Wordworker

I'm a renewed writer. I've picked up my pen again and yearn for a little feedback. I wrote this as part of an exercise today. It's just a 5-10 minute workout. Looking for a little feeback though. Thanks!

Elmer had been afraid of things with wings ever since he could remember. It started the day he and his nanny, Patrice, were in Central Park watching the ducks glide through the water at the pond near the Plaza Hotel. His gaze was fixated on an awkward looking duck which had something hanging from its mouth. At first Elmer thought it was a worm, but as he got closer he began to realize that it most certainly was not. As he tried to get a closer look, he stumbled into a flower bed which, he vaguely noticed, seemed to be humming.

In an instant the humming was replaced by a scream, then a splash, a “quack, quack, quack,” and a lot of flapping, more splashing, and more screaming. The instant Elmer fell into the water, the stinging pain in his legs seemed to briefly subside. Taking its place, however, was a new emotion. It happened to be the same emotion that Elmer felt when his mother and father turned a corner and disappeared down an aisle in the department store earlier that week. However, his familiarity with the emotion did nothing to assuage it. Complicating the issue was the duck with the strange non-worm hanging from its face that was beating its wings at Elmer and blinding him with an assault of bitter tasting pond water.

WriterJohnB

Elmer had been afraid of things with wings ever since he could remember. It started the day he and his nanny, Patrice, were in Central Park watching the ducks glide through the water at the pond near the Plaza Hotel. His gaze was fixated on an awkward looking duck which had something hanging from its mouth. At first Elmer thought it was a worm, but as he got closer he began to realize that it most certainly was not. As he tried to get a closer look, he stumbled into a flower bed which, he vaguely noticed, seemed to be humming.

In an instant the humming was replaced by a scream, then a splash, a “quack, quack, quack,” and a lot of flapping, more splashing, and more screaming. The instant Elmer fell into the water, the stinging pain in his legs seemed to briefly subside. Taking its place, however, was a new emotion. It happened to be the same emotion that Elmer felt when his mother and father turned a corner and disappeared down an aisle in the department store earlier that week. However, his familiarity with the emotion did nothing to assuage it. Complicating the issue was the duck with the strange non-worm hanging from its face that was beating its wings at Elmer and blinding him with an assault of bitter tasting pond water.

My take:
You might want to consider using a thesaurus instead of using the same word over and over to describe the same thing.

You leave out all the necessaries. How old is the boy? Who is Elmer? Give him character so the reader can relate.

Yet you put in that the nanny's name is Patrice, which has nothing to do with the price of non-worm things in duck's mouths.

Don't rush through the story. Hope that helps.

Take care,

JohnB

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fiona

You could shorten your sentences. Make it sharper. give the characters a character. ...I like the potential of it. What's in the ducks mouth?