Here is the first 13 lines.
“Mom, do you see it? This is so cool!” Ben ran in circles around the cul-de-sac, flapping his arms like wings. Each flap caused the floating specs of white to swirl violently for a moment before hovering once again.
I watched from the garage in an attempt to avoid the gnats swarming in the open air a few feet in front of me. The gray air, oppressive and strangely warm for October felt soupy. The humidity must have called the gnats out of the ground to join the pollen dancing on the air currents. My memory failed to recall so much pollen and insects in the air at any time of the year, much less the last week of October. Ben stopped running and stood still. I felt a chill, he never stopped moving, not even in his sleep.
[This message has been edited by CharityBradford (edited February 08, 2010).]
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited February 08, 2010).]
Strong opening, for me anyways, just a couple of things I felt were weaker than the rest of the writing.
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“Mom, do you see it? This is so cool!” Ben ran in circles around the cul-de-sac, flapping his arms like wings. Each flap caused the floating specs of white to swirl violently for a moment before hovering once again.
I watched from the garage in an attempt to avoid the gnats swarming in the open air a few feet in front of me. The gray air, oppressive and strangely warm for October felt soupy. The humidity must have called the gnats out of the ground to join the pollen dancing on the air currents. My memory failed to recall so much pollen and insects in the air at any time of the year, much less the last week of October. Ben stopped running and stood still. I felt a chill, he never stopped moving, not even in his sleep.(something about this last bit stood out for me. I feel like everything before it flows so well and this is kind of like a bump. I would suggest maybe stopping this paragraph with "Ben stopped running and stood still." and jump down to your next paragraph. Any kid like ben that would be out waving his arms and running around would already be out of place coming to a complete halt with no explaination. His not answering back in the next paragraph solidifies the fact something is out of place, along with the last sentence of the nxet paragraph "Ben still did not move."- IMHO)
“What is it Ben?” When he did not answer, I pulled my hoodie over my head and walked out to check on him. The gnats gravitated toward my eyes and nose after one step across that invisible line separating the garage from outside. If I breathed in, they came with the air. One swam into my left eye. Blinking furiously I swatted to clear the air, and then tried to free the little bugger (if anything, I would suggest losing "and then tried to free the little bugger, felt like another bump in an otherwise well paced storey). Ben still did not move.
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again just a suggestion; Either way I enjoyed the opening and would read on.
[This message has been edited by Devnal (edited February 08, 2010).]
A few nits. "specs" should be "specks". "The grey air, oppressive and strangely warm for October felt soupy" should be "The grey air, oppressive and strangely warm for October, felt soupy" - always close as well as open your subsidiary clauses. In such a short story you probably don't need to tell us twice that it is October. "I felt a chill, he never stopped moving..." is a run-on sentence. Instead of a comma you need a semi-colon or a full stop there.
2/3 of the way through the story. [This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited February 08, 2010).]
A usually hyperactive kid suddenly standing very still is more interesting than a swarm of gnats. Yet those sentences were buried. Perhaps you might consider where you put the paragraph breaks.
[This message has been edited by Emily Palmer (edited February 08, 2010).]
Read up on the rationale for the 13 lines and it will explain further.
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I guess I would prefer that she "tell," some. (Or else that more information about her be presented?)
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Added later: This feedback was one of my first, if not the very first, I'd given on the site and I'm worried that my tone in it was too discouraging, for what is a pretty good 1st 13. (But, I guess all I was really trying to say is that I want to know more about the mom somehow.)
[This message has been edited by Nathaniel Merrin (edited February 11, 2010).]
I now realize that my critique here sucked eggs bigtime. It's a stylistic consideration on my part, but such things are important. That is to say, for many people, an everywoman(/man?) narrator either works fine or is preferable to the one I wanted, hence the pitfall of my offering the suggestion that you fill her in more in your opening.
Indeed, what the proper protocol would have been would be for me to have simply said that I wanted to figure out/see who the narrator was, when I myself read this opening.