Not that he was complaining. If there had been anyone to see him, he would have seemed twenty years younger from that moment, leaping around the scattered debris where he had sheltered, then racing giddily up the small hill he found, dodging bushes and birds to get a look at… what?

He wheezed, but not, for once, from car exhaust. There were no
 

Okay, about the posted fragment -- I am going to avoid sentence level discussions. In my opinion, this needs more clarity, and there's lots of ways to go about doing this. I'm going to take a wild stab and assume that the MC -- or Lol (see below about the name) -- is waking up somewhere he's never been before. If so, strongly consider avoiding starting a story this way. It has been done to death and usually terribly so. Instead, you might consider rolling back the story to Lol's familiar home, introducing him and his life there, and then developing the theme of waking up in a new place. I cannot stress this enough. In the last year, I've read the intros to about 50 stories that began with a similar theme. Trust me, consider starting the story sometime before Lol goes to sleep. It can be a paragraph or two at the very least. Doesn't need to be a huge long setup.

Lol's name also needs some careful consideration. It's an unfortunate side-effect of the internet, but I can't help but read "Lol" as "Laughing Out Loud." Not ideal. It's an acronym I hate, actually, because I generally feel that most people aren't exactly honest when they write that, but that's my issue. The honest truth is that the moment I read "Lol woke" I lost interest in reading further. Because of the two above mentioned reasons.

Onto setting and overall clarity. Because Lol doesn't know where he is, and because we don't know who Lol is and what have you, the intro is confusing. It also seems that there is some deliberate withholding of information as a method to build suspense. If you happen to choose to ignore the above advice (which of course you can do), then at least consider the following workaround. Tell us immediately that Lol has awoken in a strange place. First sentence. No muss. No fuss. Be honest and we'll happily follow along. Stories that withhold from us in an attempt to build interesting suspense will only create only annoyance. I would be far more interested in knowing that Lol woke in a strange place rather than trying to suss this from deciphering events, setting, and actions for which I have no context to begin with.

That's my thoughts. I tried to be gentle.

Good luck.

Welcome aboard - I say, having been here for less than a day. First off, I kinda liked the name Lol *because* it's reminiscent of the chatroom shorthand. Of course, if that has nothing to do with the plot of the story ... maybe better call him 'Bob'. Or something.

A few notes, first on the pieces and then on the whole:

>spat out the oily dew
I don't mind that he was sleeping on his back with his mouth open, or (necessarily) that his mouth was cold and dry enough to have permitted condensation - but so *much* condensation that he has to spit it out? This just seemed like kind of an odd image, and not necessarily one to kick the story off with.

>Where the hell is the overpass?
A good question, and one which Lol spends no time whatsoever in considering. Unless Lol is crazier than the proverbial bedbug, I think he would have taken a moment or two to consider the strangeness of his situation prior to leaping and jumping.

>dodging bushes and birds
Assuming this doesn't turn into a DuMaurier/Hitchcock chiller, I'm thinking that maybe he wasn't exactly 'dodging birds'. I can see what kind of image you're going for, I just don't think this quite does it.

Taking it as a whole, this has all the ingredients for a good story-starter - we've met the protagonist (I assume), we have a pretty good sense of his situation if not of his character, and we know that something funny is going on. That's good going for thirteen lines. Good job. Some of your imagery could be a little more precise, and I didn't buy Lol's easy acceptance of his home's disappearance, but it's a strong start.

-A
 

I don't know who Lol is, why he's missing an overpass, or why he's happy. (We even get teased with this. He's trying "to get a look at… what?" We don't know. Tell us!

Just tell me http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002716.html

Also, this opening is a bit confusing to me. So was he a construction worker in the past and he is retired now? I cannot be sure from these opening paragraphs, and I think that is something that needs to be made clear as soon as possible.

I'm not sure, but when you say, "to get a look at...what?" you are trying to say that Lol cannot tell what it is that he is looking at. If this is the case, I would suggest that you say something more along the lines of "to get a look at...what? He didn't know."

Finally, it's also a good idea that you post what genre your piece is and what the word count is as well as any other pertinent info we might need right at the beginning--before you post your fragment.
 

Your opener here is pretty confusing. Nearly every sentence leaves me scratching my head and saying, "Huh?" It feels like you have potential to pull a great opener out of this, but my advice is to 1) Never tell the reader what isn't happening, tell them what IS happening. It creates distance and confusion with the reader to tell them: jackhammers aren't happening, overpasses are missing, no sound happening...

Your opener will be much stronger if you tell us what IS happening. Don't make us guess by a game of 20 questions and process of elimination. Be concrete about what the character sees, thinks, feels.

Also, make sure your metaphors aren't over the top... sunlight does not assault people. It might make them squinch their eyes, it might temporarily blind... but it's not a neighborhood thug capable of assault.

All that said, I find your basic premise somewhat interesting. Your MC strikes me as a homeless person, and I'd be interested in knowing more about him.
 

Chrissie
 

"Lol woke up on his usual stretch of underpass. He spit to clear out the oily residue from the passing traffic."

That's not that great but we now know that Lol has been sleeping on the underpass and we can surmise that he is used to being there.
 

In response to the trend of comments, I reconsidered the character name, Lol. It was a both a reference to the internet shorthand and relic of when I first started thinking about writing his story, and if fit then. It doesn't now. It's gone. I haven't fixed on a new name, but the protagonist is antisocial and homeless and based on a combination of two people I've known. For now, he's Don.

Thanks, HSO and Shendülféa, for prompting me for a word count and genre. The version I posted from is just over 2100 words, and the genre is (I hope, character-driven) science fiction short story. This won't be a ray-guns and alien mother-ships type of sci-fi, either, but a variation on the theme of being careful what we wish for.

I like the idea of disclosing more of his surroundings and hinting less. I was actually toying with the idea of fast-forwarding through the first few scenes to catapult the reader into the action, but I'm going to play with this opening for now.

Thanks to all.