FROM L. T. VARGUS
I'd eat shards of broken glass to get you to read the free sample of my book.
CRITIQUE
For those of you who want to read the writing sample that I will critique to save Ms. Vargus from esophageal laceration, you can find it right here. It is the first chapter (about 1700 words) and a portion of the second chapter (about 3400 words).
So, first chapter…first person present. Right away, I’m a bit over a barrel because whatever advice I offer can be countered with “Well, that’s just the way my character talks. That’s his voice, and any change you suggest would spoil his voice.” There’s an awful lot of weight to that argument, but I’ll soldier on.
So…first person present. Eek. Danger, danger – narcissism alert!
The very first thing I see, without even reading, is a wall of “I”. If you have this first chapter in Word, search for “I “ with a space after “I” so you retrieve the word and not letters. Then marvel. You'll probably see your first chapter absolutely peppered with “I”. No idea what the count is, but I’d have no trouble betting over a hundred. Now search for “I” with an apostrophe after it; that’ll hike the count even further. Now search for “me”, “my”, “mine”, and “myself”. I can practically guarantee that every tenth word in the first chapter is one of those five words. Wouldn’t you agree that’s just a tad narcissistic?
So, with heavy heart I begin to read, expecting to find zero story advancement and world class navel-gazing with the MC yammering about himself, his feelings, and ridiculous details.
Nope. Didn’t happen. At least not to the extent a wall of “I” usually indicates. You managed to tell a story with action and moved it along. Release the pigeons, time to celebrate.
So your content in chapter one is NOT super narcissistic, but how you write it IS narcissistic. That is a real rarity, lemme tellya. Typically, I expect something like this:
The maniacal murderer comes at me with a knife. I think it’s a steak knife, but I could be wrong. If it were me, I’d use a butcher knife. As he draws nearer to me, I see the edge is serrated, a bread knife. Probably the one I bought to cut my delicious banana bread I received from my aunt as a gift. I wonder if maybe I have a better chance against a bread knife? I bet he chose that knife because he's a chef and not a trained killer. I feel a little hope when I think maybe I’m being hunted by an amateur. Maybe he’s just as scared as I am. I might like this guy in a different place and time, maybe even be friends with him. But I have more important matters to occupy my time at the moment.
Your first chapter has elements of this kind of narcissism, but not as bad as I've seen, and the story moves along. All the same, I recommend cutting way, way back on those personal pronouns. Rewrite it and get rid of as many as possible. Do it throughout the entire book. Narration is likely where you’ll see those pronouns infecting your writing the most. Here's an example of how you might do that:
His hands are cold on my neck. And dry. I try to fight him, to claw at his eyes, but I can't reach. I scratch at his arms. He's too strong. I try to yell at him. I manage more of a gurgle and some clicky noises. I don't even know what I'd say, I guess, but I can assure you that he seems like a real dick.
Nine “I's” and a “my” in that little clip.
His cold, dry hands clamp around my neck. I try to claw at his eyes, but can't reach them. I scratch at his arms, but he's too strong. Yelling produces only a gurgle and some clicky noises. Even if something intelligible could escape, what would it be? Maybe “Dickhead!”
Two “I's” and a “my”. Of course, you change it in a way to preserve his voice, but without the I-yi-yi.
Also, I'd stop talking to the reader - get rid of “you”. It's unnecessary. Speaking for myself, you're already giving me a first person present blow-by-blow of an attack in a dream caused by a seizure - I don't need my belief challenged any further by imagining you're talking to me personally. Okay to keep the generic "you", as in "you know".
Watch the “I guess”. Kinda annoying. I bet you use it over a half dozen times, and usually two or three in close proximity.
I like most of your verbs and the smart-alecky tone in dire circumstances. It seems to fit after six repetitions. One final thing: the weak language, as in "I guess", "I don't know", "seems", "maybe", along with the adolescent expressions made me think this character was a girl or perhaps a young boy of about fifteen. That's about it for chapter one.
Chapter two - still watch the narcissistic pronouns and try to cut them down. The dialogue and other characters mask the infection much better, but there are still pockets of narration where it can crop up.
In this chapter, the MC's slacker mentality comes to the fore. I have to admit I find these kind of characters pretty repulsive, but I'd probably be willing to suffer a bit for a good story, particularly if he starts developing a spine.
I didn't really see too much that set off alarms in this chapter. One annoyance was your dialogue tags, like "I say" and "he says". If ever there's a time to cut down on those, it's when two people are alone in a room talking...very little danger of losing track of who's talking. You could virtually eliminate them in this section and just occasionally insert an action tag to keep things clear like: Glenn scratches his head. "Don't you want to go to a doctor?"
I feel like there are parts you could just delete, like the long girl with the muscle man in the parking lot - kinda random, unless she pops up later. And some of his random thoughts. On the whole, nothing much to squawk about, I guess (lol). I suspect this is building to the main story, so waiting for some action or a revelation.