Another nervous regular saying 'please would you look at these paragraphs for me'

[Robespierre]

I've namechanged as very unsure of myself. I have dug out a short story that I wrote a few years ago and I am currently rewriting it.

It would be great if any of you would look at these opening paragraphs and give me some perspective. Frankly, but kindly if possible.

Paul Ryan sat very still in a plastic-upholstered chair pushed against the wall of the ward dayroom. His narrow face was slack with tiredness but his eyes were wide open. He stared at the floor. It was late morning, so he and the nurse were the only people in the room. The other patients were attending classes or occupational therapy.

He stood up and pushed his hands into his hair. The nurse stood up too and followed Paul as he walked across the room.

?Just sit down,? said the nurse. ?Relax.?

Paul didn?t move. After a few moments the nurse, whose name was Rob, sat down in the chair closest to him.

?Why do you have to stay so close?? Paul asked him.

?We need to make sure you don?t harm yourself,? Rob replied.

How could I, here?? Paul looked at the nurse?s face, searching for possibilities. Smash a window, smash the television screen. But how long would it be before the nurse summoned some team to restrain him? He shrank from the thought of being manhandled. It hadn?t happened at the police station. He hadn?t given them cause, and anyway the police gave the impression they could hardly bear to touch him.

?People find ways,? said Rob.

He scanned Rob?s words for signs of compassion or contempt. He doubted that anyone here wanted to help him. But he supposed that they wanted to keep him safe. So that he could be punished. The psychiatrist he had just seen had said that ?the therapeutic objective was to secure Paul?s fitness to plead?.

At the moment, apparently, he was too crazy to go into a court and say that he was guilty. But it was being guilty that had made him fall apart. They could call him mentally ill, but to Paul it would be crazy to sit quietly in court while everyone went over the details of what he had done.

They wanted to calm him down. Perhaps that wouldn?t be so very hard, given a few weeks. He was already beginning to be exhausted by the intensity of behaviour that was required to acknowledge his guilt. And anyway, nothing he did was enough. He could slice off all his flesh an inch at a time without coming close. So why do anything? He could feel himself subsiding into a mesmerised static horror, which he supposed would last for the rest of his life.

His behaviour was getting calmer. But on the inside things were exactly the same now as they had been for every second of the last week. From the moment that he killed Sally Owen by beating her about the head with his fists, his mind had been filled with images of the crime. After it happened, her murder filled his head even more frequently, vividly, and engrossingly than the fantasy of attacking her had done for months before the event. He had thought that the images of his fantasy were as powerful as any could be, that they left him no choice but to rape her. But they were faint compared with the images of his remorse.

[crappypants]

I would certainly want to know what happens next.

[Heated]

You are a good writer. Normally I would say consider using some fronted adverbials, but this is a stark, staccato kind of writing that matches his inner turmoil, so not needed here. I have been deliberately nit-picky so please don't take offence, the bits in brackets are posed as genuine questions.

Paul Ryan sat very still in a plastic-upholstered (can plastic be upholstered? needs more apt adj) chair pushed against the wall of the ward dayroom. His narrow face was slack with tiredness but his eyes were wide open. He stared at the floor. It was late morning, so he and the nurse were the only people in the room. The other patients were attending classes or occupational therapy.

He stood up and pushed his hands into his hair. The nurse stood up too and followed Paul as he walked across the room.

?Just sit down,? said the nurse. ?Relax.?

Paul didn?t move. After a few moments the nurse, whose name was Rob,(clunky addition, does he need a name?Do you intend to humanize Rob? If yes, maybe Paul gets his name from the nametag thingy (I?m so articulate!)) sat down in the chair closest to him.

?Why do you have to stay so close?? Paul asked him.

?We need to make sure you don?t harm yourself,? Rob replied.

How could I, here?? Paul looked at the nurse?s face, searching for possibilities. Smash a window, smash the television screen. But how long would it be before the nurse summoned some team to restrain him? He shrank from the thought of being manhandled. It hadn?t happened at the police station. He hadn?t given them cause, and anyway the police gave the impression they could hardly bear to touch him.

?People find ways,? said Rob.

He scanned Rob?s words for signs of compassion or contempt. He doubted that anyone here wanted to help him. But he supposed that they wanted to keep him safe. So that he could be punished. The psychiatrist he had just seen had said that ?the therapeutic objective was to secure Paul?s fitness to plead?.

At the moment, apparently, he was too crazy to go into a court and say that he was guilty. But it was being guilty that had made him fall apart. They could call him mentally ill, but to Paul it would be crazy to sit quietly in court while everyone went over the details of what he had done.

They wanted to calm him down. Perhaps that wouldn?t be so very hard, given a few weeks. He was already beginning to be exhausted by the intensity of behaviour that was required to acknowledge his guilt. And anyway, nothing he did was enough. He could slice off all his flesh an inch at a time without coming close. So why do anything? He could feel himself subsiding into a mesmerised static horror(omit the ?a??), which he supposed would last for the rest of his life.(last 9 words a bit glib?)

His behaviour was getting calmer. But on the inside things were exactly the same now as they had been for every second of the last week. From the moment that he killed Sally Owen by beating her about the head with his fists, his mind had been filled with images of the crime. After it happened, her murder filled his head even more frequently, vividly, and engrossingly than the fantasy of attacking her had done for months before the event. He had thought that the images of his fantasy were as powerful as any could be, that they left him no choice but to rape her. But they were faint compared with the images of his remorse. (where are you going with this idea?)

[Robespierre]

Thank you crappypants. That is very good to know.

And thanks very much Heated, for your detailed response. It is very kind of you.

You are spot on about the clunky addition of name. That is exactly the kind of technical issue that I flounder with, approaching fiction for the first time. Name tag idea a good one. Will also revise chair!

Glib bit: Yes, I am terrified of glibness. It seems to spew out of me so readily. I could just delete that bit. The nice thing about rewriting is that the delete key does so much of the work for me.

Where am I going with it? Mostly I want it to be a straight story of this man's time in hospital.The original impetus was my first hearing of the news that the school caretaker arrested (and later convicted) for the murder of two schoolgirls was sent to a secure hospital shortly after his arrest. Later it turned out that he was possibly not having a breakdown, but I was interested in someone who actually had a breakdown as a result of his guilt.

There is another big element to the story though, which I'm a bit about setting down atm, as it might be utter crap.

[Robespierre]

And I'm ashamed to say that I don't know what a fronted adverbial is. Can you say?

[NotQuiteCockney]

Ok, I've not read the thread, other than the OP, to keep my points fair. Here's my commented version (comments in []s.):

Paul Ryan sat very still in a plastic-upholstered chair pushed [back? or is he facing the wall?] against the wall of the ward dayroom. His narrow face was slack with tiredness but his eyes were wide open. [nice, concrete] He stared at the floor. It was late morning, so he and the nurse were the only people in the room. The other patients were attending classes or occupational therapy. [leave out last sentence? Implied?]

He stood up and pushed his hands into his hair. The nurse stood up too and followed Paul as he walked across the room.

?Just sit down,? said the nurse. ?Relax.?

Paul didn?t move. After a few moments the nurse, whose name was Rob [does Paul know this? why? Maybe 'whose name tag said Rob'? 'whose name was Rob' is a bit strange-sounding], sat down in the chair closest to him.

?Why do you have to stay so close?? Paul asked him.

?We need to make sure you don?t harm yourself,? Rob replied.

[missing open quote]How could I, here?? Paul looked at the nurse?s face, searching for possibilities. Smash a window, smash the television screen. But how long would it be before the nurse summoned some team to restrain him? He shrank from the thought of being manhandled. It hadn?t happened at the police station. He hadn?t given them cause, and anyway the police gave the impression they could hardly bear to touch him. [nice, concrete]

?People find ways,? said Rob.

He scanned Rob?s words for signs of compassion or contempt. He doubted that anyone here wanted to help him. But he supposed that they wanted to keep him safe. So that he could be punished. The psychiatrist he had just seen had said that ?the therapeutic objective was to secure Paul?s fitness to plead?. [nice details, nice sense of what's in his head]

At the moment, apparently, he was too crazy to go into a court and say that he was guilty. But it was being guilty that had made him fall apart. They could call him mentally ill, but to Paul it would be crazy to sit quietly in court while everyone went over the details of what he had done. [maybe a bit too much telling here? Particularly the last sentence?]

They wanted to calm him down. Perhaps that wouldn?t be so very hard, given a few weeks. He was already beginning to be exhausted by the intensity of behaviour that was required to acknowledge his guilt. [why does he need to behave intensely to acknowledge his guilt? huh?] And anyway, nothing he did was enough. He could slice off all his flesh an inch at a time without coming close. So why do anything? He could feel himself subsiding into a mesmerised static horror, which he supposed would last for the rest of his life. [nice last sentence. The rest is a bit overwrought]

His behaviour was getting calmer. But on the inside things were exactly the same now as they had been for every second of the last week. From the moment that he killed Sally Owen by beating her about the head with his fists, his mind had been filled with images of the crime. [woah! Maybe hold this back a bit longer? Or reveal it in a conversation, not this way? Wanting to know what he did gives us tension, hold onto the tension.] After it happened, her murder filled his head even more frequently, vividly, and engrossingly than the fantasy of attacking her had done for months before the event. He had thought that the images of his fantasy were as powerful as any could be, that they left him no choice but to rape her. [did he rape her before killing her? Or what?] But they were faint compared with the images of his remorse.

[Ok, you have some interesting stuff here, but I'd like more showing and less telling (as usual!). Hold onto the tension of the reader not knowing what he did. I'm not 100% sure about your tense/POV choices here. Maybe 1st person present would work better? I'd reveal the stuff about how Paul is feeling through conversation, or internal monologue (if you write in 1st person?) not through a disembodied narrator telling us things.]

Will read thread now.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Ok, fronted adverbial is (from my googling) starting a sentence with "Where" or "How" or whatever? Or maybe other adverbs? (But everyone officially Hates Adverbs, at least the -ly ones, right?) So I'm not sure where Robespierre was going with that.

Isn't the crime part of the breakdown, really? If it's a rape-murder sort of deal. If the crime is an accident (runs someone over?) then you can have the guilt as the start of the breakdown, I guess ...

[NotQuiteCockney]

I mean, where Heated was going with that, rather.

[Heated]

Can start a sentence with fronted adverbs and adjectives, although fronted adverbs are more common e.g. "Under the spreading chestnut tree lay a dead dog." They are mainly used for narrative continuity & to vary sentence structure. Such sentences are usually planned, it's a literary rather than spoken construction, which is why it's not appropriate for Paul's thoughts, especially given their disjointed nature.

I should have been clearer with my last comment re "where are you going with this?" -(I do want to know what happens next, it what makes it a good piece of writing) but what I meant was, where are you going with the idea that the remorse for the rape was stronger than the images from his fantasy. That suggests regret for what he has done - not such a monster(?) - and I wondered where that idea was taking you?

But I do like the reader sharing the thoughts of such a character - it's so uncomfortable! Browning does it so well in his murderous 'Porphyria's Lover' as does Duffy in that poem now banned from the GCSE anthology 'Education for Leisure'

[Threadworrm]

Heated, an answer your question 'where are you going with the strong sense of remorse:

I do want remorse, and a rather bleak concept of redemption, to be utterly at the centre of this story. It is what preoccupies me the most (here and in very many stories that I like).

And NQC, I would love to write the story from an entirely 'outer' perspective, to reveal Paul entirely from his behaviour and speech. But I don't think I have the skill to make such a psychologically concerned piece of writing entirely outer.

It would certainly be an interesting exercise.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Oh, UCM, is that you?

More usefully, no, I don't think you could do this story from just an outer perspective - but if you want to give inner thoughts, why not write in the 1st person? Then you can use his voice, which makes sharing his (probably often inaccurate?) self-perceptions more interesting.

[Robespierre]

There is a big portion of the story which is about another patient, so first person no good unless I chop and change, which is prob too ambitious.

Agree so strongly about showing not saying and that is very hard to get right.

Anyway, thanks everyone for the feedback. At least no-one said sheesh what crap. And I got some v useful pointers. Thank you very much.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Fair enough re: the other patient. Are you moving the POV, clearly, with sections, so it's a moving 3rd person limited? Or is it a 3rd person omniscient?

You could move some of the insight into conversations - can he have some therapy, group or otherwise? Also, maybe give out the insights we are told in drips and drabs. Little flashes of insight about what he's thinking, between things he says and does?

[Robespierre]

It is a third person narrative which has access to the inside of Paul's mind (access which I think that I should aim in the rewritng to rely on as little as possible, largely because of the 'show not say' imperative), but which has no access to the interior of other characters, who will only be present in the story when they are viewed by Paul, and who will be largely revealed in dialogue.

Sensible?

(Evylyn Waugh is the practitioner I admire of the entirely outer perspective on central characters. He uses it to convey nihilism I think.)

[brokenrecord]

I like it, but I would read more of it if it was a thriller with twists rather than a study in remorse. My taste only, but I can only cope with so much introspective stuff without a strong narrative. Also, I can see what people mean about the upholstered chair, but descriptive stuff like that would be what appealed to me rather than his state of mind.

[Robespierre]

Yes, the narrative has to come first doesn't it.

[NotQuiteCockney]

Fair enough, makes sense on the POV.

[PtolemysMummy]

Robespierre. Have you read Novel With Cocaine?

[Robespierre]

No. I've just googled it, but I didn't know about it before. Could you say why you mention it?

[PtolemysMummy]

Ah. Because iirc it deals a bit with the state of inertia. Which is I think what your chap is in, isn't he? I don't think remorse is easily arrived at.

[PtolemysMummy]

It's a lovely bit of writing by the way. I'm very .

[Robespierre]

V. interesting point about remorse, Ptolemy. Hmm, have to think about that. Further in the story, he feels genuine remorse just for a few seconds, when he actually cares about his victim. After that, his guilt is more self-obsessed, uninterested in her. Perhaps that shouldn't be called remorse then. I had thought of remorse as being just an intense form of regret -- not as morally sophisticated as, say, repentance.

I will read the story you recommend, anyway.