Young Writers Society

I woke to stiff red numbers. And shrieking.

I like that. You go for the sensation rather than naming it. Evocative. Your first lines are almost like lyrics, with the repetition of 'I woke', but lyrics of one of those stream of consciousness singers, like Leonard Cohen. I also like how as your character wakes up, he begins to process the information, which you use to likewise orientate the reader.

Your tone is interesting, I like the intricacies you slip in there, the 'nefarious destinations', the newspaper edges. You're immediately in the mind of the character.

Your descriptions are good. Keep an eye on what your character is focusing on, you do, much of the time. To who is the character narrating? Is it just the thoughts of the reader as they come? If so, you don't have to explain things so much, he wouldn't explain them to himself. But that's mostly very good.

Her face was plain, and her blouse stuck to her chest with sweat. She might have been pretty if she had taken the extra effort to make herself up.

Nice characterization there. You mention the face first, which was interesting, because he's a bit of a misogynistic sleaze. I suppose it's from him living alone, he's objectifying her because he's used to having that kind of distance.

Your balance between dialogue and description,and the rhythm you have is good. If you wanted to you could play with sentence length in your descriptive paragraphs, stretching and shrinking just to see what that does. The long and more or less uniform length of them adds to the sense of familiar monotony, which is good.

I saw his type all the time; poor old black men who came in and ate, half-senile and the other half reeking of wisdom just ready to be passed on to their minors.

Mm, again, I love how you portray your protagonist through his perceptions of others. He's magnificently flawed. Reminds me of the play "Spinning into Butter" by Rebecca Gilman.

The objectifying people and personifying objects is tasty. I want its spawn.

Fine family fun. I give this eight and a twelve ninths of leopards and a rabid lemur.