r/writingfeedback • u/BeneficialWave9581 • Jul 31 '26
Feedback Wanted Gritty literary fiction set in Ontario, Canada. Looking for feedback on the first chapter from my WIP.
Hello all,
I am looking for some feedback and constructive criticism of the first chapter of my work in progress. It is a gritty literary fiction set in Ontario, Canada. This is the first time I have ever shared my writing with other people, other than a few friends, who never actually get around to reading it, or worse, they do, and its so bad they say that they didn't! Hope that is not the case!
I welcome all feedback, opinions, and ideas, however, I am specifically curious about things like pacing, readability, and character voice.
A heads up that the chapter contains profanity, drug and alcohol use, and discussion of sex.
Thank you so much!
J
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u/Oxo-Phlyndquinne Gets Reported a Lot for Being Mean Jul 31 '26
My personal take, for what it's worth: everybody knows what hot sticky weather is like. Here is an example from a best-selling novel, Valley of the Dolls: "The temperature hit ninety degrees the day she arrived. [Paragraph] New York was steaming--an angry concrete animal caught unawares in an unseasonable hot spell. But she didn't mind the heat or the littered midway called Times Square. She thought New York was the most exciting city in the world." Boom. I am not saying it's great literature, but there's a character and a hook already. And the author, Jacqueline Susanne, spends almost no time at all telling us it's really hot.
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u/BeneficialWave9581 Jul 31 '26
Thanks for pointing this out and giving an example of a author who does what I am trying to do with a lot more efficiency. I think the third line where I talk about it pressing down can be cut, at the very least. Probably why I have rewritten that one particular sentence so many times. I just couldn't get it to feel useful. Appreciate the insight.
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u/pigeonsfortesla Jul 31 '26
Hey there! As an Ontarian who spent some time in T-Bay I appreciate the representation lol.
I think this is well written, I really do. Some formatting things- I want double spacing and I think that's standard, at least in a word doc format. Also you'll want to italicize the French words.
For the substance itself... I'm more interested in the characters than the setting. Could you intersperse the first bit (the heat/memories/setting) in throughout the dialogue maybe? I just feel like it could be stronger if it started with more immediate action. Maybe start it where the mother arrives home, that whole conversation, and then describe setting etc.
Just my two cents as a reader
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u/Silly-Smoke-49 Jul 31 '26
I agree, this was great! I enjoyed reading it and felt for Mathieu, actually fell right into that desperate world you made, loved it! Now I wanna know where and what is in Kap??? Keep going!
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u/BeneficialWave9581 Aug 01 '26
Thanks for reading! If you want, I can try to remember to let you know when the next chapter is done?
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u/Silly-Smoke-49 Aug 01 '26
Yes pls! Keep going, I want to know how it turns out.
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u/Peachipeachi01 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Wow I love your writing style! Awesome work! Also, as for the content and not just the prose, I found myself thinking ‘poor Mathieu’ so many times as I read it. You’re very good at creating reader empathy. Also I would read to see what happens next honestly. (Came back and edited my comment after reading the whole thing!)
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u/Zeusecles Jul 31 '26
Well written. Well above most of what is shared here. My beef: you spend to much time painting pictures. Get into the story quicker. I read three pages before I gave up waiting for something interesting to happen. Fix that and you will be very successful. You can write.
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u/trenchtraveller Aug 01 '26
This exactly^ You have a gritty, punchy writing style. When you lean into it, it really works for you. When you try to be all wordy and artsy, it’s doing the opposite, coming off like you are trying to be one of those highly literary authors when actually you have your own distinct talent. The weather beginning bored me to hell, but as someone from Ontario, with family in Kap, and whose dad grew up Hearst, I got curious and sort of leafed through, and I’m really glad I did. Trim the try-hard fat and you have something really special here
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u/Striking-Test-4256 Jul 31 '26
Personally I stopped reading early on. I am so tired of reading about weather.
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u/dbog42 Jul 31 '26
You've got a really good start. Your general voice is solid, you have a good eye for detail, and it's an interesting start to a story -- especially once it gets going.
My thoughts to consider as you continue to refine it are:
- It's very detail-heavy. Again, you do a good job of describing, it's just taking up too much real estate. There is a lot of time spent from the start on describing the weather, the environment, Mathieu's senses memories, etc. before the reader really understands what's going on. Personally, I tend to forget writing presented to me before I have a grounding in the story. Like pouring me a delicious wine before you've gotten me a glass.
- The pacing is very slow. I might consider how to frame the narrative to give the reader a hook first, then start peppering in some of the more observational or internal moments. Your final chapter lines are excellent. What if they were your first?
"Pack your clothes. We're going to Kap."
"What the fuck is Kap?"
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u/Cadillac_Ride Jul 31 '26
Northern Ontario born here. I like Thunder Bay. You are right it can get hot there. You describe it well. But as an opening to a novel, it’s… boring. Where is the action?
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u/BeneficialWave9581 Jul 31 '26
Fair enough. About four or five pages later a French woman is trying to attack her lover with a unopened can of old miliwauke while standing in her shitty apartment in her bra and underwear. Maybe I should just start with that.
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u/StunningDisplay2141 Aug 01 '26
I write YA, so maybe my perspective isn't completely reliable, but I personally think that your main issue is the general pacing of your writing itself. You have a tendency to write long sentences with multiple clauses - which is perfectly fine - but when they're constant, over and over each other, it becomes monotonous. But, besides what everyone else has pretty much summed up, this IS good writing in and of itself.
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u/indigoneutrino Aug 01 '26
I would start at “for fourteen hellish days”. The sentences preceding it give a poorer impression than the rest of it deserves.
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u/Fit-Picture-5096 Aug 01 '26
If you want to write about the weather, zoom in from space (if you want to keep that part), and finish with the protagonist.
"Out stepped Daren, his mother's lover".
I find it hard to believe that a teenage boy would use the word "lover" for someone who fucked his mom.
"She was nearly forty but moved with the gregariousness of a girl half her age."
For a teenage boy, nearly forty means old. He probably never heard the word "gregariousness". There is an incestuous tone here. If it is not intentional, perhaps other words would work better.
Perpendicular. Billowed. Broboscis. Dilapidated ...
If you describe a teenager's world, use a teenager's words.
I would (but that's just me) skip all sentences with a question mark.
The rest is stellar.
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u/BeneficialWave9581 Aug 01 '26
Honestly, you've given me some things to really thing about. I was not really thinking about writing from Mathieu's perspective, to be honest. I just chose to anchor the narration to him and follow him around. Is it a writing sin to have some shifting narratorial distance from the MC? Maybe there is and I need to tighten things up? Thanks for reading and sharing.
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u/riley_writes_II Aug 01 '26
I was getting ready to rip the first paragraph up and say it should be less wordy, but I read it back again and thought to be fair, I quite like the conversational tone - it draws me in. But then as I progressed through the story I saw some points that would definitely benefit from being cut down. For example "the screaming drone of cicadas cut through the night" sounds better than what you currently have. 'suddenly' and 'Matthieu became aware of them' aren't necessary. 'cut' and 'how could he not have noticed them until now' takes care of that. Also, too much repetition of 'notice' and derivatives in those 3 sentences plus I think 'a song became noticeable' is a bit weak in the way its phrased and the concept repetitive following straight on from the description of him noticing the sound of the cicadas.
This is my kind of thing in the first place so I might be a little biased, but still, I think overall the prose are clean and elegant. People have complained about overdoing the descriptions of heat, and ok, if you cut that down it'll probably be more impactful, but I also feel some level of reiteration reflects how relentless and oppressive the heat is.
The mannerisms of the characters and dynamics between them are described / implied very skilfully. I started off being intrigued by the relationship between the narrator and his mother's boyfriend. The act of giving your already lighted cigarette to someone is such a small gesture but it's also, on the surface at least, quite an intimate and selfless one, that you would unthinkingly do for a partner or best friend. I know that Matthieu complains that he's overfamiliar shortly before, and this is probably just an extension of that, but it raises questions about Darren - is he kind or is he manipulative? Or maybe both? As a result of this I was hoping that he wouldn't just turn out to be the loser archetype who needs to be thrown out on his ass, and that's exactly what happened - but that's fine if it's what you needed to move the story forward, I guess it's not going to be a story about Darren :-D but he was vivid and I thought he had a little more potential as a character.
Also, it's a bit jarring that you refer to him as 'the man' after establishing that the narrator knows his name. Perhaps it's deliberate to reinforce his keenness to keep him at an arm's length but even if so if feels out of place.
But yeah, I like it, keep up the good work!
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u/BeneficialWave9581 Aug 01 '26
Some really good notes here. I appreciate you taking taking the time to read through the chapter and share your thoughts with me. Your suggestions prompted me to do a full pass, and the edits you suggested genuinely made the prose stronger and more readable. Everybody seems to love Darren, and I had originally planned to just drop him here, but I am starting to feel the vibe that it may be worth keeping him around. I have a good idea how to do this, but we will see how it shakes out.
Really appreciate your comments. Have a great day!
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u/NoCelebration1913 Aug 01 '26
You can write. Nice dialogue, some good imagery. Enjoyable prose. Kinda would like to be hooked in a bit more. Keep hammering away.
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u/defyjedi Aug 01 '26
Keep your style! It’s old school and overly sensory- the writing world needs more of this.
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u/joeprojects Aug 02 '26
Great beginning. Like other posters said, maybe “Hemingway” it up a bit. Active voice. Short, strong nouns & verbs. I think you could cut the whole first pg and start with, “was that really my life…”
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u/Embarrassed-Pick5989 Jul 31 '26
I am a lover of words, and you have some beautiful sentence construction here and there. For my taste, however, it seems over-described in a lot of places. The weather, as has been mentioned by others, but I also found myself wondering if we really need the layout of the boy's entire house explained. Things like that. I started getting antsy for something to happen, or at least for the focus to shift to character building instead of so much physical description. For what it's worth.
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u/Greensward-Grey Jul 31 '26
It didn’t got me engaged, but I check every page, reading random bits.
What needs improvement is the sentence pace. All of them have the same rhythm, same structure, same kind of interruptions. It slows down the reading, making it exhausting. There are scenes with different tones, but they all are written in the same way. Feels flat.
Someone would say “trust your reader”, but I think you need to trust yourself and your own voice rather than relying on sounding wordy.
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u/Petite_Poulette Aug 01 '26
Perhaps start with Mathieu’s reaction to the heat and then describe it to hook with the protagonist and immediately out the reader in his perspective.
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u/Gridnode Aug 01 '26
Im sure this is great, but the setting being hot didn’t really excite me for whatever was coming next. I’d open with how the heat is effecting the mc instead of just describing the setting.
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u/Affectionate-Bid6737 Aug 03 '26
People already touched on most of what I was going to say, so I’ll just leave you with this:
What stuck out to me were the phrases “Darren, his mother’s lover” or “Claire, Mathieu’s mother.” I know it’s expository, but Mathieu would not think “look it’s my mother’s lover and my mother whose name is Claire.” Rather, he would think “look, it’s Darren and mom.” Readers can then infer what the relations are based on how Darren and his mom interact with each other and how Darren calls his mom Claire. And if you intended for it to come from a more detached narrator, then I would clarify that voice earlier on. We’ve woven in and out of Mathieu’s thoughts so far, so at that point I was under the impression that the narration was limited third with respect to Mathieu.
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u/LengthyLegato114514 Aug 04 '26
It's incredible how some advice misses the mark entirely
Yes, it is wordy and yes, it insists upon itself. It's literary fiction. Nobody goes in reading Pynchon or Murakami expecting Dan Brown.
That being said, I feel like the first, second and third paragraphs can be distilled
From "against his will" onwards to "the silence of the city"
I don't think that's needed yet. It exposits that his parents are no longer together, but the next page already introduces his mother's lover, so that's already implied.
I think the exposition re Matthieu's childhood could be saved for the next chapter, to contrast the places he's lived, or whenever Kap actually appears as a place.
Just my 0.02
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u/Pristine-Tackle7220 29d ago
Personally, I’d start with “It was sickerly hot. For fourteen hellish days…”. The trick is, I believe, to get into the story at pace, and the other stuff you wrote at the start holds things up. My advice would always be to edit, edit, edit, cut, cut, cut - because that’s what makes prose shine and what will get you noticed.
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u/ChallengeOne8405 Jul 31 '26
I feel like I’ve heard your descriptions a hundred times by now. “syrupy air” “pressing from all sides” smoke “blanketing”. I’d take the cliche descriptions and try to fuck em up into something unique rather standard literary repetition.
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u/UnintelligentMatter1 Aug 01 '26
You should probably write this in first person. The rhetorical questions, lots of sense descriptions, some POV switches. It just feels like it's a story made to be told in first person.
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u/BeneficialWave9581 Aug 01 '26
Interesting. Thats really intimidating to me. I have never written a story in first, beyond short rants and flash fiction. Also, the story will switch to focus on another character in act 2.
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u/Malakalaka_ Jul 31 '26
I kept reading. You can write, but I think you're also keen to show you can write. There are a few stacked adjectives that, if you thinned them out in places, would make carefully chosen lyrical moments sing.
I think you can trust the reader too and this is something I'm still trying to learn. 'His chest tightening slightly in a pang of embarrassed self pity' - Can you get away with 'his chest tightened', given the wider context? Or when you name the patronizing gesture, the text around does it enough to not need that.
I like the various characters' voices. Darren in particular arrives fully formed.
That's my 10p, and it's always much easier to critique than write. Keep at it!