So i'm trying to write a book. This is suppose to be my opening chapter that draws readers in. It really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the story but it happens in the same universe. So its just a rough draft. I would appreciate any and all feedback.




Prelude
to the END.


I woke up on the ground in my apartment bedroom. Sunlight burning my face like I was an ant under a magnifying glass. I was feeling tired, hungry, and a complete mess. To top it all off there was a bad taste in my mouth like I’d been sucking on my fingers or something. I resigned myself to taking it easy today since it was the weekend. I got off the floor and shambled over to the bathroom. As I moved I began to have an overly excited headache attempt to crack open my skull and depart with my grey matter. This and my damn throat muscles felt like someone had pulled them taught and beat them with a baseball bat. This just will not be my day.  As I flicked on the switch in the bathroom I nearly lost it again. “Fucking lights” I began to undressed and dropped my clothes on the floor in a pile. I glanced down at my cloths and saw they were mostly torn up and covered in something I didn’t want to think about. “Note to self, clean up this mess and get some tylenol.” As I searched for my supplies for my bathroom routine. I felt like my eyes were covered in some sort of milky substance. Every eye movement I made was slow. It also seemed like everything was a few shades grayer. Must have been fun I thought. After turning the shower to warm I grabbed my shampoo and soap and began the cleaning procedure. It felt really nice to just relax under the warm water and go through the mechanical routine of cleaning up. I stepped out of the shower and pulled my red towel off the rack. It smelt nice and clean, just the way I like it. As I walked out of the bathroom I realized that there was another smell coming from somewhere. I smelt my breath. “Crap smells like a cat shit in my mouth”.  I knew I forgot something. So after brushing my teeth and putting on a fresh set of clothes I walked into the kitchen and decided that I was going to make myself some eggs, buttered bread, and a nice fresh slab of steak. Health conscious that’s me alright. As I began to cook the eggs the smell of the steak got my attention. Damn that smells good, so I impatiently ripped off a piece and ate it. MMMM. When the eggs were done I threw the steak on the pan, but after only a few seconds I dropped it on my plate. “Shit where’s the bread, ……. Screw it” This brought a smile to my face. Damn tree huggers always pushing their whole grain bullshit diets on people. I ate my eggs and raw steak in peace. When I was done I started to hand wash the dishes, I turned the TV on to drowned out the work I was doing. The news channel was playing some story about some stupid riot that happened last night, “We have confirmed reports that the rioters seemed to have disperse after the initial attack, we are also getting the final numbers from the death toll at nearly 110 people.” The reporter kept talking about how the rioters ran away once the police started shooting and using tear gas, but by then I just tuned it out and finished drying the dishes. That’s when the flashes started, me and Mark standing with some others yelling about something stupid. Bodies everywhere waving and yelling. The feel of the heat as it built inside me like a furnace turned to 101 degrees. We were hanging out with these two chicks we had met the night before. We only went because the chicks were protesters and we thought that since we got them to follow us home once, why not try again. Then flashes of burning hot anger, red behind my eyes, a scream, the girl I was with grabbing Marks hand and biting it. “Oh shit Oh shit Oh shit, what the hell was that”, I started to freak out. I had backed away from the kitchen sink. I felt like I was lost and falling into a black abyss. My hands where shaking and my knees felt like jelly. I must have dropped to the floor. Because I had to pull my left arm from behind my back to grab ahold of my head. I heard this loud noise and it seemed to be emanating from where my hands were clamped tight. BOOM BOOM BOOM. Flashes of blood and hot body parts everywhere were playing on the inside of my skull. The banging was so loud I felt like my head would split open and my brain would jump out. BOOM BOOM BOOM. An explosion? “Police get on the ground; Police get your hands where I can see them.” That’s when they found me curled in a ball on my kitchen floor holding my head in my hands, tears running down my face, just rambling on and on “red means dead, red means dead”.

The first, and most obvious advice, would be to use paragraphs.
‘Nuff said on that?

The next suggestion would be to stop relying so heavily on similes.  Used creatively, they’re okay, but if they’re the only method you have of describing things, you’re not trying hard enough.   They’re too often trite, passive or bloated.  (Even if we forgive the cliché, “like jelly,” the simile: “My knees felt like jelly,” is weaker than the metaphor, “My knees were jelly.”)

Worse, if you use similes too often, I get bored and distracted.  I start counting the “likes” instead of paying attention to the story.

To extend the idea…
When you DO use a simile, make it worthwhile.  Make sure it conveys the idea you’re trying to convey.
Consider:  “There was a bad taste in my mouth like I’d been sucking on my fingers or something.”  (For my own peace of mind, I’m going to ignore the “or something.”  I’d rather not think about all the things that might have been sucked.)
In that sentence, the first few words provide the key info: “There was a bad taste in my mouth.”  Since you added a bunch more words, though, I assume you’re trying to enhance that information--that “bad taste” isn’t enough to fully describe the experience.

The problem is, I have no idea what this character’s fingers taste like.  For this simile to work, you’ll need to be a little more imaginative and descriptive: “…like I’d been sucking on my fingers after wiping my ass with one-ply paper.”  Now, that creates a vivid sensory image!

One last critical note, specific to this passage:  I wasn’t sure at the end where his memories separated from reality.  When the police order him to the ground, was that in his apartment, or a memory of the night before?

On the other side of the equation, do not let critics like me keep you from continuing to write.  I see enough in this to know that you have solid ideas—the narrator’s hunger for raw steak (is it foreshadowing?), the memory slowly returning, the literary technique of feeding us information from the background (the TV to which he’s only half paying attention).

Continue writing—even if that means using similes and walls of text.  Write until you have the whole story on paper.
If you get it that far, you’ll be far ahead of most people who think about writing a book, and then you can go back and do your editing.  Working with something that’s already on paper is easier than creating something out of thin air, and if you need help, there are professional editors who can help.

Keep it up, and good luck!

Thanks for the helpful critques.  

First off, i enjoyed it and want to find out more. That was it's job, right? Well done. Now, there are a few revisions that the previous poster made and I agree. I was having issues trying to keep up with the flashback and the present. Seems rushed to get to the good part. Take your time. Explain with more details and break out the flashbacks with the present better and I think you are good to go.

Thanks for the info. I have written and rewritten this part for months. I just couldn't seem to get it right. I have started the first couple chapters and outlined a few more. But that's why I had to put this here. I needed this type of feedback to show me why it never seemed right to me. Thanks again for your critiques and comments.

Stop writing "I..."

Use real descriptors.

MMM is not a word.  Hard to take you seriously if you're just going to revert to gutteral sounds depicted as a stream of consonants.  Besides, the best sounds have vowels, it's what separates us from the animals.

Damn tree-huggers is a polarizing statement.  If you want to sell this eventually you should also understand that damned tree-huggers also like to read zombie fiction.  This unnecessary statement will turn them away.

"Crap smells like cat shit in my mouth" is redundant, Make is more personal, as a real person would say it.  How would you say it if you were this chharacter?  
Example: "My mouth smelled like a cat used it for a litter box" (1940-1950 pulp detective novel) or "My breath stank like cat shit, I need to do something about that" (Chuck Palahniuk).