: Re: Are these fictional musings convincing or overwrought? I've been working for some time on a story about a detective who finds himself alienated, delusional and hopeless while trapped inside a

@Sue2132873

Vote Up Vote Down

Flatten the scope - you are attributing personality to the people he sees, but the words imply they have none. Also focus on the self-obsession of the narrator ( as per @J .R. ). Just my suggestion for re-working it:

"Outside my window I make out figures who have simply given up.
They glance in the bathroom mirror and are met with
defeat. Unarticulated, maybe, but real enough, a resignation to the truth that
hope for a brilliant future in a lucid,
satisfying destiny was misplaced. They had woefully overestimated
themselves. They languished, doing nothing in particular for years,
with the tacit promise of "self-improvement". They imagined
themselves as successes sometime in the future. They
start their journey tomorrow. Or the day
after. Or whenever. I move among them, standing beside shadows on the
subway, in the store, I knew that I, at some point, suffered
their fate. After Kathy, I could never find a rhythm,
a groove to approach life from- something that I could keep private
and something that could give me direction, inspiration, meaning. So I
withdrew. Somebody once said that apathy isn’t the same as
withdrawing, but I did it out of confusion and
insecurity.

Life then came to find me, by which time I had starting losing my hair, aged
and wearied, impotent and faded; all the
while having loved no one else and nothing else in particular.

This, I understood, is what people are most afraid of."

I am not suggesting this as a finished piece, just an attempt to make the picture you are painting much flatter, more 2D.

(0)

Login to post a comment!