This is part of a story I've been working on. I just want some feedback on the style of writing, whether you like it/dislike it/are indifferent to it/etc. It's unedited, I just grabbed a big chunk of it, so excuse any grammar and spelling issues. Please be honest. Thanks.

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My Dad was a drug dealer. When I say he was a drug dealer, he wasn't a street dealer, don't worry. He was a government endorsed dealer. A government endorsed, highly paid, drug dealer. Sure, he didn't actually distribute the drugs, he just gave his clients the name of what they needed on a piece of paper and sent them to his buddy down the street to buy the drugs, but that was just so that both he and his buddy could make a living off of the deals. He'd sit in his high-backed chair all day and his clients would come to him and tell him what was wrong and ask him for drugs to take away the symptoms.

When I say he was a drug dealer, I mean he was a doctor.

I don't know how anyone could sit through medical school and not make the comparison. I guess they fill your brain with so much science that you forget that your job is essentially writing out lines like you did in grade two. The system seems to work though. The patient is ecstatic that this pill makes all their pain go away, but then their prescription runs out, so they go back to the doctor. The doctor gets paid, the pharmacist gets paid, the patient is ecstatic. They could make a killing off junkies.

My best friend from high-school was a drug dealer. When I say he was a drug dealer, I mean he was a drug dealer. But he had a plan. We used to watch motivational speakers at our school, and they'd come and tell us how terrible their lives were, and then they found the light or their salvation, or got motivated to make something of themselves. They were never well-adjusted in the beginning. You won't find any successful motivational speakers who tell you about how they were raised in a family with a Mum and a Dad who weren't on drugs and didn't abuse them, or who didn't start shooting H at the age of 8. Every motivational speaker was a fuckup.

My best friend from high-school thought that being a motivational speaker would be a free ride. All you have to do is talk to students who don't listen. So he got into dealing drugs, he had it all mapped out. Two years of dealing and doing drugs, and then he'd clean himself up and get a job talking about how Jesus Christ had saved him. Somewhere along the line, two years turned into three years, three years turned into five and five turned into me standing at his funeral and not really minding as his coffin was lowered into the dirt. His parents cried, my parents cried, but probably only because they were scared I would be a junkie just like him. I packed his coffin with his drugs, like the Egyptians did, in the hope that maybe he could use them in the afterlife. I didn't want them anyway. If I needed drugs all I had to do was ask my Dad.

I know it's bad that I didn't care that my friend was dead. I know it's bad that I don't love my parents. Everyone seems to think it's such a heinous crime not to love people, just because they raised you. Whether I like them as people or not has nothing to do with whether they raised me. I've never really cared whether anyone lives or dies. I know it's bad, but that's just the way I don't feel.

Conversations with my Dad and my dead friend were much the same. My Dad would see me wince as I swallowed some food and try to put me on antibiotics, hemostatics and antiestrogens.

“I can make the pain go away, son.”

My dead friend would see me fail a test that I'd studied hard for and try to put me on opiates, amphetamines or anesthetics.

“I can make the pain go away, man.”

They were both pushers, one just had an education.

When my dead friend died, my Dad gave me a talk about doing drugs. He told me that it was a bad scene and that if I was addicted to drugs to come to him and he could prescribe me something to help get off drugs. He just wanted another customer. He told me about all the dangers of doing drugs, and took a long swig from his coffee. He told me about all the dangers of doing drugs, and added another spoon of sugar to his coffee. He told me about all the dangers of doing drugs as he mentally wrote me a prescription and flicked on the T.V.

Before she worked at the kebab shop Em was a masseur. When I say she was a masseur I mean she was a prostitute. She worked at a law firm and gave the lawyers hand jobs in their lunch breaks. They fired her when they found out that she didn't have any qualification to perform massage therapy. It didn't matter that she'd never actually given a massage to anyone at the firm. Maybe if she went to university and got her Advanced Diploma of Lunch-Time Hand Jobs they'd re-hire her, but she was too lazy for that and the university wouldn't count her years of experience towards her degree so she went to work at the kebab shop. She still got to handle meat though, so I'm sure she was just as happy.

Andy and I used to go down to the kebab shop at about three in the afternoon and hang around for what Andy called the “after school special” when schoolgirls would come in and Andy would leer at them all, even the fat ones. It didn't seem to matter whether they were attractive or not to Andy, as long as they were in a school uniform and they were female. They loved it though, most of them would overhear him talking to me about them and they'd bend over a bit or lift their skirts so Andy could stare at a bit more of their legs. Sometimes things were awkward. Andy seemed as oblivious to whether they were attractive as he was to whether their parents were standing right next to them. He was the textbook definition of subtle.

Andy knew a lot about girls. Andy knew a lot in general, but I don't know how much of it was true. With girls, he knew what he was talking about. Girls wanted Andy. Not that girls actually wanted Andy but they were attracted to what he projected. He knew exactly how to lie to get the best results. He knew so much about how to get girls, and I guess that's why he spent a lot of his time in strip clubs and brothels.

My Mum was unemployed. When I say she was unemployed I mean she was a housewife. She knew a lot about girls too. She used to give me bits of advice like “Girls like guys with a sensitive side, who show their emotion and are in touch with their feminine side.” I used to believe this until experience showed me that it was clearly not the case. Andy's advice was better. “Girls like guys who they can show off to their friends, guys who can bang them harder and better than anyone else and even guys who pretend they can.” Whether his advice was entirely correct or not didn't really matter, I'd worked out that mostly people are wrong all of the time anyway, but occasionally they say something semi-intelligent. What I gleaned from Andy's authoritative comment was that it didn't matter who you were to most people, it mattered who you pretended to be. I'm sure Mum had the best intentions, but unless you want to get forty year old women wet then I wouldn't bother with being sensitive.

I see a bright future for you...

http://www.totse.com/community/images/icons/icon14.gif

Thanks guys. Any constructive criticism? Or just criticism if you really think it sucks. Do you reckon it needs more work? Would you read a book that was written in that sort of style, with whatever impression you get of the protagonist?

I've written a bit more than this, in the same sort of style and tone, so I'm just curious as to what people actually think of it.

Thanks a lot though.

a man is a masseur.
a woman is a masseuse.

The style is awesome. Reminds me of The Catcher in the Rye (favourite book so probably why I like your style so much). Also, the anti-stereotypes like when you say "unemployed" we all have this image in our head...
Yeah man, I like it. Could you post more of your stuff?

The style is awesome. Reminds me of The Catcher in the Rye (favourite book so probably why I like your style so much). Also, the anti-stereotypes like when you say "unemployed" we all have this image in our head...
Yeah man, I like it. Could you post more of your stuff?

Yes. Yes I can. I've never read Catcher in the Rye so that's interesting, I'll have to pick up a copy. Thanks a lot for the feedback, it's good to hear. I mean, while I enjoy reading my own stuff I have no idea what other people really think of it.

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Every time I saw my parents I saw their grip on life becoming that much more skeletal. Their faces and hands were withering and it wouldn't be long before their flesh eroded to the point where they could no longer maintain their clutch on the living world. They had a carer who they imported from somewhere foreign to look after them. He used to make me feel guilty every time I visited. He told me that I should be the one taking care of them, and that they shouldn't have to pay someone to do what a son should rightfully do. I asked him where his parents were then, if he was such an angel. He told me they were dead and I told him he was lucky.

He never bothered me about it again.

It wasn't that I wanted my parents dead. But if they were going to slowly drift into death then I'd rather they hurry up instead of wasting everyone else's time. It was like one long infomercial that just didn't end. You get up, get snacks, go to the toilet, get some more snacks, go back to the TV and it's still on. So you leave the house, decide to get out for a while and go get the paper, walk the dog, whatever. When you come back two hours later it's still on. Every day when you turn on the TV, they're there, trying to sell you life insurance. You give up on TV and live your life like it's not there, until one day when you want to buy life insurance so you turn on the TV to get the number but the ad is finally over so you just sit down and watch whatever is on.

All along the highway there are the remains of carnage. Where an animal stood in a brief fight against an overwhelming chance of death. Where an animal stood still against the coming death and took it like it was a kamikaze mission to the other side of the road. These carcasses get run over by every passing car until there's nothing left of the once living creature that isn't spreadable. All the blood is splattered on the side of the cars of people who see the body, speed up and aim for the juicy bits. This is what I watch on the highway.

These animals did not have life insurance. I wonder what will become of their families. If only they'd paid that $2 a day.

Lots of people claim that you can't put a value on life. These same people then buy life insurance, because, while nothing will ever really compensate for the loss of a loved one, you may as well get a pile of cash for your trouble. I hope that if there is an afterlife, the people whose families made life insurance claims don't get let in and instead get sent to work on the “soul plantation” owned by the insurance company.

Buying life insurance is like putting a bounty on someone's head. Only you get the reward regardless of who kills them.

The highway must look like a serpentine concrete rave party to an animal at night. All the red and white lights moving along the concrete dance floor. I can understand the attraction. Once they get there they are stunned by the beauty of the rapidly approaching disco lights, they watch it getting bigger and they don't even bust a move as they are flattened and the lights continue along the dance floor. Now that's a party animal.

It's night when I drive, and I don't run over any roadkill.

I play with the radio but the only station I can find is a family station. I know this because between every two songs they have a promo saying how they're the number one family station. The songs are mostly love songs and mostly pop. I wonder briefly if whoever wrote the song actually put any feeling in it, but between the monosyllabic rhyming couplets and the word baby between each chorus and verse I'm having a hard time seeing the message of the song. Maybe it's a subtle way of saying that love is for morons. If that's the case then I'm sure the artist is disappointed at the quite literal interpretation the station programmers took of it, like Jesus might be if he came back and found out everyone was reading the Bible the wrong way.

I brake fast to avoid ramming the back of this tiny car doing fifty or sixty kilometers per hour. As I pass I crane my neck to see if the driver is retarded or on the phone or drunk. He was none of those, at least not that I gathered from the insightful and quality research I received via my split-second glance, but he was so old that he could've been driving to his own funeral, and if I hadn't stopped, mine too.

He could've been retarded and he could've been drunk. Most old people have some form of disability which thankfully keeps most of them off the road, not that there aren't enough retarded drivers without them. I suppose he could've been drunk, but he was driving fairly straight for someone with cataracts and he wasn't in a ute so I can only assume he was sober. I know for sure he wasn't on the phone because both his hands were on the wheel and no one over the age of sixty knows how to use a hands free device, let alone a mobile phone. Maybe if the phone companies released a mobile phone with the old circular dials on them they could crack open the market of elderly phone users, but old people don't have many places to go and ever fewer people to call, so I doubt it would take off unless they advertised it in Reader's Digest.

I turn off the radio and drive. The only sound now is my wheels and the engine. It's a long drive interstate and I stop in the early hours of the morning at one of those “Rest. Revive. Survive” things and sleep in my car. I'm woken by tourists the next morning. I know how animals at the zoo must feel, being woken by the calls of the voyeur, stone in hand in case his yelling fails to wake you. They have a caravan. It's a middle aged couple, younger than my parents but older than me. He looks overworked and she looks undernourished. He seems to ignore her and spends the majority of his time yelling and swearing at the caravan when the fold-out bits won't fold out right. This is what I'm woken by, the constant banging of the caravan and the yelp of pain when his hand gets stuck in it. This is followed by more swearing.

The woman looks so dejected and she sits by herself at a park bench. Somehow I instantly know that she knows exactly how the fold-out bits fold out. I can tell the kind of guy he is though, and he would not appreciate her help. She married him because he was a provider, and he has provided. He's provided a home and food and kids. But she cleans the home and cooks the food and the kids don't even speak to them anymore because of him. This last bit I've constructed in my head, I'm not a psychic nor observant enough to surmise that from minuscule details like the detectives on crime shows. His only saving trait is that he can work like a dog. He's never been good at sports, or art, or even being social, but Jesus, can he take a whipping.

That man should not have had kids. As much as I retain hope that his wife had some natural talents that she passed on to the children, she was dumb enough to marry him so I doubt the children were anything greater than the prodigies their parents were. I start the car and pull out of the rest stop, eager to leave the depressing couple to their marital issues.

It was a long drive and time is never like in stories. There are no chapters where the characters can within the space of a few pages be transported through time and space to another country or another life. Time is constant. There's not even a break for you to turn the page and gather your thoughts. You age constantly, regardless of what skin cream companies will try to tell you in the hope that you will buy their anti-aging cream. And so the drive seemed longer because there's no way you can cut out the meaningless bits of your life. The bits where you experience nothing and achieve nothing. The bits they cut out in stories you have to live with.

Chapter 2

hehe, the caravan pair remind me of my parents... how much more have you written?

hehe, the caravan pair remind me of my parents... how much more have you written?

There's about 8-10 thousand words of that at the moment. I've written other stuff as well and I write pretty much every day, but most of it's just blogs and stuff. Nothing's finished though, not yet anyway. Hahaha, cool parents man, cool parents.

moar

moar

On the condition you give some feedback.

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Maybe in the afterlife there is a highlights reel where people stand around and watch the best bits of their life that they'd forgotten, without all the filler material. A dull life brought together into a thirty second montage with a cheesy-acoustic-guitar-chord-strumming-emotion-feigning-crooner to make it all seem okay. And as you watch the best of collection of your life you'll listen to the commentator like on TV sports and their semi-entertaining, inane banter will make your life seem trivial. I can't imagine an afterlife at all to be honest, I only entertain the idea as a remote possibility which people get too attached to and forget about the fact that they are alive and in the present.

As I drive the sun moves through the sky above me until it shines through my sunglasses and into my eyes, making a spot on my vision wherever I look and blinding me when I look straight ahead. I can't see the road and I'm driving on instinct alone. A crash would not surprise me and yet it doesn't come. I consider myself lucky but I wonder how much roadkill I'm running over. My tires are clean when I get out but I've never run over roadkill before so I don't know if anything would get stuck to the tire or not.

When I was a kid my parents delighted me with the story of my conception. All because I wanted to know what they were giggling at when “Love In An Elevator” came on the radio. I wish they'd lied to me. It wasn't just any elevator I was conceived in, it was a hospital elevator. They were there because of my grandfather, he was dying and apparently that turned the two of them on. I hope the fetish isn't hereditary or it's going to be an awkward funeral when they both die. The receptionist at the hospital could somehow see that this couple were looking for a place to have sex, so she marked on the A4 maps they handed out to all the visitors the safe places to have sex. She marked them with a love heart and I'm sure she found the idea of two people having sex in the hospital very clinical and romantic.

They were on their way to one such location, but it was down a few floors and when they got in the elevator they apparently couldn't contain their lust. The old guy in the wheelchair in the corner of the elevator didn't seem to be conscious, so they went for it. I suppose it highlights how dumb my parents were, because no one who is prone to bursts of unconsciousness is left alone in a hospital. I guess he could see the same thing the receptionist saw, but he would've seen a fair bit more than her too. And when they were done and the elevator reached its destination, my mum looked up to see this guy staring at them. At least I have someone to blame for my sexual deviancy.

I'm far from being the most sexual person I know, though. Em fucked me on our first date. Not after our first date, on our first date, in the disabled bathroom at a movie theater. I imagined the retards queuing up outside while we fucked. That made me go a little softer. She apparently couldn't wait until I took her home. I like to think it's because I'm such a prize but I know it's just because she's not. There was nothing wrong with it, but I'm glad I didn't get her pregnant. Not just because the baby would have half of her genetic data, but because it would probably turn out to be more of a slut than either of us separately.

If sexual experiences were books, she was a library - not a book store. Homeless men would come and grubbily thumb their way through entire chapters of her collection. Parts would be borrowed and never returned, parts would be lost in the archives, but none of it was anything you'd pay for anyway, so no one really cared. If the librarian hates the library chances are everyone else will too.

It would have been fine if Em had had some other qualities besides liking sex and not really caring where or who it came from. If she had just had something to redeem herself, a career, a goal, a skill, even a hobby would've made her tolerable. But there was nothing there besides a hole. Metaphorically and physically. Actually that's not fair, there were several holes physically and only one metaphorically. The physical ones could be and were filled regularly, but I don't think she can even see the bottom of the other one yet. It might be because she's imagined that there is something missing in the first place. She used to tell me how she felt empty when she didn't have someone inside her. It might just be that she's a sex addict, or that she needs to feel wanted by someone and she only feels that when they're pulling her hair back and biting her neck.

It's easy to get too deep into analyzing my ex-girlfriend, especially now that I don't really have a reason to care about her. Lots of people try to stay friends after they've dated someone. Staying friends would imply that we were friends in the first place. We didn't even really have that much of a relationship, I only refer to her as my ex-girlfriend because it's easier than explaining the details of our relationship to everyone who asks. We were nothing more than friends with benefits, and like I said before, we weren't really friends. So I guess that leaves us with the benefits. It wasn't that I despised her when were together, but I didn't really know her. It was like if you walked into a newsagency and decide to screw the first person you see.

I wouldn't recommend it as a way of meeting people.

Every time I think of that first time with her in the retard's bathroom, my dick does strange things. It goes up at the mental picture of her. It grows in length but by the time it's there I've remembered the location and it shrinks back down. Thinking about that first time makes my dick put on quite a show for anyone who's tuned in to the interior of my jeans.

To be honest, I've never really felt that close a bond with my dick. Naming your dick is a foreign concept to me. I can't imagine that I'd name any other body part. I'm sure my dick feels isolated from the rest of me because I don't name it. I'm sure he feels used that I demand he performs sexual functions and then I don't cuddle with him afterwards, or thank him, or call him by a special name. Poor little guy. In fact, I'm quite sure my dick would hate me. I force him into uncharted and poorly chosen territory, then like a bipolar army general, I tell him to withdraw. Again and again this pattern is repeated, all while wearing a lubricated latex uniform that must be uncomfortable on him. I push him around without even considering his feelings. Poor little Edmond.

I've heard lots of girls say that guys think with their dicks. This I can relate to. I think my dick must be a philosopher reincarnated. Not a good philosopher though. One that uses his reasoning skills to justify his own actions, regardless of how atrocious his behaviour. In a way, I prefer having this mindless philosopher in my dick to say, Socrates. If I had Socrates in my dick, I doubt I would ever get laid. Just as I was about to penetrate some poor girl, Socrates, rock hard, would suddenly decide that it was a slight upon the gods to act like this, and launch into a twenty minute monologue about the true nature of penetration. I'm fairly sure Socrates could never get it up anyway.

The road I'm on used to be the highway, but now it's a two lane road with pot holes every hundred metres. They dot the road like pockmarks in a bitumen earthworm. Pockmarks that are invisible until you're five metres away. Some of these pot holes are so deep that undiscovered sea life is inhabiting them. Probably endangered undiscovered sea life, and that's why they haven't been filled in. That and the fact that the local council would probably blow their entire year's budget on filling just one of these holes, and then how would the mayor get drunk every night? You know there's something wrong with your town when the mayor also holds the position of village idiot. But these towns have such small populations that some people have to take on two jobs to support the community and being the mayor he's got to lead by example.

I drive past jug bands on front porches, and people whittling and chewing tobacco in rocking chairs eons old. I'm so enthralled in watching them that I nearly miss my turn-off. It would be easy to miss, even without the prime time entertainment. On either side of the turn-off are large bushes so that you can't see it until you're directly in front of it and you have to be looking out your window and not at all at the road. I can thank the country folk for the fact that I found it, after all it was my radar-like scanning of the area that lead me to find it in the first place. I'm sure they'd be ecstatic that they made a contribution to my journey. It might even be the high point of their life.

Could you perhaps upload the whole thing and link us? :)

In about a day. I just have to join it up in one bit, or it probably won't make sense.

Only read the first piece so far since I'm in a bit of a rush, but I absolutely loved it. Can't wait to read the other parts.

In your original post you asked for opinions on your style. Well man, you have STYLE. There are a few "technical" things that I would fix, but the story immediately caught my interest and made me want to read more. That's what's important. You've got talent, keep it coming.

Yeah dude, I'm in.

I'd give you criticism, but I'd just as much take away from it as I would add anything remotely helpful.

Just keep it going. It's like a surreal thriller, constantly reminding you it's real and in your imagination at the same time.

Only read the first piece so far since I'm in a bit of a rush, but I absolutely loved it. Can't wait to read the other parts.

In your original post you asked for opinions on your style. Well man, you have STYLE. There are a few "technical" things that I would fix, but the story immediately caught my interest and made me want to read more. That's what's important. You've got talent, keep it coming.

Yeah I haven't really edited it yet, sort of been more focussed on just getting words down for now. Thanks for your feedback as well Moonius.

Thanks to all you guys, you've been really supportive so far, and knowing that my work is appreciated really drives me to write more. Once I get time off uni (like a month away) I'll have 3 months to sit down and do some serious writing. Thanks again guys.

I bow to the genius of your work. It is excellent. Reminds me of Augusten Burroughs' book Running With Scissors. However, you sort of ramble on and on which takes the attention away from the reader when your talking about the roadkill.

I bow to the genius of your work. It is excellent. Reminds me of Augusten Burroughs' book Running With Scissors. However, you sort of ramble on and on which takes the attention away from the reader when your talking about the roadkill.

Which bit specifically was rambling? I'll check out that book too. Thanks for the feedback.

Could you perhaps upload the whole thing and link us? :)

UPDATE: So I've uploaded it so whoever wants to read it, can read as much as I've written up until today. It's still unedited, and highly 'drafty,' so please excuse and report any errors you find in exchange for the entertainment you (hopefully) get out of reading it. Leave me further comments/criticism if you want.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7690109/Bogans-Heroes-Working-Title?secret_password=25jcg3onvelxq6sapi7a

UPDATE: So I've uploaded it so whoever wants to read it, can read as much as I've written up until today. It's still unedited, and highly 'drafty,' so please excuse and report any errors you find in exchange for the entertainment you (hopefully) get out of reading it. Leave me further comments/criticism if you want.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7690109/Bogans-Heroes-Working-Title?secret_password=25jcg3onvelxq6sapi7a

Thanks man, I'll read it as soon as my exams are over.

I think that you need to post an update. I read it and I think that you should get the the damn cabin and start explaining how much of a joy you brought to the girls that work there. I liked how it was written so...

very nice style. don't know how to describe it. it is kind of like maddox but not as doushebaggy or whatever the adj form of doushebag is. I really liked all of it. Read the whole thing and that means a lot coming from me. I really liked “I think he’s a spirit now. Since we found out what is it the sky, and we found out what clouds are, he doesn’t live there anymore. Everywhere science goes, religion is condemned “ i really like that line. thanks for the nice read

I think that you need to post an update. I read it and I think that you should get the the damn cabin and start explaining how much of a joy you brought to the girls that work there. I liked how it was written so...

Haha. Glad you like it.

very nice style. don't know how to describe it. it is kind of like maddox but not as doushebaggy or whatever the adj form of doushebag is. I really liked all of it. Read the whole thing and that means a lot coming from me. I really liked “I think he’s a spirit now. Since we found out what is it the sky, and we found out what clouds are, he doesn’t live there anymore. Everywhere science goes, religion is condemned “ i really like that line. thanks for the nice read

Thanks for that feedback man. Made my day. I'm glad people actually read it and it's even better that you guys like it. Now I've just gotta pump out the rest of it.

I think that your writing is great and especially like your style.

By the way I think that the rambling parts of your story give more insight to the way the character thinks and I personally like it.

Could be annoying if you read slow though.

Thanks man. I've been reading it back a lot lately and I realise that it sort of goes off on tangents a lot. Glad you liked it, I think that it does work towards character development, yeah. Did you read the massive link or just the thread?