Very helpful indeed, thank you!

Ooo! Very dark! I love it, Ellen.

I lean against the railing, gripping wood dried gray with time and salt.
Passionate sounds through the motel window quiet. They’ve drunk my gift.

Short stories are definitely more difficult in some aspects, although the sheer number of words is daunting when writing a novel.

Okay, I took a quick pass at some edits and here's the result.

She bent over and studied the muddy, face-down body—back of the head soaked with blood, hair matted to the skull now hardened. A collage of varied hoof-prints covered the back of his denim shirt. Each shoulder sported a print bigger than a dinner plate. She turned to the crime scene tech.

“What can you tell me?”

“Looks like my neighbour.”

“I mean about the prints.”

The tech pointed with a gloved hand. “Sheep-prints. Those look like cow—got some big paw prints there in the middle, too. I’d say the ones on the shoulders came from a good sized draft-horse.”

The Detective straightened up and eyed the animals placidly gazing from the fenced in pasture. She wrinkled a brow as her eyes fell back down to the body.

“Are you telling me those animals killed your neighbour?”

The tech shrugged. “Well, I can tell you he’ll never mistreat them again.”

The first thing I did was get rid of any passive language and shortened up some the sentences to help the pacing. Once the characters are established, there's little need for attributions, so I got rid of some and replaced others with action tags instead to build movement in the scene, I also replaced a few of the longer descriptions with a couple of more powerful words that could do the work on their own. It's still the same story, just a little punchier and with fewer words.

Hope this helps you!

Hahahahaha!

I'd be most interested in seeing your edit! Have at it!

I wish you still had it too. I would have loved to read it.

Love it!

I once won $1000 writing, in 25 words or less, a witty snippet on baseball. I did it in 24 words.

(I did pay my taxes in case the IRS is reading this.)

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