Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25980873-20160718233750/@comment-25226524-20160729201745

I'm sorry, my friend, but I'll be honest and tell you I stopped reading rather quickly. Your writing isn't terrible, but it is fairly dry. A lot of the words don't feel natural. A couple examples are the first word of these phrases: "deactivated the alarm" and "proceeded to the fridge". Those just sound off. Somewhat robotic. The big issue is that I don't feel like I need to know anything you're telling me, and what you're telling me all sounds very familiar. I'm not saying your story itself is familiar, but a lot of what is said or described feels unoriginal. It's the way it's worded. This is where I stopped reading:

“We have a bright future ahead of us. You know, I’ve been thinking, this house is pretty large, and we have some unused bedrooms. I was thinking of filling them with, I don’t know, two, maybe three kids?”

That first sentence made me pick up a pillow and smash my face into it, and the next two sentences didn't do much to console me. No one would speak that first line. If they did, I would punch them. And the other two sentences are just exactly what I would expect him to say. I'll tell you the same thing I've told a couple people recently: you really need to cut yourself free from the shit you've had beaten into your brain your whole life by bad shows and films. It happens on a subconscious level, but you have to learn to guard against it.

I want to finish by telling you please don't feel bad. Some of my writing has this exact same problem, and I don't try to fix it because I get too pissed when I start reading it. I don't know how your story plays out, but it needs a chainsaw taken to what I read. It doesn't all have to go, but it needs drastically compressed. Good luck.