Genre: not sure. It explores some philosophy of science, but I wouldn't call it science fiction.

Intent: I'd like feedback on the first 13. I'll probably look for readers after the 2nd draft.

The funny thing is that once I was constrained to 13 lines, I cut all kinds of stuff at the very beginning to make sure you got to see the hook. It wasn't pleasant, because I liked what was there, but isn't that what it means to kill the darlings?

-----

Maybe it started earlier, but I can't pinpoint anything before the clouds fell.

It didn't rain. They didn't smack into the ground like boulders or airplanes. They just fell silently from the sky, as if God Himself had dropped his cotton candy.

My mom was underneath one. She always tells the story the same way: "It felt like a rushing fog descending in judgement upon me." I guess that's not too far off.

The fog stuck around for days, sometimes collecting in pockets, sometimes dissipating. It never rained properly, either, I guess because the clouds were on the ground. And still the fog stayed, and no clouds came.

Naturally. I believed in fog.

-----

I don't understand, "And still the fog stayed, and no clouds came." The fog WAS the clouds, wasn't it? (This is a very minor complaint, because I wasn't distracted enough to worry about what you meant, until I read the piece a second time.)

I like your first person POV. It's effective here, for me.

At the end of the fragment, I was still confused as to where this is going. IMHO, that's not a terrible crime, unless you fail to clear things up before my attention span expires. And my attention span is more forgiving, I think, than many readers. I rarely put anything down without finishing at least one chapter. But I prefer stories that make me keep reading because I'm interested, especially over stories that coax me to read by withholding.

About the hook: we can be hooked by good writing or character -- it needn't be plot detail, although that's fine.

One way to put that hook up front is something like:

The day the evil robot monkeys came for me, I had spinach in my teeth.

The spinach . . .

So we get through the spinach (if that's where we need to start!), but we know we're going for evil robot monkeys eventually.

I don't have a single problem with it. The 'its' were easily implied or explained. The weather didn't rain, and the experience of having the clouds fall from the sky and what it felt like. No problem.

This seems to be, however, a case in which the title of the story is entwined with the story's opening. If you read the title first you know immediately what the first 'it' is. That's not a problem--just pointing it out.

This opening draws me right in. It leaves me with a few questions, but I expect you'll answer those soon enough and as the story develops. If I were an editor perusing this manuscript I'd definitely turn over the page to see what comes next and hope I'd be able to read right to the end without a hitch.

A few comments, and then the revised version:

> The first thirteen is generally just to establish that you
> know how to write and how to tell a story. Thus, when you
> distort your first thirteen in order to make sure that
> some "hook" or other that wouldn't naturally be there gets
> in, you often ruin your first thirteen, because you're
> frontloading something rather than concentrating on
> telling the story.

But telling the story often starts with an upfront grab. As
I understood it, that was the purpose of using the _first_
thirteen, as opposed to an arbitrary set of thirteen lines.
If I'm missing the point, someone tell me.

I also think that forcing myself to get the hook into the
first 13 has really improved the beginning of the text. I
had material that I liked, but that didn't advance the
story; I like what I have now much more than what I had
before my little editing session.

> That said, this isn't terrible.

I love the sense of understatement on this list. Not just
this post, but in general.

I reworked everything today -- long airplane flight -- and
have what I consider a second draft, for anyone who's
interested in reading the whole thing. 4200 words.

Here's a revised version of the first 13:

-----

I was just shy of ten years old on the day I made the clouds
fall.

I don't mean that I made it rain. They just fell, as if I
had knocked God's own cotton candy right out of his hands.

My mom was underneath one. She always tells the story the
same way: "It felt like a rushing fog descending in
judgement upon me." I guess that's not too far off.

The fog stuck around for days. It was moist, clammy stuff,
so you were constantly walking from way-too-hot direct May
sunlight into way-too-cool white-outs. And it never rained
properly, either, I guess because the clouds were on the
ground. The fog, really. Always fog, never clouds.

Naturally. I believed in fog.

-----

Yeah, well, I didn't say I was smart...

I like the visual of cotton balls as opposed to cotton candy for clouds, seems a more apt description for me.

The first version was interesting, but elliptical.

This time, you let us know up front that the MC made the clouds fall - that the MC, presumably, has some sort of bizarre control over the physical universe. Not only does this make the "I believed in fog" work (fog exists because the narrator believes it makes "sense"; clouds no longer exist, because the narrator can't understand what holds clouds up - so suddenly, nothing does), but it really does make me want to know who this person is, what these powers are going to mean, and so on and so forth.

I now have a significantly trimmed version, 3200 words, and I'm interested in getting a few readers. I don't know what else I needs changing / fixing / smoothing etc.

(What's the protocol for this? Since I have a different intent now, should I start a new thread?)

Specifically, I'm interested in knowing
* whether the teacher talks too much, and whether he's too preachy
* whether I should cut the first experiment that proves that clouds can stay in the sky
* whether I should cut the other experiments, and
* whether there's anything else I should / could cut.

There's one other specific thing I'd like to ask, but if I shouldn't bias you by highlighting it before you read the story.

Also anything else you want to comment on: good read or not, ready for submission or not, enjoyable or not, etc., as well as typos and all that other stuff.