Does this text flow smoothly (description of suicidal thoughts)?
So how did this animal suicide thing start? Ironically, it began with my own death wish. But why? I had perfect health, friends and family who cared about me, plus I had just been admitted into college.
Well, basically, I stopped finding meaning in things. Not in a spiritual or philosophical way, though; things simply ceased to make sense. I'd be riding the train or crossing the street and ask myself: What's the meaning of all this? You wake up, go to work, eat, poop, crawl back to bed—then die. Yes, some will remember you, but those people will die, too. And even if you make yourself a place in history, all traces of that will disappear once we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, or once the universe undergoes a cosmic explosion.
I concluded the most logical thing to do was to end with my life.
My mind made up, I holed up in my apartment one night to think of the most suitable method. Jumping from a building wasn't an option; I was afraid of heights. Hanging—I was terrible at tying knots. Even my shoe's, which untangled every 5 minutes. After giving it a lot of though, I decided on pills. Easy: grab a bunch, pop them into your mouth, then wash them down with water.
I'm especially concerned about the transition between monologue and action/scene (is that how they're called?), which I marked with bold.
Let me know if you want me to include more paragraphs.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/12694. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
The transition seems fairly smooth to me, probably because the action doesn't feel like action: It feels like the continuation of the musings in the earlier paragraphs.
Maybe this is because we're not seeing the setup, but I think the entire excerpt feels rushed. This is someone who's thinking through reasons why life just doesn't make sense, but I'm not buying any of it: It seems detached, almost philosophical.
I think that easing us into this more gradually and giving the reader some anchor points - something like motivations or action touchpoints - would help.
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