Someday someone somewhere is going to invent a bomb which will destroy all the humans and animals within a certain radius, its blast radius, while leaving structures and plant-life intact. It’ll look something like a slow blue wave, and after it splashes through the center of city after city, total surprise, on a cold October morning, the Enemy (with a capital E) will arrive by the busloads and will walk around picking out new houses. Whole families of them. These will be foreign people, people whose customs we could never hope to understand. They will speak to each other in a strange language and will use indecipherable criteria to select their new homes. What color is the car? Is there a dog dish? What brands of electronics are in the house?

I love the "it'll look something like a slow blue wave... on a cold October morning", that totally changes the flavour of the introduction.

As far as crits are concerned:

I think you could cut “within a certain radius, its blast radius” down to “within its blast radius.” It just seemed a little repetitive and I think everyone will get what a blast radius is.

Because of the tone, which is slightly formal, I would change the “It’ll” at the beginning of the 2nd sentence to “It will.”

I would cut “(with a capital E)”. It’s a little to cute for it’s own good. Its funny, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not the same tone of funny as the rest of the piece.

Plus, I really don’t get the last line. Maybe it makes more sense after these lines though.

I found it interesting so far. Would like to read more & offer a brief critique on the overall thing if poss.

tchernabyelo
benskia
Robyn_Hood.

sent. and thank you.

If you still want readers, send it through.

Edit: The above list of respondents is a great group, let me bring down the tone a bit...

The style of writing is easy and fun to read.

quote:

---

Well, I guess the problem is I wasn't using courier. Made my 13 lines slightly longer than is acceptable, I guess.

---

From the "Please Read Here First" area:

quote:

---

This is the way we determine if a story fragment is 13 lines or not:

First we highlight the text and copy it to the computer clipboard. Then we paste it into a manuscript template in MS Word, with Courier New font set at 12. Then we count the lines. If the sentence in the 13th line is only a little longer, we let the text go over 13 lines.

Finally, we go back to the topic and delete all but the actual, MS-Word-manuscript-format-12-point-font 13 lines.

---

I am cogitating, letting the thoughts settle.

The initial feeling is, this is interesting writing and sounds right, but is there a story in there?

Is it supposed to be a stand alone? It seems a bit disjointed and ignores punctuation and grammatical conventions. Like the first few paragraphs. I am not sure if this is a deliberate tactic to make the text feel dense and impenetrable or whether you have some other aim.

Crit will come tomorrow.