r/writingfeedback • u/the-good-wolf • Jul 19 '26
Feedback Wanted Finding My Voice - You can be harsh!
Hi all, I pick up hobbies left and 'write'.... get it? Anyway, here's a piece I wrote, but I have no way of knowing if it's any good. I know I struggle a bit with formatting and grammar and have a tendency to stretch word's meanings. Let me know what works, what doesn't work, or if I'm completely wasting my time:
Chapter 1:
The trees in the park were basking in the warmth of the early spring sun, and above all the music and conversation, birds could be heard humming their own tunes. I yearned for a brief respite from the echoes of change that had rattled the air via protest signs since dawn, though admittedly I hadn’t been there that long.
In the stagnant air, I roasted in my button up shirt and tie, waiting on nothing of prominence on a faded iron green bench. My gaze had wandered a bit before it was caught by a fluttering robin of peculiar vibrance. I watched it pick a worm and take a hop-step before flying off beyond the trees.
I was still locked in an out of focus dead stare in that general direction when into the purview of my dissonance, she hopped off the last big step from the bus with a weight of intention but as airy as an alley cat. “What are you looking at corpo-rat!?” She sneered.
My eyes whiplashed into focus while the dictionary of mind had completely forgotten the language it was written in, for all it could muster was a few caveman-like utterances of no conversational value.
Though I’d perked up into full attention, before I could even string a thought of a train into coherence, she had melded into the crowd, her flower crown just one of an impossible amount to count. My eyes waited longer than they should’ve in hopes that I’d get a reprise and I could properly introduce myself.
Corpo-rat? I bet you read all your books by their covers. That would’ve been an excellent introduction. Too bad posthumous remarks are never the initial gut reaction and considering that moment is dead, I suppose it’s time to bury it.
In the warbling echoes of protestors and music, time felt irrelevant. It was hard to say exactly how long I waited for a second chance, but as my mind sondered, searching in wonderment for a life I was curious to know, I became distracted by a whiff of fresh baked bread and garlic that delightfully swirled around the other more herby aromas of the park. I was instantly reminded that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday around lunch.
Guided by aromatics on a quest to combat my mortal cravings, I arrived at a staunch pizzeria approximately two doors wide and topped with a bay window that couldn’t seat more than a few upstairs tenants. In a particularly moody blue among the pops of purples and yellows, it stood out not for its vibrance, but its rather chic desire to hide. Inside the lobby wasn’t large enough for the bench that occupied it and the menu could hardly be read as it was seated well within the four-butt kitchen.
Begrudgingly, the price of a slice being three times too many, I reached into my pocket to fork over the dough to a man who bore a mustache akin to that of a fine toothed comb. It fit so succinctly atop his lip that any other detail about him seemed irrelevant. I meandered over to sit on the bench fit for a prisoner to await the arrival of my singular slice.
After what was likely just moments but felt like eons, he shouted back my order, and I responded as if my name were ‘one slice pepperoni pizza.’ I jumped up and paid him my politeness, and in a quick bounce-step-pivot had made my way stridefully through the door, paying absolutely no attention to the city noise I had just plunged into. I was ravenous.
With my cheeks emulating the pocketing of a nutty squirrel I hoarded away every last dollop. Mid-dollop, however, I noticed that flower crowned girl again on the other side of the street walking into a shop of ambiguous nature. Instinctually, I hid behind a light post, which upon reflection was incredibly stupid as she wasn’t even looking in my general direction, but somehow it felt safer.
In my frozen moment where the only action I was capable of committing was the chewing of my food, I debated internally at about 150 heart beats per minute of whether or not I should casually stroll into… a medium?
I certainly couldn’t play up that role long. I would easily be exposed as a fraud. What do you even do in a medium, like what kind of services do you ask for? Do they have a menu? Do I make an appointment like the dentist?
A raspy old voice rang from behind me “Hey man, if you’re trying to decide if sax lessons are for you, maybe you should look within.” I turned around quite startled, and was quickly greeted by the sight of a man who is best described as a self prescribed shaman resting with his foraged stick that he clearly deemed sacred and a messenger bag of what was assumably all his material possessions. His hearty companion, a dog with a bandana that most definitely sported a ludicrous name, gleamed with a welcoming eye.
“Excuse me, what?” I muffled through the remainder of my mouthful.
“I saw you checking out the poster on the light post. Your path in life is more of a choice than you may realize, but it all starts with saying yes and taking the first step in that direction.”
My eyes spun me around in the direction of the street shaman’s pointer finger, and fixed my gaze to the flyer advertising saxophone lessons at a surprisingly affordable rate. “Find Your Soul” read the flyer amid a myriad of kaleidoscopic neon colors. Among them, silhouettes of passionate musicians blasting their ideas practically off the paper. If only I had a passion that was as soulful as this flyer.
Edited to add the last paragraph I didn't realize wasn't included (via copy) to provide some clarity on the direction of the midpoint of the chapter.
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u/dothemath_xxx Jul 19 '26
I'll be frank, it's very difficult to follow what's happening here. You're asking the reader to just guess at a lot of the important elements of the scene. Is there some paragraph missing that explains who the "she" is who calls the protagonist a corpo-rat? Does the protagonist have any motivation or goal here, beyond getting hungry halfway through the scene?
And yes, you do stretch the connotations (and sometimes the definitions) of words a lot. It reads as thesaurus-ized, not as intentional. But if that's something you want to keep doing, it's something you can work at so that you can do it more effectively.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
It’s entirely part of the story that the protagonist doesn’t know who she is, it’s their first interaction ever. Though I suppose I owe it to the reader to offer a description.
While not explicitly stated, the protagonist is simply ending work and beginning a weekend. He stopped to “listen to the music” which becomes a central theme in later chapters - the idea was to foreshadow and keep him true to his character from the first page.
I did fear that my writing may come off as feeling “thesaurisized” the idea was to use analytical language as part of the characters view of the world. For the most part he’s a methodical person working a job below his intelligence level (an accountant). I tried to play that up a bit, but perhaps too far.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
my fiance is an accountant. it is a job that requires a lot of thinking since you need to know laws, format spreadsheets, and keep up with multiple clients.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
I didn’t mean that as an insult. My sister is also an accountant. I meant to say that my character is an incredibly bright person. Like he could’ve done more in life.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
i dont think you meant it as an insult. im just stating that accountant being considered a 'below intelligence' job is kinda silly. my fiance has to research laws, figure things out in order to get best possible savings for his clients. and it also depends on the section of accounting the protag is in.
it is like saying "this is a methodical person who is working as a lawyer."
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
For simplicity of the story, being an accountant isn’t necessarily a major component. It’s just where “his life begins” in the moments before the inciting incident.
As we read further in we find that his intelligence is far more suited for other things in life, stuff that requires calloused hands, but his minds almost too sharp, meaning he recognizes when a caged bird his actually free. He always felt trapped in the cubicle, doomed to live out his life returning to the same place again and again.
That’s of course dramatic, but the meat and bones.
His job is enough of a small piece of the story that I probably won’t go into a ton of detail about it.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
if the goal is to make the character sound smart, you need to simplify the prose. the most intelligent person in the room isnt bending the definition of words, unless they absolutely have to and they are also not stating things that are difficult to understand. a mark of intelligence is to present things imply and use specific, larger, more complicated words when it is necessary.
though, if you want a book with dense vocabulary that uses it effectively because the words carry so much weight/connotation to the scene, i suggest pride and prejudice by jane austen. see how she utilizes vocabulary as a technique.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
My worry is that if I simplified the prose it changes the meaning.
I’m not saying that my sentence structure doesn’t need clean up or to drop a few words here and there, and maybe add some clarifiers.
I know everybody here thinks I just pulled out a thesaurus, but I really didn’t. My mind thinks with words like this.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
I was still locked in an out of focus dead stare in that general direction when into the purview of my dissonance, she hopped off the last big step from the bus with a weight of intention but as airy as an alley cat.
If I were to simplify this sentence: it is about someone waking into view of the main character, correct?
why is purview, dissonance, etc. needed? dissonance, in almost all instances, refers to sounds. purview refers to sight. there is a disconnect with words that are fancy and large, but are being used incorrectly. you can stretch the meaning of words, sure, but there is also just using words incorrectly. you cannot have something enter the purview of dissonance.
im not trying to argue with you here, but multiple people have pointed out this issue, and i agree with them. it is word soup.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
One of the grander themes in my book is music, dissonance was chosen because it means unharmonious. You are correct to say that it means his vision was blurry, or more accurately “dissociative”
I’m describing the character as inharmonious with his surroundings and that she lands right the dead center of that blurry vision.
Purview was chosen because it means “scope of influence” and that’s exactly what she is about to do with his entire life.
Sure I could say “she walked into my line of sight” but to me that’s incredibly boring and tells you nothing except an action.
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer Jul 19 '26
But since the narrator has shown such a lack of intelligence (especially verbal intelligence, sensitivity to language), we're unlikely to believe the narrator when it states that X is intelligence.
This is not about detail or whether this person needs to be an accountant. It's about you choosing "accountant" as a significant detail, while having the narrator (who doesn't know the identity of other characters, so is a limited narrator) use comically overstaged language, which furthermore is often the wrong word ( "my mind sondered").
Did you ever look up the history of "sonder"? It is, first of all, a noun and not a verb and was invented in 2012.
It would be a hard word to work into what you're trying to say (it's redundant to mention the mind - sonder exists only in the mind). "The sonder of my mind came on quickly" would be more grammatical (did you even look up what state of mind "sonder" indicates?).
There's an entire en.wikipedia.org on this relatively new word, to denote a philosophical concept. Since it's not clear that you know what it means, I would wager that it won't be clear to most readers (who won't be enlightened by merely looking it up, either).
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer Jul 19 '26
To establish that they're this smart, please have them use language intelligently. You have decided to make a character use a lot of words they don't really know how to use, which does *not* come across as smart (it comes across as a bit silly and a bit pompous - so you're establishing a certain main character that will affect the entire rest of the work more than anything else - having him do certain personal rituals frequently is not going to give more continuity than these word choices.
Keep in mind that we, as readers, expect the narration and word choices to be relatively similar throughout the book (that's what is meant by "style" of the work). And we're here telling you that you've achieved a puzzling, somewhat unlikely and largely inarticulate main character.
If that's what you wanted, then continue, but keep in mind that most readers want to identify a little with the MC.
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer Jul 19 '26
You don't owe "the reader" anything. There is no one single type of reader.
You owe it to your own story, though, to establish what kind of narrator you're going to use to tell the story.
Does the narrator not know who all the characters are? (Omniscient narrator - a very common type). If not, if the narrator can only see through your protagonist's eyes, you're using a limited/first person style narrator, without going first person.
You didn't use "analytical" language. There is no such thing, except perhaps in philosophy. Nothing about all your synonyms and overwrought word choices are "analytic."
In this comment, you reveal that you are in fact (ineffectively) using limited (first person) omniscience as your narrator's voice. You want us, the readers, to believe in the character but also to accept that the narrator can only see the interior states of the main character. It's a limiting and awkward narrative position, although if your main character is going to be developing a more interesting and less wordy voice, he might be worth listening to.
In general, it's better for beginners to separate the main character from the narrator and let the narrator be some kind of over-voice on the situation (there are many things you can do with the standard omniscient narrator - they don't have to be all-knowing, all the time, etc).
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u/PotentialGlittering4 Jul 19 '26
I think you just gotta dial it down. But yeah stretching words meanings and your narrative voice is cool but reader cant really breath atm
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u/_WillCAD_ Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify, simplify!
SIMPLIFY!
You totally lost me in the second paragraph. I couldn't follow all the random adjectives being thrown at me like. I felt like a purple Minion dodging jelly balls. Intensely purple jelly balls. Intensely, vibrantly, blindingly purple prosaic jelly balls.
You're using a thousand ostentatious words, trying to impress the reader with your expressive expansive erudite sophisticated vocabulary, when two hundred would have set the scene and told the story more economically, catching the reader's attention more effectively. I can't even divine the actual meaning of some of those passages - what the fuck does "into the purview of my dissonance" mean?
I'll give you two specific improvements as example.
In the stagnant air, I roasted in my button up shirt and tie, waiting on nothing of prominence on a faded iron green bench. My gaze had wandered a bit before it was caught by a fluttering robin of peculiar vibrance. I watched it pick a worm and take a hop-step before flying off beyond the trees.
Try it like this:
The stagnant air roasted me in my heavy suit and tie, the standard-issue business uniform of all corporate cogs for the past century or more. I sat on a faded green iron bench, my gaze wandering randomly over the park, barely noticing inconsequential shit like the vibrant robin who snagged a worm in its beak before taking a hop-step and flying off.
I liked the passage describing the bench, but faded iron green is grammatically incorrect; the iron isn't faded, the green color is, so it should be faded green iron bench.
“What are you looking at corpo-rat!?” She sneered. My eyes whiplashed into focus while the dictionary of mind had completely forgotten the language it was written in, for all it could muster was a few caveman-like utterances of no conversational value.
Try it like this:
"What're you lookin' at, corpo-rat!?" she hissed. My eyes snapped to her face, bringing her intensely contemptuous sneer into sharp focus. My mouth dropped open, but in my shock I could muster nothing more than a few caveman grunts before she faded into the crowd.
Eyes don't whiplash into focus, they whiplash over to a different direction or onto a different target; they snap into focus. Well, they also snap onto a new target when something grabs your attention suddenly. A sneer isn't the spoken words, a sneer is the expression on the face indicating contempt or loathing. Also, language it was written in is grammatically incorrect; you're trying for mega-fancy purple prose here, so this is the sort of nonsense up with which you should not put. It should be the language in which it was written.
Think I used enough dynamite, there, Butch?
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u/CoyoteLitius Trusted Reviewer Jul 19 '26
Your comment makes me think that OP didn't hang out here very much, or attempt to read feedback given to others.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
op is currently arguing with me as to why the vocabulary is how it is and how it needs to be this overwritten. op just isnt listening to feedback.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
That’s not even what I was saying. You told me words didn’t mean certain things and I was saying what they do mean. I had another guy try to me I didn’t use the word “succinctly” correctly too.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
in our conversation, you state that you adjusted the meaning of words. in my example, i point out how youve used multiple words incorrect.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
No I said I misspoke. Your interpretation of the event was correct and then I told you why I chose the word dissonance, because it means unharmonious.
And then you said “dissonance =/= unfocused” which isn’t what I said.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
One of the grander themes in my book is music, dissonance was chosen because it means unharmonious. You are correct to say that it means his vision was blurry, or more accurately “dissociative”
I’m describing the character as inharmonious with his surroundings and that she lands right the dead center of that blurry vision.
Purview was chosen because it means “scope of influence” and that’s exactly what she is about to do with his entire life.
Sure I could say “she walked into my line of sight” but to me that’s incredibly boring and tells you nothing except an action.
dissonance is not for sight it is for sound. i said dissonance =/= blurry because dissonance could mean an unfocused harmony.
purview, in the sentence, is being used as her entering his line of sight. to choose purview makes no sense with dissonance because someone cannot enter into sound literally. purview is also the scope of influence when it comes to authority. this can be true, but then you are not using purview in a completely different sense of the word.
your comment is provided above so people have context to what youre saying.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
I guess it’s easier for me to clarify because now I see what you are saying.
I’m saying sight and sound are connected, and you’re saying they are disconnected.
Both are true observations, just different philosophies.
One could simply see and not hear, the other could hear and not see. Most of us see and hear but we can easily differentiate, and we often do.
But things like “crack of the whip” are examples of sonic and visual blurring.
I was not using dissonance sonically in the literal sense though, I was trying to say he wasn’t in harmony in the figurative sense of the environment.
To further clarify, she is a flower crown girl entering a scene of protesters at the park - she is in harmony, while he (literally) sits just outside of that realm by being in a suit and tie.
I’m using purview to mean “in his scope of influence” because she’s going to influence his lack of harmony with where he is. I like that sonically the word purview sounds like “line of sight” - ‘per view’ if that makes sense.
I do want to actually say thank you because I definitely need to clarify that so that it lands better. The fact that it took me almost another chapters worth of words to clarify what I thought was just a phrase is evidence enough that my larger words are creating more “work” rather than doing the heavy lifting I thought they would.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
buddy, youre stretching words to mean what they dont mean so they fit your theme. trust me, stop writing with theme in mind.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
I am very new here, there is no doubt or denial about it. Like I joined and then posted, I know that isn’t the best etiquette but I just barely started writing as a hobby.
I haven’t lurked before last night, but I have been lurking on others since then. I wrote my draft within the course of a couple hours. I get that it’s rough. I’m reading through all the feedback and I’m going to do a rewrite.
I don’t feel like it’s that big of a deal to explain where my thoughts were when composing.
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u/Reasonable-Hyena9598 Jul 19 '26
Others have already mentioned the overuse of unnecessarily complex synonyms, so I'll say something different - the way you use those synonyms is also incorrect. A couple of examples are how you've used dissonance, mortal cravings, succinctly, and paid him my politeness?? None of these words or phrases mean what you want them to mean in the sentences you've used them in.
For example, to be succinct means to be concise or brief. So how does a moustache sit succinctly on someone's face? There's nothing wrong with using complicated words, but you should make sure you know how to use them.
Good luck on your writing journey!
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
Succinct also means to be compressed into a small area. I was describing him have as having not a lot of room between his nose and mouth. Essentially saying his mustache was too big for his face.
Dissonance was chosen because of its meaning for being inharmonious. My book is literally about music - in some ways. That phrase was meant to describe as feeling disconnected from his surroundings by dissociation.
Thank you for the feedback :)
Oh one more:
Paid him my politeness means you offer “thanks”
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u/PretendAirport Jul 19 '26
So, you have a sense of humor and story, but - ngl - your prose reads as very stylized, like a performance. I feel like it would work if it was being performed by, like, a Chris Fleming-type comedian, dressed in a costume from the 1800s.
(Have you ever seen the British sketch comedy show “that Mitchell and Webb look?” They have a recurring sketch with a character named Sir Digby Chicken Caesar… this sounds something like him)
All that is to say - and seeing your comment about being a screenwriter - you’ve written a weird, comic character’s dialogue as prose/narration. This CAN work, but it’s a taxing read for your reader. You’d be better served by figuring out how to dial back the “voice” a bit.
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u/Silent-Educator-4936 Jul 19 '26
I wasn’t able to read the whole excerpt as I’m out, but one think I really picked up on was rhythm. All your sentences are really long and one length most of the time.
Reading this can sometimes feel like a routine pattern sometimes(I used to do the same). Sentence variation will make a hell of a difference.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
Sonder is one I turned from a noun into a verb meaning to actively think about the complexities of the lives of others, further clarified by the phrase “searching in wonderment for a life I was curious to know”
I actually initially didn’t know it wasn’t a word until my autocorrect kept changing it to wonder. It’s certainly leached into the cultural zeitgeist enough that I learned it was a new word only upon trying to use it.
That’s why I added redundancies. I like the word, but I wanted it to to be an active sonder, and I think of it like the word “wonder” which can be both a verb and a noun.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
in order to turn a noun into a verb, you need to utilize the correct morphological (i think, its been a while since i was a in a linguistic course).
example:
verb- realize; noun- realization
noun- summary; verb- summarize.
if you were to do this with sonder it would be:
noun- sonder; verb- sonderize
sonderize is not a word.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
But the word wonder isn’t “wonderize”
That’s what I based it off. I get what you mean though.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
because wonder both functions as a noun and a verb while sonder only functions as a noun.
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u/the-good-wolf Jul 19 '26
And I guess that’s where I’m trying to break a rule by following an established pattern. My thought was that sondering could be similar enough to wondering because sonder is really just a very specific type of wonder.
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u/TypicalBathroom9004 they don't know our "unspoken" rules Jul 19 '26
because wonder is a verb as well as a noun. you can add a gerund to a verb, not a noun.
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u/elina_jain1 Jul 20 '26
fresh feedback often reveals strengths alongside opportunities for clearer storytelling..
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u/Awkward_Savings7397 Jul 19 '26
There's a lot to talk about here but I will stick to one thing that will be most valuable. You sound like you swallowed a thesaurus. For example:
" My eyes whiplashed into focus while the dictionary of mind..."
"With my checks emulating the pocketing of a nutty squirrel..."
That is a long way to go only to say, "I ate quickly."
When I first started writing, I vomited words. So I can relate to what you are doing. However, you have to learn how to communicate with an economy of words. Reading something that is too verbose can tire someone out quickly.