: You should probably give the boys names and treat them as individuals since they do different things.  At least identify them as Older Boy and Younger Boy, or something.
Pg. 1: “get deeper” should be “gets deeper”
Pg. 3: “mothers body” should be “mother’s body”
Pg. 3: “paints” should be “pants”

Good luck!

rjbeleir

Thank you for taking the time to read my short!

I apologize for the roughness, I should have taken more time on this then just one night and I will surely put more dialogue for the mother.

That big gun problem was just me being lazy, I was so anxious to get this posted on this site that I completely overlooked the whole "reality" aspect

I will consider giving the boys names too, again thank you for reading.


If there is anything you would like me to take a look at then feel free to ask.

It was an okay tale. But I do think you could have done more to give the character more character. The mother seemed to be the only person who shows sign of changing emotion. The boys have no character at all, they're just there. They really do nothing but dig and die, so maybe you should give them more than just that.
The pirate talks very pirate-y and I liked that kind of like a Barbosa.

I think evrything has been covered above since its only a 3 pager. Not a bad job but needs work.

Take more time re-reading your work for grammatical errors/typos. And definitely think about how you would lenghten & develop this into a more rounded story. Its a old but entertaining plotline all the same.

Best of luck

Col.

Thank you Xavier Gonzales and colkurtz8 for the read.

I agree with you both, the plot needs to be better and so do the characters

If there is any work of yours you want me to look at then feel free to ask.

Andrew

Check out the shorts on my sig below if you get a chance, cheers.

Likewise, if you have anything else I would be more the happy to read & feed.