Pills by Pills- Ch. 1- a work-in-progress.

(You dont have to read this before the story, prefferably after.)

Spoiler

This is a true story, though it is not about me. Therefore I cannot write this in 1st person, though I earnestly wish I could. I appologise for the crappy unexciting writing. I just wanted to see if this topic would attract anything poisitive before i adventured on. i dont usually write about things like this. i enjoy farytales, so im sorry if i could not convey the proper emotion.

I cry as I sing myself to sleep, “How can I escape/ the feeling of loss/ that has become so deep. How can I escape/ the pain in my side/as I try and try to abide.”


She spends her days in bed, hugging her side. The pain takes over her body, and her soul. She doesn’t know what to do, and she doesn’t know how to take it. She sees her pain medication on the side table next to her bed.

Soft music is playing, as she strokes her dog, staring at the pills. She knows the illness has taken over her life. She wants some control. She wants to control her sickness, but it remains the puppet master in her life.

Unless… there is hope after all. She can control it and she can break the hold it has over her, all at the same time. She reaches for the bottle, and takes out however many pills she wants. Because she can.


Pills, By and By

This wasn’t the first time she used pills to feel better. Actually, this was the second time she had to experience the tears, followed by the rushing to the hospital.

The second time she overdosed was harder on everybody though. Her parents were divorced, her mother and father were at work, and her sister had left for college a week ago. She was alone. Instantly after popping the pills, she decided this wasn’t how she would go down. She was stronger than that, so she went to the only place she could. Her best friend’s house, who, thankfully lived a block away.

“Sam- I…” The words escaped from her mouth.

“Kelcie, what’s wrong?”

“I overdosed.” Her friend did not know what to say. Sam had never had to deal with this situation before. There was only thing she knew what to do, and that was to confide in her parents.

“Kelcie, you need to tell your mom or dad. I don’t know what to do… You need to go to the hospital.”

“I can’t… I don’t want to tell them. I’m scared.”

Sam grabbed her friends arm and tugged her in the direction of her house. “Come on then. We have to tell somebody.” That’s what they did. When they reached Sam’s house, they told her parents, who told Kelcie to call her mom and dad. In ten minutes, her father had been at Samantha’s house to pick her up and take her to the hospital. The father who had never been there for his daughter before was going to save her life. Her mother was away on business again.

That incident was the cause of the first time she had to go to rehab, and she vowed never to return. That didn’t last long.

Hey Alter!Ego

I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. I will be your reviewer for today, so I do help that I am able to provide some valuable input.

I'm not usually that good at reviewing this sort of story, but seeing as you had no reviews I thought that needed to be changed. Let's take a look at certain ideas that might help you to improve this.

For this type of story, probably the most important part of your writing is the connection you build between the character and the reader. This is so important that it might even supersede the story itself. You need to make the reader feel the pain of your characters, a task which is remarkably difficult to accomplish successfully.

I'll try to give you a few steps that might help you achieve this vital relationship.
Step 1: Show the reader the scene clearly. Paint a picture of the suffering that you want to portray. This picture should be vivid. Facial expressions, glazed eyes, the smells in the air and the taste of tears. Give us the sounds of whimpers and the stickiness of the liquid as it pours the pill down the throat. If you want to achieve maximum feeling from your audience you need to make this graphic.

Step 2: Flaunt emotion. What should drive a story like this is feeling and emotional attachments that the reader develops to it. Dialogue is merely an aside thing, and narrative is too. All dialogue should reveal complex emotion. All non-dialogue should also. Throw us into this world properly. Rather than focusing on what happened and on the story itself, focus on the emotions that drove the story forward. Dialogue must be angry, desperate, upset. Harness the emotion as though you were the character, and spit it out towards the audience with feelings. Why did everything happen?

Step 3: Use dialogue together with prose as effectively as you possibly can. Your dialogue is your tool to get us to know the characters, not the story. Your prose gives us almost all of the story, and a lot less of the characters. Cut out a lot of your dialogue that focuses on what happens. You can tell that as part of your prose. Each piece of dialogue must contain the emotion that we mentioned above. You can also not afford to let your dialogue sound cheesy. These people are suffering, build that picture up a lot more. We don't need to see faltering when they speak. We need to see them speak emotion.

Step 4: Establish a perspective. You need to tell the story from the perspective of one of your characters. Not both at the same time. Describe how one characters sees all the events and become close to that one character. This is vital to bringing our attention back to this character. We need to see this character as someone we can sympathize with. We can only do this if you bring us close enough to her.

Okay, that's pretty much the tips that I can give you here. I'd minimize the use of the ellipsis to ensure that it does have the desired effect on the rare occasion of its use, but that's just a little thing. I think that the above highlights a large part of what the story needs for us to relate to it.

I hope that this has helped!
Have a great one.

Hi.
This seems like something I would write, and I hope that you aren't using people's real names. After all, this is fiction.

alter!ego wrote:I cry as I sing myself to sleep, “How can I escape/ the feeling of loss/ that has become so deep. How can I escape/ the pain in my side/as I try and try to abide.”

This was before the title, so I am not sure if it is supposed to be a preface. But, this does not fit in with the rest of the story, at least, not yet. Maybe you'll find a way to work it in.

alter!ego wrote:The second time she overdosed was harder on everybody though. Her parents were divorced

Do you mean to say that because they were divorced and her sister was away, the overdose was harder on them? Or, did she overdose because they were divorced and her sister was away?

alter!ego wrote:she went to the only place she could. Her best friend’s house, who, thankfully lived a block away.

Then she talks to Sam and you wrote...

alter!ego wrote:When they reached Sam’s house, they told her parents

But, they are already at Sam's house.


I wish I could help you more. I think Yoda has some good advice, though, on how to rewrite it.

Best of luck,

McMourning

To me, it seems like you didn't make the "overdosing" in part two dramatic enough. This is, I imagine, a serious matter, but Kelcie is apparently walking through the neighborhood to Sam's house and is able to communicate (effectively, it seems, and if this is difficult for her, you need to describe it as such).

Overdosing was treated with the same amount of seriousness as an accidentally broken vase. I suggest you ramp up the drama.

Bon Courage.

Everyone seems to have covered it. Make us feel your MC's pain! Help us sympathize her. Use descriptive words. Make sure your scene is clear to us. And...as someone else said, I hope you are not using the people's real names.
A good start in all.