Presents by Todd Bronson - Short, Drama - The unwrapping of a young man's emotional loss of his dog and the childhood he tries desperately to hang on to. 19 pages - pdf, format 8)

Todd,

First thing I noticed was the length. While 19 pages is still acceptable for a short, you'll get more reads if this was more around the 12 page range. This is overwritten in places. You could cut a few pages off of this by just removing redundant action.

You need to name characters, even minor ones. Even THIN CONSTRUCTION WORKER or SHORT CONSTRUCTION WORKER are better than "#1", "#2", "#3".  ("Construction worker" is kind of a mouthful, anyway...)

So like I said, I found some of this overwritten. Paragraphs like this: "Bob (22), a burly, tangled hair brute goes to the bed of his rusted, century-old Ford pick-up. He reaches his dirtsmudged, harden-arms into the bed. Sweat-stains are encrusted under his arms."

All you tell is in this 4 line paragraphs is, "Bob reaches into the bed of his truck." So shorten it, and just tell us that. The fact that the truck's a century old doesn't matter. And how do Bob's pit stains serve the story?

You also have some long action paragraphs. Try to keep them 4 lines or less. Be concise. The less text on your page, the quicker the read and the more people will want to read it.

"He strenuously carries and drops it by the hole." More often than not, adverbs aren't your friends. If a line will work without them, do it. Like this: "He struggles with the jackhammer, drops it by the hole." Not great, but you get my point.

Also, don't put a copyright notice at the bottom of each page. It's good to be careful, but it distracts from the read.

Hope this helps.

Will