Greetings,

  I have a tendency to agree with the first comment, and the story was good. I could feel what your main character was feeling in her plight. You created visuals that brought about memories of when we had to pass out Valentines when we were at that age. There are some errors as far as words that were chosen and punctuation, but writing with a thesaurus next to you is always a big help. Heck I even keep a misspellers dictionary next to me...lol! The story in itself did have a flow that had the reader still reading, this is a good thing! You tell a great tale. I hope this is of some help, I would like to see this go further...write on!

 Good story.

Some of the paragraphs run a bit too long , so you need to find some breaks and cut them down. It will be much more pleasing to the eye and make the story flow better.

I think you do a good job in your descriptio. It is always better to show more than you tell but that is up to you to decide when to use it more.

Also you use the word had before a few words already written in the past tense. try reading it without had and I think you will find you do not need it. do the same for that, see if you can replace it with it or leave it out all together. That and had tend to create clutter and take the smoothness out of the story.

ope this helps and good luck. Keep writing.

Well, it worked...scared me!  I honestly didn't see it coming.  I don't necessarily agree with all the other comments here.  The story had a great beginning, middle, and end.  I liked the way you created the character and some background on the first pages.  On the whole, the writing style (and storyline) kept me wanting to continue reading - very engrossing.  There was minimal dialogue but this particular story didn't seem to warrant too much from the characters since the spookiness was mostly created by the narration.

Great job...can't wait to see what you'll write for Halloween!

 Alice, What a creepy story! And I mean that only in a good way. I love the surpise ending. I thought something bad was going to happen, but never saw Anna being turned into an ice sculpture as the bad thing. That surprise really makes the story.

That being said, I do have to agree with the other comments -- many of your sentences are too long as are some of the paragraphs. I find reading whatever I write outloud really helps pick up not only on spelling and grammatical errors but also those sentences that leave you breathless. They are hard to read, outloud or silently.

But in the end, it is your story, so you can take or leave my comments. Run-on sentences and all, this is a great page-turner of a story!

Alice,

I'm not familiar about the market for this story, but I'd consider revising a few things and seeking out a publisher. It's good stuff. If you have more of these, say a collection of "scary short stories" for the 10-14 age range, I think you may find some success. Your story is unrelenting, and I really admire how you're able to tap into the thoughts of this fifth-grader (rather authentically, I feel) while executing a plot that is focused on mounting suspense and delivering a fascinating ending, and all at the same time refusing to compromise with explanations, sympathies, or other types of formulaic additions to "nice-it-down." It was a good read, and I wish you the best with it.

A few suggestions for a future revision:

1. Tone isn't established for a thriller in the opening paragraphs. However, since it's written (as it should be) with a campfire-style omniscient narrator, this is OK... but just be prepared to bulletproof yourself from an editor who says, "Well I couldn't tell immediately what kind of story this was going to be..."

2. You use a lot of long, dense paragraphs and lengthy sentences. I recommend breaking them up. For every new bit of action, start a new paragraph-- particularly isolating important movements. When new, important characters appear, make sure the reader sees him/her. When an important sensation runs through Anna's body, make it visible on the page. Every new important thought, likewise. One example:

"Once she reached the shade of the trees the cold, if it was possible, deepened. It no longer seemed to be within Anna; instead it spread throughout the shrub-lined trail. Anna’s shaking returned, not as shivering this time but rather as shudders that racked her entire body. She tried to run home but her legs refused to do more than shuffle along. As she rounded a bend in the path and broke into a clearing, the cold too unbearable for words, she suddenly ran into Brian Winter. He was standing in the path and blocking her way."

When Anna breaks into the clearing, 1) she notices the cold. STOP. New pgh. Indent.

            "It was Brian Winter."

The reader knows it's coming... we just know it... and when it happens, we see it! And we're still shocked! Just make the important things visible!

I definitely recommend breaking up paragraph 1 especially, just to draw the reader into the story with ease.

3. Sometimes your narrator uses language that is just a tad too mature for 5th graders (age 10-11). Readers of this material will be probably two years older and two years younger. An 8-year old would stumble on words like:

"analyzing the scene later, recalled as a pretty casual manner. At the time however, the statement,"

 

"ubiquitously overt"

It's not really big words per say that stumble a young reader. (I mean, think how JK Rowling uses words like "sycophantically" and gets away fine). But it's the complexity of thought tied to emotion. Kids don't analyze. They look. They wonder. Kids also don't think about "statements." They think about "what he said." "Ubiquitous" would be okay, but coupled with "overt" makes it tougher.

3. A few smaller, pickier things:

So on that sunny February day Anna was not in a sunny mood.

This line is just less effective than the rest of your story.

A conscientious young girl Anna picked up the list to put it away with her other school things, as she did so she realized there was one name on the back of the sheet she hadn’t seen: Brian Winter.

"Nearly everyone it seemed, she and Jenna had dawdled on the last part of their walk."

These are run-ons. I found a few others, too.

Before they separated to go to their assigned seats, Anna felt a shudder run through Jenna.

Anna can't feel what Jenna does. But she can "notice the color drain from Jenna's face in utter fright."

The room was divided into five rows of six desks; Anna’s was in the second row on the left-hand side, Jenna’s in the first row in the middle. Brian’s was in the back right corner, nearly opposite Anna.

This line establishing setting comes too late. It's just in an awkward place.

Anna was startled

I noticed a few instances of passive voice that could stand to be cleaned up. Not too many, though, to be distracting.

 

She found out why when, turning to get into the lunch line, she was halted by an icy hand grasping her arm. She turned to face Brian Winter.

 

Brian scanned Anna’s face, reading her expression, before he asked “Which bunny loves me Anna?” He said it softly but even so, all conversation at the nearby tables stopped.

 

“N- n- no one” stuttered Anna. “It’s just a card Brian, the last one I had in the box.” Brian wasn’t the least bit phased by her reply. He hadn’t let go of her arm. By now the whole room was silent.

Isolate this action! New paragraphs! Make it visible. This is some strong, creepy writing. (I'd omit that last line, though, because it interferes with "he hadn't let go of her arm" which needs to be more visible.)

“Good god!” she cried “Your hand is like ice!”

Yikes.

 

Once she reached the shade of the trees the cold, if it was possible, deepened

The words "if it was possible" is unnecessary and distracting. But if you want to keep it, it should be in parentheses. But I wouldn't put it in parentheses, because it would just look funny in this particular type of story.

Her numb limbs refused, causing her to fall backwards.

Because this is at the end of a long paragraph, I almost didn't see the action... but it's a really important visual!

When I was about 10, I read some juvenile-thriller books by RL Stine, Christopher Pike, etc. This is better than those. It's got a youthful ingenuity to it, yet your delivery is (as I said before) unrelenting while somewhat beautiful. Caveat, though, it works primarily because it's a short story. It's simple enough to pack the punch it does. We don't want to know more about Anna or Brian or Jenna. It if were a full length novel, the writing style, execution and delivery would change the dynamic altogether, and I'm not positive it would work (and maybe that's not your intention anyway, so who cares). Like I said, if you haven't thought about it, I'd consider putting together a collection of scary short stories for this age range and pitch it to people. Children's Lit and Young Adult is a huge market right now! Otherwise, see if you can find a young adult magazine that'd be interested in publishing it around Halloween (even though it's a Valentine's story). You'd have plenty of time to shop it around in the next seven months!

She then carefully divided the cards into two piles, those cards she could safely give to the boys in her class without fear of teasing, and those that could only go to her closest friends.

I like this bit a lot. It captures a lot of what we all went through on Valentine's day in school well.

Once she had them thoroughly sorted Anna put each card in an envelope, sealed in, and taped a piece of candy to the outside.

I would put a comma after sorted.

Brian was sitting quietly at his desk.

"Brian sat quietly at his desk." would be much simpler and the short sentence would complement the longer ones in the paragraph.

They stood like that for an eternity it seemed until finally Brian released her arm and moved away, exiting the cafeteria.

"it seemed" is unneeded for the hyperbole, especially if this is meant for children.

Anna paused and looked down the dim-lit trail.

I understand that you are contrasting against the sunny day, but it would help if you put something about how despite it being sunny, it was dark in the park, to really show that you didn't make a slip of description.

She then looked down the wide street and seriously considered going several blocks out of her way in order to skirt around the park.

I would get rid of then, and seriously, just to tighten up this sentence.

I liked this piece but for one thing: I feel like I didn't really care about Anna very much. Other than her fear of being made fun of for a Valentine's day card, she isn't strongly characterized.

I was a wimp when I was younger when it came to horror stories, I'm sure this one would have spooked me silly! I never even could get the courage to read goosebumps.