Thanks for giving it a read! Starting with the ink black water definitely seems to be the popular consensus, so I'll look to giving it a rearrange. Glad you liked the dialogue, it was honestly the one thing I was predominantly nervous about.

Nice work here. The hook didn't grab me until the moment when Felix said, "you've swallowed too much chlorine."

  
The setting of Picton was a rather weak start that didn't work for me. If you had started with Pat and Felix floating in "ink blank water" and diving right into their conversation, I believe that'd make for a stronger beginning.

  
During their conversation, you could break up pauses in dialog with what's happening around them—dogs barking, the summer heat, etc.

  
This sentence in particular reads awkward to me: "A domestic screamed onto the nature strip, slammed door, lone figure under street light like a shadow sealed in amber."  


  
Now the dialog now is superb. It does read natural to me and oddly enough even though Felix and Pat are shooting the breeze, it built suspense. Almost like they were distracting themselves from a greater danger that they do not want to acknowledge.

  
I would definitely read more of this if there was more.

Well I did not know either of those things. You learn something new every day! 😅

Thanks for reading and for a great critique, you've given me heaps to go on. With regards to a few of the things you were confused about, nature strip may possibly be an Australian term, but it refers to the patch of grass between the road and a house. I was actually intending for the figure to be from the domestic, but I can definitely see how it might be a bit abstract currently. And it hadn't occured to me that it may not be generalisable, but yeah, a lot of street lights in Australian country towns are a [bright yellow](https://i1.wp.com/excesstext.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/P10805872.jpg?resize=640%2C480). Creates a pretty spooky ambiance at night.

Overall, I thought the piece was solid, but there are areas I think could do with improvement. I’ll focus the critique on the opening first, as I think that is probably what could do with the most work. 

  
I also agree with what’s previously been said, that you might benefit from moving the introduction of the two boys up a bit, and interspacing the description of Picton with their dialogue. In terms of that descriptions, I’ll now do a bit of a line by line to show where I think things could be improved. 

  
**Opening/Hook** 

  
*“It’s quiet in Picton. Summer heat hanging in the air as the year winds down to Christmas.”* 

  
Although I have nothing against this line, I’m not sure it really has enough of a hook or a pull for a first line of a novel. 

  
*“The sort of hot, still night when faint gasps of conversation echo across empty streets.”*

  
This might be a nit-pick, or a failure of comprehension on my part, but the style of this sentence makes it sound like the heat 

Thanks for giving it a read and for your hefty critique! Heaps to go on and I definitely think I can tighten it up now. That said, I could not be more surprised that it seems everyone prefers the dialogue over the prose. I guess it goes to show you can never fully self-identify your strengths! I've always thought dialogue is where I fall a little flat, but maybe I'm just too used to my own voice. Shouldn't be a problem to make it punchier though, and to cut out the intro/sprinkle it throughout. I also might cut the dialogue back slightly based on your 'dear god' comment: always good to know when you're starting to lose a reader. I must confess the lizard conversation doesn't actually have any relevance to the greater plot, it's just there to build character, and so they can reference it as an in-joke a few times later and let the reader feel included. I'll give some thought about ways to add the plot in, particularly with the strangers in the park. Thanks again for giving it a read, it

Lastly, for this section, I'll mention a bit about character. You do a great job portraying the boys' characters through only dialogue, but somewhere in their lizard gimp suit banter, I started asking myself: is there *any* difference between Pat and Felix? They're like twin brothers as far as I know. I mean, Felix has black hair., I caught that description of him. But I don't really know anything about how Pat looks. Until we get to this point:

>Felix lowers himself down the wall and jumps. He hits the soft grass and rolls quickly. Pat’s dull thump comes soon after. They run over to the playground and squat atop the wood chips in the shadow of the slide. The night air is cool against their bare chests.“You see 'em?” says Pat breathlessly. 

Pat's the chubby kid, huh? This is a great example of how to effectively say, Pat's the chubby kid, without explicitly saying Pat's the chubby kid. But I did find myself yearning for, I don't know, a mention of Pat rubbing his hand over his croppe

Hi,

I left some comments on your google doc. Hope they were helpful. In reading over the other critiques left so far, I would agree more of less with a lot of what they're already saying. I'll try to maybe challenge you in new directions however and talk about some extra things I noticed.

**Setting**

Since you start with setting I'll start with setting. Here it is:

>It’s quiet in Picton. Summer heat hanging in the air as the year winds down to Christmas. The sort of hot, still night when faint gasps of conversation echo across empty streets. Drunks stumbling back from Mitchell's Pub. Dogs barking between tin fences. A domestic screamed onto the nature strip, slammed door, lone figure under street light like a shadow sealed in amber.

I believe every other commenter pointed something out about this first paragraph. My advice: cut it. Cut the whole dang thing. It would be stronger to start later, like with the "ink black water" as someone else already pointed out. (Aside: "ink black 

Hi all, these are the first couple of pages of a short(ish) story I'm writing called 'The Bureau of Small Town Excellence'. It's set in a small country town in Australia. It's going to be magic realism (ghosts in the telephone wires/weird earthquakes every night sort of stuff), but that doesn't come across in this excerpt, which is the first 1366 words. 

I'm looking to know: 

Does it read well, is the dialogue natural/does the conversation drag, does it set up enough mystery for you to want to continue reading? Plus, of course anything else you'd like to mention or other general thoughts.

In a perfect universe I'd have posted it with the next 500 or so words as well, but I realised too late my first crit is just about to expire, so we'll have to make do.

Crit 1: [565 words](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/pobvr7/565_knock/hd6thqp/)
Crit 2: [847 words](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/qli7be/847_breakfast_trigger_warnings/hj9g7bl/)

Story: [1366] [The Bureau of Small Town Excellence](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qRXYaG69jOvmRNcoKsofwxMee6NwDhphBaN2Pes7PK4/edit?usp=sharing)

[1366] The Bureau of Small Town Excellence