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@dakota

Ooh fire fighters, nice! I like the core idea and I think it could turn out pretty good.

So my instant thought is that you have a lot of characters for a short story. There’s no going to be much time to flesh them out to be very deep, so (since you can’t really cut them out entirely for fire crew realism sake) you could just mention one or two names and then just refer to the rest as ‘the others’ or something like that? That would make it clear to the reader that they’re not that important to the story and hopefully give the important characters time to be fleshed out and realistic in only 5,000 words.

The other main thing I can see instantly is that you’ll want to make sure you show Jared well while he’s alive and then show his death well too. i.e. you want to show how humble and sacrificial he is right from the start. Show how he doesn’t think lives are cheap, like Dayton seems to, and how he doesn’t hold Dayton’s anger against her. This just makes her more angry with him.

But then when he sacrifices himself, and she’s reunited with her sons and realises he’s dead, she’s stunned, but instead of instantly switching to grief and regret over her own mistakes, she starts to understand what Jared means and how much he cared for people.

One last thing: the conversation with Dave and Dayton. That could be verging on preachy, or it could be really good if you write it well. Make sure you keep it fairly short, and something that can forebode that her sons are in danger and Jared’s coming sacrifice. (e.g. “Fire always ends up with someone getting hurt.”)