Saved rating · 2026-07-05
Grace Hillby RB
The story
centre was damping. It wouldn’t take much for one to ignite and then it would spread. Clay didn’t trust the mood either. He know Jeb Garner and his gang for long riders, keeping distance between them and trouble they’d caused somewhere along the line but he reasoned that his first job was to keep them and their trouble away from his town. Men at the outer edges of the groups started to jostle and push a little and small scuffles were breaking out. “Now”, said Clay, “don’t you boys be raisin’ your bristles at each other and causing trouble”. The situation was tense but was passing off and the men were beginning to draw away when one of the younger men standing near to Creed went to shoulder his rifle. It had remained cocked and he caught the trigger in his movement, discharging it harmlessly into the air. The two men facing him went for their guns but Creed leapt forward and bowled them over into the dust. They scrambled to their feet and backed off. The noise was enough to spook the others in the crowd and other handguns were drawn and fired at random while the gang instinctively made for the saloon to regroup. The townspeople scattered, leaving the road clear. Gunsmoke and dust hung in the air, slowly clearing to revel the empty wide street and the two men lying on the dirt. Clay Ibbotson strode out with his two deputies and together they carried them to the shaded stoop outside the hardware store. “Get the doc,” said Ibbotson. They’re hit and one of them’s like to die”. Both men had been shot. One in the leg, the other through the belly. Ibbotson had seen such wounds before and they never ended well. A slow death too and a painful one in his experience. ----- It was quiet now, the men had gathered in the saloon and an uneasy peace reigned. Clay Ibbotson was in his office. He was talking to Joe McClurrie, the doctor. “Sam’s leg will heal in time and he’ll have a limp for sure Sheriff, but I fear for Wilbur. That shot was close range and while it didn’t kill him outright, it made a mess. I don’t like to say he’ll last the night.” “That will make it murder, doc and we can’t let them just ride out”, said Clay. “Any witnesses to the shooting”? “Plenty, Sheriff,” said Joe, his deputy. “We have several men who say they saw the shooting.”
Overall score
5.5/10
"A competent Western scene with a well-chosen inciting incident, held back by surface errors and characters who are types rather than people yet."
§01 · Sub-scores
- Prose5 / 10
- Character5.5 / 10
- Plot6 / 10
- Originality5 / 10
- Emotion5 / 10
- Dialogue6 / 10
§02 · What's working
- The accidental rifle discharge is a smart, believable trigger for the chaos — it avoids the cliché of a deliberate villain shot and gives the scene a credible, panicky energy.
- "Gunsmoke and dust hung in the air, slowly clearing to reveal the empty wide street and the two men lying on the dirt" is the excerpt's strongest visual moment — it earns its Western atmosphere with a concrete image rather than just telling us things are tense.
- The medical triage scene grounds the stakes quickly and efficiently: naming the wounds (leg vs. belly), naming the men (Sam, Wilbur), and letting the doctor deliver the mortality verdict gives the plot a clear, ticking-clock problem to solve.
§03 · Suggestions
- Prose-level errors undercut the authority of the narration — "revel" for "reveal," "He know Jeb Garner" for "He knew," and the confused naming of Joe (both the doctor and the deputy in the same scene) pull the reader out of the story. A careful proofread pass is essential before anything else.
- Clay Ibbotson is a functional sheriff-type but we don't yet feel what makes him distinct from a hundred other Western lawmen. Give him one specific habit, fear, or physical detail — the way he holds his hat, a past wound, a debt to someone in the crowd — and he'll start to live on the page.
- The dialogue is serviceable but mostly functional (delivering information). Try to let subtext do more work — when Clay says "we can't let them just ride out," what is he *not* saying? Does he owe someone a favor? Is he afraid? A beat of hesitation or a loaded glance between characters would add depth without slowing the scene.
- The excerpt drops us mid-scene without orienting us to the world or the stakes beforehand. Even one or two sentences establishing what Grace Hill means to Clay — why this town, why now — would make the violence land with more emotional weight.
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