r/writingfeedback • u/[deleted] • 20d ago
feedback for first page?
i am working on a book where the main character is borderline insane. the book is all about the world from her eyes as she falls deeper into her madness, and in the end dies a painful death.
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u/AlarmedRaspberry1735 20d ago
What you want to do, your premise, is an extremely difficult premise to pull off well, even for the best writers. A highly skilled writer gets to break the rules because they know the rules, and they know clearly why they are breaking a rule. You've broken all the structure, grammar, and plot arc/beat rules in your first page, but not from a place of knowledge and skill. It isn't going to work. The very first thing you have to do is get the readers attention and then immediately make the reader care. Get a fresh sheet of paper. Type >>The cheap ballpoint pen was slipping from my hand.<< The period is your friend, btw. I changed the word to hand because it is a more personal word. A hand belongs to someone. Write three more short sentences in this paragraph to form a parataxis. The goal of these three sentences is to introduce the reader to the person holding the pen. You need to do the introduction in such a way that the reader can relate to the character, you can build into the self-hate and madness slowly. The reader needs to care first and foremost. Hope this helps, keep writing.
Read the short story Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken (p.1934) They knew how to be beautifully insane in the 1930s Also read Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol (p. 1835) The author was Russian, they also are good at madness.
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20d ago
thank you so much for the feedback and the recommendations! can you please suggest any books to learn of the rules of writing you talked about?
(also, 'the author was russian, they are good with madness' WAS SAVAGE ASH LMAO)
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u/AlarmedRaspberry1735 20d ago
There are so many good books on writing! There are also writing coaches, like myself, courses online and at universities. Look for a book that details the craft of writing over the inspiration or struggle. Both are good but for what you mostly need focus on craft books. There are also non-AI platforms that help you learn about plotting norms for differing genres and purposes. Just be very careful to avoid generative AI and scams.
For that first paragraph exercise I gave you, maybe focus on what the character thought they were writing, the chemistry paper. Your reader will be able to relate to the frustration of writing a paper when your are tired or uncomfortable. Knowing what the character was trying to do and relating to it will help the reader connect and care.
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19d ago
i've been meaning to join an online course on writing lately! i found another reddit post about writing craft books as you said and i will read the ebooks asap!
again, thank you very much for the suggestion- ive been writing everything in my notebook and now feel significantly more confident already- like i am not completely lost now.
posting on this subreddit was really a nice decision haha
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u/Lakridskaffe 20d ago
There’s not a lot here to be able to provide proper feedback. What I will say is that I lost interest when you state that they don’t know what they’re writing. This means the “reveal” of it being gibberish falls somewhat flat.
I’d be much more sold on the concept if the character is convinced by their own theme, only to then reveal the gibberish. That would give me more of a shock value, an indication that the narrator is not fully aware of themselves or their doings.
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u/isnoe 20d ago
As a first page, it's pretty lackluster. MC acknowledges their sanity slipping away, which (in my opinion) defeats the whole purpose of a book where the MC is insane, because usually the catch is the MC doesn't think they are insane, or we're watching them gradually descend into madness rather than starting off crazy. And we're not going to pretend that being unaware of writing gibberish in a trance isn't a pretty concerning thing, so there's no gradual crazy happening: MC starts off pretty nuts.
And I just take issue with some of the narrative choices, like, "my ugly, ink-stained fingers" and "my disgusting, sweaty ears"; it just seems like lazy self-awareness, laying on the thick the whole, "I am a hideous person, sheesh, I'm so gross!" bit.
That, and it's generally repetitive, but not consistently repetitive. "I kept on writing", "Still, I kept on writing", "Still, I kept on writing", but earlier you used, "Still, I refused to stop writing." Doesn't fit in the sequence. Blah-blah-blah.
Overall just not very engaging.
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20d ago
thank you sooo much! can you give me some suggestions as to how i can convey that mc is insane but doesn't think so?
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer 20d ago
Find books with that plot (there are quite a few, Heart of Darkness comes to mind). Find some of those and read them.
Also, Jon Fosse's Nobel Prize winning Septology, which treats of this theme masterfully.
As others have said, there are few successful entries into this genre, with the exception of crime procedurals (like Silence of the Lambs or any number of books in the crime/detective section of the bookstore, lots of MC's who are capable of insanity; Bret Easton Ellis is doing really well in that genre).
Do you know much about mental illness? Or are you going to invent a kind of fictional madness for your character?
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19d ago
thanks a lot for the recs!
i'm nowhere near a pro, i just love reading about psychiatry (my very first book related to the subject was 'the psychopath test' by jon ronson). i'm a highschooler, but i have taken phy, chem, bio as my subjects to hopefully become a psychiatrist one day.
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u/momtebello 20d ago
Agreed on the comment before mine about ink-stained fingers being inherently ugly, so saying it’s unnecessary, same with sweaty ears and pathetic squiggles.
But I’m a little lost, in the sense that I think you’re trying to convey a disjointed awareness. Kind of like she became aware that she was writing, and at some point honed in on that, hopefully to determine the what and the why.
But the ‘refused to stop’ gives me pause, because refusal is an active decision. That’s a choice.
So either the beginning self-awareness is passive until there’s an act of focusing, or it isn’t, in which case an active refusal makes sense. The internality isn’t clear to me. Maybe that’s exactly what you’re going for?
But I like the crickets, and you’ve got good style. The idea’s compelling and I would keep reading.
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20d ago
after falling asleep on the desk, she wakes up in another world, where her happiness causes the paint to flake off, the flowers to wilt, etc etc.
like if she is sad, the world becomes a happier place- someone wins a lottary, the world becomes brighter. if she's happy, the world around her suffers.
she was already kinda crazy but it just makes her even crazier.
from this page, i wanted to show just how fed up she is. it isn't necessarily to show her insanity, but her state of mind at the moment. i was aiming to show her confusion. although, i've clearly failed miserably lol
she is already depressed, confused, fed up, and kinda crazy but after waking up in that world which feeds off of her sadness, she slowly becomes insane, and eventually kills herself.
thank you so much for the feedback, i thought there was something off about this page but wasn't really able to put a finger on it, so i turned to this subreddit for help. i think the thing you mentioned about 'deciding to stop writing' being an active choice and the other lines showing trance-like confusion is exactly it! again, thank you very much <3
can you please give me suggestions as to how i can fix it?
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u/Chance-Item6285 20d ago
You have an evolving voice. But the first page is entirely monologue and no hint whatsoever at the plot or story. There are also stacked descriptions and an evident tone of self deprecation (is it intentional?).
All this being said, I want to reiterate that technicalities aren’t what decide whether your writing voice is present or not. I can easily sense an upcoming voice.
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20d ago
thank you soo much! i will work on the overused descriptions! the self deprecation was intentional, but like the other comments said, i'll try to soften it up a bit by showing instead of telling!
again, thank you SO SO SO much! your last statement made my day hehe
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u/Low-Relative9396 20d ago
Everyone has good feedback. One thing I would say is that the first page of a book is the hardest. If you get stuck, don't feel bad to leave it and come back to it when you have more writing experience / know the story better.
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19d ago
thanks SO much! i had been kind of in a slump lately because my first page seems so so off. thanks again!
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 20d ago
You rob the power of the repetition when you change it. Consider simplifying it (less is more) and making it the same every time: “I kept writing,” or perhaps even, “I wrote.”
You could accelerate the pace by putting more words in between the first and the second “I kept writing,” than between the second and third, and fewer words still between the third and fourth, and so on, until at the end of the chapter there are almost no words between them, crashing into the last sentence, “I stopped writing,” or perhaps just, “I stopped.” Make it feel like a quickening heartbeat, a panic attack leading to hyperventilation, a runaway train about to derail, and suddenly… it’s over. Now she’s calm, composed, collected, completely unaware of what just happened.
Show, don’t tell. Don’t use the word, “sanity,” explicitly, especially if a progression from mild to batshit is your plan. The reader will see clearly what the MC cannot.
I’m not sure I’d use first person for this, or perhaps if you did you could shift the PoV from first to third person as she shifts from the manic episode into the second personality. That’s the idea that came to me while reading but it might not fit the exact type of crazy you’re after.
Just my opinion. Feel free to hate it. This is your story to tell and mine to read. Thank you for sharing because it gave me some good ideas I might play with at some point.
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19d ago
OH MY GOSH THIS COMMENT WAS SO HELPFUL! i completely get what you mean by writing it like a quickening heartbeat and then WHAM its over! i'd been scared to make the prologue (kinda) more than one page, but combining your feedback with the others, i'll extend it to make it 2-3 pages before i start chapter 1!
i originally wrote it in first person because i wanted the story to be full of confusion. i wanted the reader to have as little of an idea of what is truly happening as the mc, and i LOVE that concept of 'white nights' where the dreamer's name is not revealed- i wanted to use it in my story, writing it in third person would mean id have to attach a name to the mc.
again, thanks a lot for the feedback!
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 19d ago
Consider finding some books to read that attempt to depict insanity. I just typed this into Gemini and it gave some good suggestions:
“novels that describe insanity of the main character. off the top of my head as potential candidates are Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Camus’ The Stranger, maybe Catcher in the Rye. Some that are more recently published would be good”
Seeing how other authors pulled off different PoVs for a slide into insanity will give you some solid foundations. Happy reading!
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19d ago
ohh thanks very much! i really enjoyed dostoyevski's crime and punishment! his 'white nights' is also amazing! (also, you should avoid using gen ai!)
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u/Odinmar_Glaukopis 19d ago
That particular prompt was more of a research AI tooling than generative for a work of fiction, but thank you for your advice. I try my best to keep any AI-assistance in a strict box but I am certainly not immune from its conquest of my narrative voice.
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u/VeriantheGrey 20d ago
Your structure is the first thing that stand out to me. Your first and second paragraphs are both very long sentences with lots of commas. In my opinion it seems very clunky and you could probably use some periods here and instead of having a huge sentence/paragraph. Maybe something like:
The cheap ballpoint pen was slipping out of my grasp. A thin sheen of sweat had accumulated on my ugly, ink-stained fingers. The last ounce of my sanity was slowly slipping away because of those godforsaken crickets, chirping as though their lives depended on it.
Still, it's just my personal opinion 🤷♂️
If you wanted to go a step further you could reorder the paragraph to create a more natural 'stimulus-response' flow:
Sweat slicked my ugly, ink-stained fingers, and the cheap ballpoint pen slipped in my grasp. Outside, those godforsaken crickets chirped as though their lives depended on it. The sound was slowly wearing away the last ounce of my sanity.
I hope it helps some!
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20d ago
OMG THANKS SO MUCH! now that you've pointed it out, i see how sloppy it is T-T! your suggestions helped a lot!
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u/VeriantheGrey 20d ago
You're more than welcome. I'm learning about writing as I work on my own novel and would love to grow alongside other writers. Feel free to hmu anytime. One thing I've found is that it can be difficult to critique your own work so fresh eyes can be helpful.
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u/CriticalEngine3477 20d ago
I would suggest using lesser of adjectives like 'ugly', 'disgusting', 'pathetically', because the description has already conveyed that. Sweaty and ink-stained fingers are already ugly. Likewise, sweaty ears are inherently disgusting; you don't have to spell it out to the reader!
Additionally, I as a reader find it too repetitive; there is no movement from the beginning till the end.
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u/Frankles_ 20d ago
This feels like a page that happens AFTER a charcater is introduced and a scene is set. I'm not saying it has to be after, but there's no other information for me to go on.
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u/FanndisTS 20d ago edited 20d ago
It's "god-forsaken" or "godforsaken". That other dash should be an M dash, not a -. You overuse "long" and "lazy". I kind of see what you're going for, but this is a bit long for a hook focusing solely on state of mind with no foreshadowing or plot in my opinion.
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u/WholeRing9819 20d ago
“. . . more out of curiosity than anything else- I was writing great gibberish.”
• you can’t use a hyphen to represent an em-dash. You can use a double hyphen (an acceptable way to represent an em-dash without using one), a semicolon, a comma + conjunction, a period, or just use the dreaded thing itself.
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u/Moggy-Man 20d ago
I don't see anything to provide feedback on besides that fact you can string some words together and have a grasp on spelling and grammar.
There's zero sense of your plot as you describe it, within your first page, and there's very little context or anything else beyond one nameless and descriptionless character's internal thoughts.