The morning dew slid off the tarp as Ethan pulled it up off of the leaves he had been sleeping in.
It was still mostly dark but the morning songbirds had already started singing, effectively waking the world around them. After Ethan had decided that the tarp was adequately dry, he folded it up. As he folded it over one last time he paused to make a re-assessment of the forest around him. The sound of rustling of the leaves about ten meters to the left of him continued. Due to the sporadic spacing of the sound Ethan could tell it was a bird, most likely a Brown Thrasher, kicking up leaves as it foraged for food. Ethan finished surveying the surrounding foliage for any threats or other abnormalities, decided that there were none, and shoved the folded tarp into his back pack.

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The morning dew slid off the tarp as Ethan pulled it up off of the leaves he had been sleeping in.

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Morning dew sliding? Not driping or running? Ethan pulled it up off of the leaves pulled what? dew or tarp? Did have the tarp draped over the leaves? Were the leaves on teh ground or the tree? of the leaves he had been sleeping in sounds like he was sleeping inside the leaves. That works if he is a fairy or gnome.

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It was still mostly dark but the morning songbirds had already started singing, effectively waking the world around them.

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still mostly dark has to go. 'Dawns early light had yet to shine' would be cliche but better. The entire sentence is overwritten. Cut, trim, eliminate adverb, cut descriptive tag, rewrite. Something along the lines of...

Songbirds chirped in the pre-dawn light, stiring the sleeping forest from its slumber.

Now mine is very cliche-ish but hopefully you get my point.

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After Ethan had decided that the tarp was adequately dry, he folded it up. As he folded it over one last time he paused to make a re-assessment of the forest around him. The sound of rustling of the leaves about ten meters to the left of him continued. Due to the sporadic spacing of the sound Ethan could tell it was a bird, most likely a Brown Thrasher, kicking up leaves as it foraged for food. Ethan finished surveying the surrounding foliage for any threats or other abnormalities, decided that there were none, and shoved the folded tarp into his back pack.

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He folded the tarp while a small bird made a racket nearby. Not very exciting and you used 'fold' three times.

At least he was doing something in this opening, nothing interesting, but it was a bit of action. Now throw in a bear, tiger, or seven-eyed tentacled reaching alien and it might be interesting.

I suspect the problem you are having is you're starting in the wrong spot. You could try a tactic I am seeing more often these days.

You could open with the climatic scene in your story, then flashback to your more boring, but important to the plot, beginning. It is hard to pull off but I have seen it done very well by a few excellent writers.

and sorry i don't get your point with the next sentence... your versions are indeed very cliche and i do not see how they are in any way better than what i had. so, please explain

And i do not think that throwing something so strange and exciting as your examples (tiger, bear, alien) would make it better. that would probably just make it more random/confusing and i personally would probably stop reading that.

and with folded... i could just say "shoved THE tarp" at the end, but it is the other two times that are the problem. they come right after each other and are both verbs of folded. Would using another synonym be good enough? i don't know. the way i have it does paint the picture the way i want it to but it does sound strange with folded three times.

Yes, what is happening isn't really very exiting but the point of it is to show Ethan is not in a normal situation and the way he acts is more animalistic than human as he responds to this abnormal situation. but again, i guess that is just too confusing to be a starting point, which, i didn't really expect it to be.

What did Ethan do while he was waiting for the tarp to dry? I live in a dry mountain climate, where dew dries relatively quickly, but it would probably take a half hour at least for a tarp to dry. So, what did he do? Did he shake the tarp to shake more dew off it? Did he hang it in the sun? Did he build a fire and make breakfast? Or did he just sit there and wait for it to dry?

Is the brown thrasher (no need for caps) going to be a significant part of the story? Or is Ethan an ornithologist, out in the woods watching birds? It seemed odd to me that he would speculate on the species of bird he heard scratching in the leaves unless something significant were to come of it.

Overall, it's an interesting start.

and with the brown thrasher, thing. i was trying to show that Ethan was the kind of person who would not only what was causing a possibly threatening noise but also able to get a good idea of the species of the bird, just from the sound. brown thrashers are pretty easy to identify just from the sound of their foraging. I originally had it say, "brown thrasher or rufus side towhee" but decided that that was not only unnecessary but also that i would be able to tell that it could only be a brown thrasher because they forage in the morning and RSTs don't. I'm not a bird watcher, i just go camping a lot, and so does this character. so i am trying to show that Ethan is the kind of person that would think about what exactly was making the noise.

The morning dew slid off the tarp as Ethan pulled it up off of the leaves he had been sleeping in. It was still mostly dark but the morning songbirds had already started singing, effectively waking the world around them. Ethan decided that the tarp was adequately dry and folded it up. As he finished he paused to make a re-assessment of the forest around him.
About ten meters to his left, the sound of rustling leaves continued. Due to the sporadic spacing of the sound Ethan could tell it was a bird, most likely a Brown Thrasher, kicking up leaves as it foraged for food. Ethan finished surveying the surrounding foliage for any threats or other abnormalities, decided that there were none, and shoved the folded tarp into his back pack.

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i think that the problem with the first sentence is that what is actually happening is sort of unexpected and not that it is written in a confusing way.

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I disagree. The problem isn't that the first sentence is unexpected, it's unimportant to the reader. The confusion of what you are trying to say only compounds the problem.

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I think what i wrote does accurately depict what i want to happen, Ethan did indeed sleep in a pile of leaves

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Then write that he woke up in 'a pile of leaves'. You wrote only wrote leaves. He could have been in a tree or the tarp could have been draped over a tree and he slept on a flat ground covered in leaves. Honestly though, none of it matters at this point.Why should I care?

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...but because it is how he can comfortably survive cold nights and not be found and robbed by other people or rounded up and sent to a work camp by the Peace Enforcer Corps.

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There is your hook! Say that! He is hiding from desperate people and fascist police. This is a reason for a reader to care!

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I would think that someone might want to find out why someone would be sleeping in leaves and continue reading, instead of being confused about it, but what i have written doesn't give much promise of explaining it, even though it does in the next few sentences.

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You'd be mistaken by that assumption. Editors get hundreds (plural) of submissions for each edition. They are looking for an excuse to bail out of your story. Explaining it in the next few sentences would be too late because your story would likely be in the rejection pile after this 13 lines. You are an amateur (not an insult. 95%+ of us are, including myself). Your story gets thrown in a pile for the slush readers to paw through. Pro's get moved to the front of the line. You need to write something that grabs the reader immediately. This opening does not.

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and sorry i don't get your point with the next sentence... your versions are indeed very cliche and i do not see how they are in any way better than what i had. so, please explain

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I will do my best. Your original sentence.

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It was still mostly dark but the morning songbirds had already started singing, effectively waking the world around them.

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Translation: it was really early.

My example was cliche but to the point. Yours was wordy.

It was still mostly dark

Look closely. What are you saying anyway? Is the dawn light beginning to illuminate the morning? Are the stars still out? Is it dark or not? Is the information relevant? At the very least the adverb needs to go.

but the morning songbirds had already started singing,

This information would be better if compressed and placed before how bright the morning is. If done correctly, you don't need to mention how dark it is.

effectively waking the world around them.

The adverb at the front isn't needed. The descriptive tag at the end isn't either. The entire sample is redundant because it is common knowledge that songbirds singing in the morning have the tendency to wake the world.

You don't think my version was any better. Fine. I'll see if I can do better.

The chorus of songbirds chirping meant it was time to move. Ethan wanted to break camp before dawns light exposed him to the enforcers.

This at least shows a reason why he is rolling up a tarp so early in the morning.

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And i do not think that throwing something so strange and exciting as your examples (tiger, bear, alien) would make it better. that would probably just make it more random/confusing and i personally would probably stop reading that.

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I don't mean inserting something that is irrelevant to your plot. What wouldn't be confusing is a searching ship over head, or baying dogs on the hunt in the distance. We need a reason to care.

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and with folded... i could just say "shoved THE tarp" at the end, but it is the other two times that are the problem. they come right after each other and are both verbs of folded. Would using another synonym be good enough? i don't know. the way i have it does paint the picture the way i want it to but it does sound strange with folded three times.

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You are missing my point(s). The three folds is a bit repetitious, that's all. Easy to fix but something I think should be brought to your attention. The bigger problem is I don't know why you found it important to descripe him breaking his camp down with so much detail. If this were a manual on how fit a tarp into a backpack it would be fine. Manual's rarely find their way into a Speculative Fiction magazine though.

I don't mean to insult you. I thought your first version showed some solid writing potential. This one not so much. Maybe it would help to explain why we only post 13 lines on hatrack.

1) Copyright issues. This is a public forum. Anything posted on a public forum is consider published. Limiting your work to 13 lines maintains the integrity of your work. So you can say with confidence that your story hasn't been published anywhere before when you submit it.

2) 13 lines (when a manuscript is formatted correctly) is what the first page amounts to. It is said that a large number of manuscripts (about half) are rejected on the first page. You need to hook your reader with it. That is why you'll see a lot of people comment on whether your opening hooks or not on here.

I can safely say this opening doesn't hook me and I would not read on.

ok, i get how that is better. It actually explains what is going on. It is more wordy than what i had but contains more than twice the information. of course, it doesn't fit with my story, but i get the basic idea. i see that what i had was to many words for what it was saying and your first example also seemed to be too many words for what it was saying as well. But this makes sense, imply the description while saying something useful... he wanted to break camp before dawns light: so it must be still dark.