Welcome to First Page Feedback by Pat!
Every week, I read the first page of a submitted work. (On slow weeks, I may choose something from the public domain instead.) I give feedback on the page, similar to what you would get in an Open Read and Critique session at a science fiction convention or writers’ conference, except it’s just the one page, not a round-table feedback session.
As with all things, take anything I say with a grain of salt. Everything here is my opinion, and hopefully will give both the author and the readers some insight of things to look at. Writing, like all art, is highly subjective and especially in the case of this type of feedback bear in mind that I only see the one page. I’ll make guesses about where I expect it to go, but sometimes things are building to something I don’t know anything about, and things that are confusing on the first page may be cleared up on the second.
Anyway, without any further ado, here is
My Depression and Me
Laine Alder
Work in Progress
Dear reader,
You don’t know me yet, but I’ve been here all along.
I was in the corner of the lawyer’s office when she was eight, crayons scattered, waiting for answers no one wanted to give her. I sat in the silence when she was sixteen, the truth uncoiling like a snake that had been hiding under her bed all those years. I curled myself around her at nineteen, when the world was too loud, too sharp, too much, and the only comfort was letting herself sink. I slipped back in at twenty-two when she tried to rewrite her story, whispering that she could never really outrun me. I clung harder at twenty-four, reminding her that I was the only one who had never left.
I am the shadow behind every photograph where her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. I am the weight that presses her chest flat in the middle of the night, even when she sleeps beside love. I am the reason she second-guesses every joy, every kiss, every dream that feels too good. Because good things don’t last. Not when I’m here.
You will meet the others, too—denial with its soft lies, anger with its sharp edges, bargaining with its false promises, and the hollow silence of depression itself. But I am the one constant. The one who lingers when the party ends, when the door shuts, when the world turns quiet.
People think they know me. They call me names. Shadow. Darkness. Illness. But I am more than that. I am the truth under the rug, the secret in the locked drawer, the voice that says, look closer. I’ve been here since the beginning, waiting for her to realize she was mine.
Initial Impressions
It starts out (and continues throughout the first page) as the personification of depression speaking in first-person voice, which is a nice choice.
First full paragraph, starting with the lawyer’s office – I liked it being tied to a specific event (without it saying it was caused by any specific event). There were hints at the next several lines, but nothing specific like that. But the reference to events, years apart, showed the pervasiveness of it over the years, ending with “…the only one who had never left.” to reiterate how it may wax and wane but never really goes away.
That idea is emphasized in the next paragraph, “the shadow behind every photograph” to “the reason she second-guesses every joy, every kiss..” and “…good things don’t last. Not when I’m here.” Which, of course, we just learned, it always is.
The next paragraph gets a little confusing – it lists its related feelings, but, among them is “the hollow silence of depression itself”. Which seems to imply that Depression is not who we are actually hearing from here. The title, “My Depression and Me” implies otherwise. In the “Additional Information” section of the submission form, the author does mention an alternate possible title Love Letters to a Dark Cloud. I like it a lot better, it seems more evocative, less generic.
And now it occurs to me that I’m only assuming this is a memoir about Depression. I don’t have a field for genre on my submission form, so sometimes I guess, and I have been wrong before. Perhaps it’s not the personification of Depression speaking, but something else, something other, darker, maybe even supernatural – and that could be a very different story.
So let’s talk a moment about setting expectations. In general (there are exceptions – there are always exceptions), readers love it when you subvert their expectations. They hate it when you disappoint their expectations. For example, say your novel has a man looking scared on the cover and there is a ghost looming behind him. Never having the ghost show up is going to disappoint readers and they’re going to have a negative opinion about what might have otherwise been a good novel. Having a main character deal with ghosts in a haunted house will be meeting expectations. But having it end up that the main character was slowly going mad and the ghosts he was talking to were all in his head and causing problems in his life because of it would be subverting expectations.
Right now, my expectation for this one is that we’re hearing from the personification of depression. But the reference to “the hollow silence of depression itself” seems to contradict that. Whether my expectations are going to be subverted or disappointed remains to be seen.
Worldbuilding
“lawyers office,” “crayons,” “under her bed,” and “photograph” seem to put it firmly in our modern world. There’s nothing else that contradicts or adds unknown elements to our modern world, so I think we have our setting. The character is also neither at the extremes of being rich or poor (too rich, and the child wouldn’t be at the lawyer’s, they’d be home with the nanny. Too poor, and there wouldn’t be a lawyer.) Also, I saw no reference to structures or cultural concepts I don’t recognize, so I’m going with middle-class America here.
Plot
What does the main character want? What are they willing to do to get it? What gets in their way?
We don’t really know any of this yet, except that the answer to the last might be “clinical depression.” I’m also getting the impression that we haven’t heard from the main character – whoever “she” is yet. If it turns out that this personification of depression is the main character? Well, that would be interesting. I would think it would be hard to sustain that throughout an entire book, but it could be fascinating if pulled off well.
Exposition? Too much irrelevant information in the wrong place?
Not really. I mean, in a way it kinda is all exposition, but it’s also a monologue from a character and a setup.
Where is the story going from here?
My guess, from here, is that this is a memoir, or a pseudo-memoir about a woman overcoming — or at least learning to live with — clinical depression. How she does this, what hardships she faces, what she learns, and what coping mechanisms she comes up with could all be interested and are likely to be included. Also, the hint about “hearing from the others.” Perhaps all those other things will have their own bits, too, where they speak in personified form: Denial, anger, bargaining, etc.
We’ll find out, and the way this is set up kinda makes me want to.
What would I change?
If it was me writing this, I’d want to make clearer whether or not this was indeed the personification of depression speaking. If so, take out the reference to depression as a separate thing, and if it was not, maybe have something early, within the first paragraph or two, that makes it more clear. If it turns out there are supernatural elements, I’d want to hint at that. You might be tempted to save it for the back blurb, but beware that not everyone reads those.
To learn more about Laine Alder, visit her substack at https://lainealder.substack.com/ or follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/plot.twists.and.switchbacks/
All text from My Depression and Me is copyright Laine Alder and used here by permission.
There is also a video covering much of this at https://youtu.be/jcPDCo-WdEY