Young Writers Society

18+ for language.

Here's the beginning of a short story I'm working on:


You want me to tell a little about myself? I f***ing hate it when people ask me to tell a little about myself, because there isn’t any way anyone can tell just a little about their self, people aren’t that f***king simple. If you want to hear about me I’ll start at the beginning, and by beginning I don’t mean all the sh*t about where I was born, who my parents are, and what my childhood was like.

No, I’ll start with a story I wrote in the second grade. The story was about a boy who had a pet monster, a big scary one, and whenever this little stuck up kid got mad he’d sick the goddamn monster on the person he was mad at. The first to go were his parents for making he clean his room, then his teacher for putting him in time out, then this other little brat who picked on him, and then his friends for not playing with him. After a while he was the only person in the whole town the monster hadn’t eaten, because it was a loyal monster, and the boy was glad to have the whole town to just him. When my second grade teacher read the story she gave me an “F” and called my parents. Then parents sent me to a therapist who was a real pain in the ass. I just told him everything he wanted to hear till he was convinced his services were no longer needed.

Now, looking back on that story there’s one thing I’d really like to change. After everyone else is gone the kid feels lonely and he cries, “I’ve made a horrible mistake!” but no one can hear him. Because he is alone.

I’m starting with that because it just goes to show how f***ed up I am, but I think everyone’s f***ed up, at least a little bit.

Um...lot of cussing here, but it doesn't make the story interesting, or make me want to read more. (It even sort of got annoying after a while.)
This is your typical: Here's the story of my life---which is a bad way to start any book, even auto-biographies.
You need to give us some action to start with, you say "I'm not going to tell you about my life," but then proceed to do just that. Don't start w/ backstory, please don't start with backstory, start with the kid. Where is he? Why is he there? How did he get that way? First person is tricky--it's easy to start monologue-ing. Try to get an interesting twist on something. Try telling the story w/ the monster like it's happening right now, and then lead it into whatever the kid's doing now. Might be interesting. Also, uh...I know it said 18+ but still, that was a little over-the-top w/ the language and all, made it seem kind of corny, like some cheesy drill sergeant.

I'd read it Just so you know I agree with EloquentDragon about the beginning of the story - it's a little unprofessional and doesn't really rope the reader in. The cussing and the story of the kid contradicts in my eyes... the character does sound pretty hard personality-wise, the cussing portraying him as tough and a no-more-mr-nice-guy sort, but launching immediately into the story he wrote as a small child kind of turns that persona on its head. I found it a little confusing. Perhaps you'd want to either begin with the child and lead into the character at his current age, or instead begin with the character in a predicament of sorts at his current age, follow him through it (it doesn't have to be long) and find out more about him, why he's so hard, a tiny teaser about his past (an anecdote maybe?) and try to show a little of his softer side before easing into the child's story. It just threw me a little, that's all, this tough guy with all his swearing launching into a tale about a story he wrote when he was seven. Also, with the monster story, its not very... interesting. The little plot has great potential to be really quite comical, as does the child's 'therapy', but it just needs a little work description-wise and on tying the monster-story in with the repercussions on the child. I like the character at his current age, he sounds like he could be a whole lot of fun to write, and the child could definitely be a funny one!
This is just my opinion though, so yeah. Just thought you might like to consider it
Amy

I agree with the latter two, the cussing is over-used very much so. It does sound interesting though, but I think you need more detail in some way...Why does he want the monster to kill everyone? What makes him hate people so much? Why is he so angry? Is it even a he? a she? Name?

Try to elaborate a little bit and cut back on the cursing

Topic (belatedly) locked due to being in the wrong section.