Support for Indie Authors discussion

Niteen,

I am copying and pasting most of your post below, as it is great that you're looking for feedback on your writing. However, I have to delete your original post due to the links and self-promotion.

Hello,

I have tried to write a short piece in 1st Person. Let me know what you think.


Deliria

I wake up at the sound of the 5 o’clock alarm. I reach for my phone and swipe right. The alarm stops. I lay still for a few seconds. Then I turn to my left side. I feel a bit dizzy at first and then disoriented. My chest feels heavy. Inflammation. Or acidity. I’d had a late dinner. And it was spicy and oily. So most probably the latter. I lay on my left side for a while. The inflammation will subside.

I wake up early in the morning to write. My mind is fresh and words flow smoothly at that time of the day. I also visualize right after the alarm. I lay on my left side and think about the scene I want to write. This way I write more and tend to make less errors.

I wake up with a start and pick up the phone from the side table. I had dozed off for 15 minutes. Shit! I throw away the blanket and get out of bed. I hurry to the loo and come out in record time. I open the door. I tie the shoe laces. I hurry down the stairs. On the second-floor staircase window, a bird flies away hearing my footsteps. I don’t know its name. It is black, with a red undertail coverts. Sometimes I catch it unawares. It jumps and hovers above the grill, and then takes off like a fighter jet on a carrier.

I run down the steps and get to the parking lot. I glance around. No one. But then the milkman walks up to the elevator.

“You’re late today,” I say.

“So are you,” he says. He pushes a button and waits.

I start to jog and go past him.

“See you tomorrow,” the milkman says.

I let out a smile. “Definitely.”

I turn left. I see the housekeeping guy cleaning the premises of the building. He stops and waits for me to pass. He waves at me. I raise my head in acknowledgment. Same time last year when temperatures had dipped to nine degrees in Pune, I’d given him a woolen sweater, which I rarely used. My wife had gifted me a jacket on my birthday and insisted that I start using it. She was glad that I gave away the old sweater. So, he waves or nods every time he sees me.

Advertisements
Report this ad

I begin to pick up speed as I head to the main gates. The security guard has already opened the gate for one person to pass.

“Good morning, sir,” he says.

“Good morning, Ramesh.”

I start jogging faster once I’m out on the road. I’m about to move to the sidewalk when I hear a car behind me. Before I could turn my head, I hear desperate honking. From the corner of my eye, I see that the car is headed toward me. I try to move away, but the impact is hard. I’m thrown away farther from the sidewalk and on to the compound wall. I hear my head crack and I feel the warm blood ooze out of my skull.

I wake up with a start. I had dozed off for 15 minutes. No heavy heart. No disorientation. The extra 10 minutes had turned out to be a cure. I get off the bed and stretch out. I hear my joints crackle. I move to the loo, switch on the light, and get in. I don’t know about other writers, but I get to think clearly in the loo. There are no distractions. No sounds. I sit there like the Auguste Rodin sculpture and find solutions to plot issues. I’m able to eliminate one by one the various ideas that I had come up with to include in the story. Basically, it’s time well spent on troubleshooting.

I choose the blue track suit. Blue has been my favorite color since childhood. I don’t know why. Maybe because I love the blue sky. It is the color of promise. Of hope. Of peace. It is the color of the sky when dark clouds clear away and light shines through.

I put on my smart band. I open the door and walk out. I wear my shoes and stretch out again. I jog down the few steps and stop at the staircase window. The black and red bird is on the window sill. It hardly moves. It doesn’t see me. I move down couple of stairs and stand opposite it. The bird sees me, I think. I look at its eyes. They make me uneasy. They’re staring through me, not at me. I stomp on the floor. It doesn’t move. In fact, the bird chirps a few times. Another bird lands next to it. Now, they both stare at me. I feel invisible.

I back away and almost stumble down the stairs. I stop at the landing and steady myself. I control my breathing, which has achieved Mach 1. But I don’t feel the thump of my heart. Is this a dream?

I head down to the parking lot. The milkman is at the elevator. He looks up to check the indicator. He then turns his head in my direction. He acts as if he is seeing me for the first time. He doesn’t nod. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence. I take a few steps toward him. He looks up at the indicator and tightens his grip on the sack full of milk packets. He opens the elevator and disappears into it.

‘Hey,’ I cry out. But the door closes and the elevator goes up. I stand there stupefied. I’m unable to figure out what is going on. I guess that he was not in the mood to have a word with me. Maybe he had a fight with his wife early in the morning. Or he had an altercation with the milk supplier. He had mentioned about earlier instances when he had complained to the supplier about the date on the milk packets. So why would he not… But then I feel that I don’t really care. And why should I? To hell with him if he pretends not to see me.

Jagan, the housekeeping guy is cleaning the premises. I jog toward him. He continues with his work. He does stop when I’m close to him. He has that no-nonsense look on his face he always has while working. He doesn’t nod when I pass him. And I was in no mood to give a shit whether he acknowledges me or not.

The security guard hardly raises his eyes as I reach the gates. I just can’t figure out what’s wrong with today. So, I jog out. I run down the slope and begin to move to the sidewalk. That’s when I hear a car racing toward me. I move my head and it is almost on my back. The car zooms past me. In fact, it goes right through me. I feel the rush. I try to analyze what had just happened. Several things go through my mind. The bird. Birds. The milkman. The housekeeping guy. The security guard. The car. The final thought gives me the creeps.

I fall on my knees, I look up at the heavens, and cry out, “No.”

I’m sure nobody can hear me.

***** The End *****

Sure. No problem.

Reading through your passage, the main piece of advice I can give is, remember whether writing first or third person, you don't want to start too many sentences with the same pronoun, in this case, "I". When every other sentence or so starts with "I" or "He" or "She", it can bog the writing down and make it feel monotonous.

I've rewritten two of your paragraphs to illustrate what I'm getting at:

Waking with a start, I pick up the phone from the side table. Fifteen minutes has passed. Shit! Throwing the blanket aside, I get out of bed. I hurry to the loo and come out in record time. With my laces tied, I hurry down the stairs. On the second-floor staircase window, a bird flies away upon hearing my footsteps. The name of the bird is unknown to me. It's black with a red undertail coverts. Sometimes I catch it unawares. It jumps and hovers above the grill, and then takes off like a fighter jet on a carrier.

Running down the stairs I make it to the parking lot. For a moment no one is around. But then the milkman walks up to the elevator.

I agree with Dwayne on the pronouns. Way too many.

Another thing--if this is the start of the book, the editor will glance at it and probably not go past the first two paragraphs. Starting with waking up is an overused trope and editor and most readers will skip ahead unless there is something there to really grab their attention.

When writing in any POV, read it aloud so you get a feel for what ou are writing and the rhythm or have a program read it back to you. (MS word has it built into the program now) so you can hear how it sounds. Revise accordingly.

B.A. wrote: "I agree with Dwayne on the pronouns. Way too many.

Another thing--if this is the start of the book, the editor will glance at it and probably not go past the first two paragraphs."

I was mostly focused on helping to make the first person flow better in my comment, but you make a great point. My initial reaction the first time I read the passage is by the second paragraph, I scrolled down to see how much longer this is going to go. Two paragraphs of someone laying in bed is pretty dull. The details of shutting off the alarm are needless. To be told they're laying on their left side twice (when it hardly matters) is tedious.

And you're right about the waking up trope. I have had to rework my current work in progress quite a bit as I realized I had the prologue, chapter one, and chapter three all starting with someone waking up.

Dwayne wrote: "Reading through your passage, the main piece of advice I can give is, remember whether writing first or third person, you don't want to start too many sentences with the same pronoun, in this case,..."

Thanks Dwayne. I will keep this in mind.

B.A. wrote: "I agree with Dwayne on the pronouns. Way too many.

Another thing--if this is the start of the book, the editor will glance at it and probably not go past the first two paragraphs. Starting with w..."

Thanks for the suggestions. I will revise the story and see how it goes.

This isn't part of a book. I just thought about it as an exercise to learn to write in 1st POV.

You begin with a series of declarative sentences in paragraph one, all originating with the narrator. That is virtually a demonstration of “Telling,” which is another way of saying, the nonfiction approach we were taught in school.

You, the narrator, are alone on stage talking to the reader. Does it matter what tense you use when talking about someone not on stage? Would the paragraph have been different had it read:

He wakes up at the sound of the 5 o’clock alarm. He reaches for my phone and swipes right. The alarm stops. He lays still for a few seconds. Then he turns to his left side. He feels a bit dizzy at first and then disoriented.

The same person did the same thing, and the same author is trying to seem more immediate by using present tense. The only difference is that we learn the protagonist’s gender at once, instead of waiting 423 words for someone to address him as “sir.” In the original, we must read through the first two manuscript pages before we learn our gender.

The problem is that this is a chronicle of events—a report. And as such, it’s focused on events, presented by the dispassionate voice of the narrator.

Yes, the voice that you hear is filled with emotion, but it’s your voice, carrying emotion the reader doesn’t know that they should include.

The short version: You’re writing exactly as you were taught to in school: Fact-based and author-centric. That’s great if your goal is to inform the reader. But…they offer degree programs in Commercial Fiction Writing. And you have to figure that as least some of what’s taught is necessary. Right? So that’s what you need to dig into.

The techniques of the profession aren’t all that hard to learn, and they make a HUGE difference. As E. L. Doctorow pointed out, “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” And the tricks that the pros take for granted can help you do that. They also make the act of writing a lot more fun.

So hit the library for a few good books on fiction writing technique. My personal suggestion is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It’s out of copyright, and free to read or download on the Archive, and other such sites.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot, Jay. That was quite interesting and in-depth. Will checkout the book for sure.

Good that you've taken the risk in asking for feedback. Hope that my input will be helpful.
The piece appears stiff, like a reporter at a distance trying to get all of the facts in, on an event that is occurring, not wanting to miss anything. Maybe, the sentence formations could be a bit more complex, by using commas and conjunctions. Such sentence structure not only enhances first person POV, but also third person. Keep on writing.

Thanks for the suggestions and advice, Tony.