mik writing advice

Some more thorough proofreading would help, Mik. "Six o'clock, I hate you," should end with a comma instead of a period, since the sentence outside the quotation continues, "he thought as he..." "Managed to find his goal" is an unnecessarily vague and grandiose way of phrasing "he found the button to turn off his alarm clock." You used the phrase "getting/got out of bed" twice within the same sentence; reusing the same or similar phrases within such a short time is something to avoid unless you're making a point of it.

"Finally sitting onto the couch with his coffee" is awkward because of "onto." I don't think there's technically a rule against it, but you'll want to use "onto" as a preposition following movement verbs like "stepping," "jumping," and "climbing." "Sitting onto" something is an extremely unusual phrasing; you should use "sitting on" instead.

"...with his coffee to start waking up, he switched..." This is more awkward phrasing, and you're extending the sentence way longer than it should be without dividing it up into multiple sub-sentences. The entire sentence would be better if rewritten as something like: "Finally, he sits on the couch, the hot bitter in his mug pulling his eyes open as he switches on his TV." "Finally, he sits on the couch," is one whole sentence, with an implied "while" before "the hot bitter in his mug (is) pulling his eyes open;" "the hot bitter" briefly becomes the subject performing an action rather than just an object the man is holding. "...as he switches on his TV." adds one final point to the sentence that would be a little jarring if it were stated on its own, but you could also roll it up into the start of the next sentence, too. Additionally, in this one sentence, you switch verb tenses from present-progressive to past; you go from "Finally sitting... to start waking..." (even though he has actually already woken up, as described earlier) to "he switched the TV on." Changing verb tenses in dialogue is fine, but you need to maintain consistency in your verb tenses while narrating.

The third paragraph is literally only two lines. You could break up the news anchor's monologue like so: "'-nd the new statistics are out from the FBHLI,' the older anchor on the screen said. 'The damage from the incident...'" The information about the TV being small and in the corner is superfluous here, and distracting.

"Yes, it was pretty big," just sounds weird, coming from a news anchor. If that's what you're going for, then it's fine, but if the anchor is not supposed to sound detached and impersonal, you should instead write something like, "Yes, it was a tragedy of horrible proportions." Don't write numbers spoken, at least in dialogue/monologue, as numerals; write them out as spoken words. This isn't a scientific paper, it's a story. "Forty-seven dead" instead of "47 dead." "Five hundred three" is the technically-accurate way to say 503 aloud, but since it's character dialogue you can get away with using improper grammar, e.g. "Five hundred and three."

The next few sentences are messy. At "They added to their release a statement, 'This information...'" it looks like you forgot some closing quotation marks before the beginning of the sentence. Who are "they," here, the news anchors? Somebody else the news anchors are saying added a statement? Further, "added... a statement" is usually more succinctly put as "stated." So you should instead write something like "'...thirty-four of whom were severely injured. Montgomery Fire Department stated these numbers came out slowly because their teams had difficulty getting into the site following the incident.'"

I'll compare the two segments for clarity:
"'...34 of which were severely injured. They added to their release a statement, 'This information was slow to come out due to the difficulty to get into the area after the incident.''"
It sounds like the speaker here starts quoting somebody else halfway through speaking. You overuse the preposition "to" in this sentence: "due to" and "difficulty to." "Difficulty to" is awkward; "difficulty of" is more common. "To" denotes movement or causal relation; "of" denotes characteristic.

"'...thirty-four of whom were severely injured,' they [the anchor] stated. 'Montgomery Fire Department stated these numbers came out slowly because their teams had difficulty getting into the site following the incident.'"
Here, it is always clear who is speaking, who the subject of each sentence is. "of whom" refers to people rather than mere numbered casualties, which is more likely in the real world for a TV news anchor who's trying to evoke pity for the victims. Ignore [the anchor] in brackets; I only included it so you'll know who the antecedent of the pronoun "they" in this clipping is. "Montgomery Fire Department" was added, of course, because otherwise you'd start the sentence with a pronoun that has no clear antecedent; starting this sentence with "They" could refer to the casualties.

Moving on.
"The Quarantine was necessary and it..." This whole sentence is confusing for similar reasons as the "They added to their release a statement," sentence, made worse by ending the paragraph with "The younger news anchor added." There are several sentences of speech above which you can (and should) break up to announce the change in speaker, so the reader knows that it's the younger anchor talking instead of the older one. Due to the confusing use of quotations around the "They added to their release a statement" sentence and the "younger news anchor added" phrase being placed so late in the paragraph, it's unclear if the younger anchor only chimes in at the end to say "The Quarantine was necessary and it applied to us as much as it applied to the rest of you," or if the younger anchor has been speaking the entire paragraph. Additionally, it's unclear who "us" is in "...it applied to us as much..." This pronoun needs a clear antecedent; if it's part of Montgomery FD's statement (in this hypothetical scenario) then that needs to be made clear. If it's the news anchor saying that it applied to "us (the media)," then you should clarify that. If it's supposed to be deliberately phrased that way to unsettle a reader, then fine, but you better damn well make up for getting a reader to feel weird about that. With everything that I've said in mind, the paragraph would be best rewritten as one instead of on a sentence-by-sentence basis as I've been going through it up to now. I'll demonstrate the principles I've been using to judge your writing and rewrite the paragraph below, as an example.

"Yes, it was a tragedy of terrible proportions," the younger anchor added. "A final body count was also released, tallying forty-seven dead and five hundred three injured, thirty-four of whom were severely injured. Montgomery Fire Department stated these numbers came out slowly because their teams had difficulty clearing the site in the aftermath. The Quarantine was unfortunately necessary, and it applied as much to the rescue teams as it did to everyone else."


In short: Avoid overusing phrases or words. Maintain consistent verb tense when narrating. Pay close attention to the rules of quotations and dialogue. Break long and meandering sentences into more digestible statements. If the speaker changes, and is saying a lot, make sure the reader knows that soon after they begin talking; don't wait until the speaker has finished to tell the reader who was talking. Pay close attention to your prepositions, their denotations and connotations. Unless you have an extremely good reason, make sure all your pronouns have a clear antecedent.