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An excerpt from my first attempt at writing a novel. This part is very early in the story: There is only one thing worse than suicide. Surviving a suicide. For the perpetrator, at least, because the people around will not hesitate to express how glad they are that he failed. What an odd behavior that is, to promote failure. For the one who attempted the suicide it is obviously a different story. There is no joy whatsoever. You just know you are so incompetent that you didn't even manage to kill yourself. The depression gets doubled, or tripled. You feel worse than when you started. Useless and helpless. To be fair, the body is very resilient. More so than it looks. And life has provided humans with many defense mechanisms to prevent death, self-inflicted or otherwise. Mechanisms that are buried deep down in our brains. Primal fears, mostly, of pain and loneliness. So killing yourself is not as easy of a task as it may initially seem. That said, when you are depressed, it is simply impossible to think like that. To be positive. Your own brain betrays you, logic stops working and you enter a downward spiral of self-destruction, even in the face of cold hard facts. I opened my eyes. The red was gone. All colors were gone in fact. Only darkness prevailed. And calm. That too. Absolute darkness and calm. I was laying inside what I made out to be a wooden box with silky linings. I caressed my wrists and felt a dry gash on each one of them. They didn't hurt anymore. I felt myself up and concluded I was wearing a suit. It was stiff and rough, causing a shiver to run down my spine. A dead, dried up flower came out of my chest pocket. I touched it lightly and it crumbled to dust. When I finally came to all of my senses, I screamed. Then I screamed again. And then some. My voice was coarse, unrecognizable from my real voice, as if my vocal cords were full of shrapnel and sand. It reminded me of Gregor Samsa, turning into a bug. Losing his ability to speak. But I was no bug. I still had arms and legs. Four, total. A head, a mouth, a nose, ears. My voice still pronounced real words. I was human. So aside from the strange voice we really had nothing in common. The voice and the segregation from the world. I clawed at the top of the box. I punched and kicked, each time striking with more force. I gave up shortly after, it was pointless, so I just laid there. Staring blankly into the nothingness that surrounded me, if that can even be considered 'staring.' It was peaceful, it was calm, but most of all, it was boring. Excruciatingly boring. My perception of time was completely messed up. My senses too. It seemed like it had only been a brief moment since I had been there, inside the bathtub. Bleeding. Painting the water in red, so to speak. With a dumb smile of relief. Not an actual physical smile, but one of those emotional smiles that you feel inside, when everything is poo poo but you just know everything will turn alright. When your mind tricks you into a false sense of relief. As far as my perception goes I had just been there moments ago, my consciousness fading away. I had been gone. But time moved forward without my permission. It had moved forward, and I was now stuck inside a wooden cage. Alive. “Is this Hell?” I yelled. Not surprisingly, there was no reply. Not even an echo. The box was too small for echoes. Too small for me. Too small for my thoughts even. How was a person supposed to think when he couldn't pace around? I would have to get used to it. It did not take long for my mind to enter a stream of consciousness state, swimming erratically through a sea of memories and thoughts; What I'd do if I were the president. How disappointing my 'last supper' was: a cold stale pizza. All the chores I left undone. If a mammoth would win a fight against a T-Rex. Very important stuff. Then I was re-watching a science show in my mind, where they talked about a condition that made people appear dead when they really weren’t. It's name escaped me, it was all hazy. I considered the possibility of having that; I had passed out after slashing my wrists, they assumed I was dead and buried me by mistake. That made sense. Definitely. Not that it would have made it any better, of course, for I was still trapped in there. Waiting for a slow, slow death. Maybe from dehydration. Or asphyxiation, more likely. But knowledge gave me comfort, even if it was all guesswork. Regardless, It's not like I, of all people, cared about survival. The only reason I was laying there in the first place was that I had attempted to kill myself. It would not change a thing. Not a single one. At that point all I had to do was to keep waiting. 
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Sep 17, 2015 19:01
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:30 |
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Thanks, that's all great advice. I will go back and review my wording and punctuation to make it flow better. I guess I get caught too much in how it sounds rather than how it reads. As for what happens later, he stays there for a little while (one small chapter) and then there is a flood, which allows him to break free. He finds another person who's been buried alive and they set out to find what happened and why.
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Sep 18, 2015 00:26
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Well, I'll give it a shot. This is the first time I do this so take it with a grain of salt. -I like that it starts in the middle of the action but don't tell us what he was going to do but didn't, tell us what he actually does and how he reacts. You can still keep that sense of interruption. quote:Against all odds he was perfectly fine. quote:Across the room, what loosely resembled a young man in his late teens sat at a desk in nothing but boxers, his face a mask of utter horror. -Avoid using "seemed", "appeared", "realized" and that kind of word whenever possible. Sometimes you can jump straight to the sentence or you could just display what happens instead of telling us about it. Instead of "The answer seemed to insult it" it could be as simple as "The answer insulted it." quote:“One minute I’m talking with the professor, next thing I know I’m The "unexpected" is already obvious. quote:Suddenly everything clicked into place all at once. It was obvious when John stopped to think about it. quote:The boy's – no, the computer generated representation of a boy's face went pale. quote:Even now, knowing what to look for, the room felt so real it was uncanny. quote:
It needs some tightening up in a couple parts but it seems like it is off to a good start.
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Sep 25, 2015 16:07
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quote:Red Baron stands agape staring into Cracker Jack’s fading eyes. Three holes in Cracker Jack’s chest continuously ooze blood. Mad Dog hurls Cracker Jack’s body at Red Baron, knocking him to the floor. His glock gets knocked out of his hand. quote:
quote:Slim Jim In a more general sense the narration feels a bit too stiff in some places, like a robot going through a list of things: "This happens. That happens. This is like this. Such and such." You can probably remove/change some punctuation and combine some sentences to make them more fluid. All in all I think it is pretty solid.
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Oct 23, 2015 16:31
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I don't really know of any resources off the top of my head, just find some authors who use the present tense and see what they do. For whatever it's worth I don't think your problem is telling instead of showing, but rather in the how you are doing it. Everything feels segmented, like you are going: "Fact. (Stop) Fact. (stop) Fact. (stop)" It shouldn't feel like a lawyer going through a crime scene, it should feel more natural. Here's an example: quote:Original: In short, make the sentences feel more connected to each other instead of a series of unrelated events. As a side note, I just noticed that you introduce MD right away but he doesn't do anything until a paragraph later. You should either hold off on introducing him or make it clear that we are experiencing the scene through his eyes. Chernabog fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 18:43
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:30 |
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newtestleper posted:Chernabog's examples show a couple of other basic mistakes - "Exclaims MD eagerly" here you're making two at once - using book-saidisms and adverbs. Googling should be able to find some information on why these are bad and how to avoid them. That's a good point  Here's more info I dug up on that topic: http://malcolm-wood.com/Saidisms.html
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Oct 26, 2015 22:43
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