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I'm trying to describe somebody falling asleep from exhaustion, in first person. I'm currently using a longer, detailed description, but is that the best way?

Never had a few moments deliberation seemed like an eternity as I feel my consciousness ebbing away, and my thoughts, as clear and concise as they were mere moments ago, were coming to an end. My eyes grow heavy from the strenuous effects of excessive agitation of the brain--that faculty which, in all its strength, I had not prepared for such a weakness. At once, I was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to give myself away to my pursuer, to exhaustion, to be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor…

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    @MonicaCellio : I'd think under current site rules, we'd close this as a critique question. Any reason you edited rather than closing?
    – Standback
    Aug 9, 2015 at 4:55
  • @Standback my finger hovered over the "close" link, but it seemed like this could be tweaked to ask a more specific question, and it seems like the level of detail/verbosity is the key factor here. But I could go either way -- there were no votes from the community, so I tried the edit.
    – Monica Cellio
    Aug 9, 2015 at 4:57
  • Just how import is sleeping to the story and the character doing it? With a long winded description like this, it's like waving a red flag and shouting into a blow horn saying: This is important remember this! If it's not important, say: I fell asleep. Move the story along never fall so in love with your own writing that the story is pushed back for overdone descriptions.
    – darkocean
    Aug 24, 2017 at 4:17

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A bit too wordy for my taste, but that's purely subjective. I'd have to see the rest of the piece to make a better judgement. The overall imagery could work. The long, run-on sentences work well in showing fatigue, but some of it might need a bit of a clean up. For example:

My eyes grow heavy from the overwhelming effects of excessive agitation of the brain for which, in all its power, I had not prepared for its weakness.

This sentence is just not right. If you leave out the inserted sentence "in all its power", you get:

My eyes grow heavy from the overwhelming effects of excessive agitation of the brain for which I had not prepared for its weakness.

which makes no sense, grammatically.

At once, I was struck with incoherence—an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to give myself away to my pursuer—to exhaustion—to be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor…

There are so many — here that I don't know to what they refer to, what sections are they surrounding. For example, it looks as if "—an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—" is an inserted sentence, which makes no sense. I believe you were going for "At once, I was struck with incoherence — an inconsistency to my thoughts — as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall" but even so, the em dashes make it so awkward. I think it would look somewhat clearer like this:

At once, I was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall—for I had already decided to give myself away to my pursuer, to exhaustion, to be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor…

It's still a pretty awkward sentence though. As I said already, long, run-on sentences are perfect for this situation, but they still need to be clear and readable to the reader. I had to go back several times to get my head around it.

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  • Your very helpful! I will make some changes and re post for you. Your very thorough and it is very refreshing to get an intellectual response to my question! Thank You!
    – Shawn
    Jul 5, 2013 at 22:53
  • Okay. Made some changes. Let me know if it sounds better. If you would like a few pages worth of the works before and after this piece. Please feel free to let me know and I can email them to you. Thanks!
    – Shawn
    Jul 5, 2013 at 23:00
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Using shorter sentences (and varying their length) can make the piece more readable:

Never had a brief span seem like an eternity. As I feel my consciousness ebbing away, as clear and concise as it was mere moments ago, it was coming to an end. My eyes grow heavy from the strenuous effects of excessive agitation. At once, I was struck with incoherence, an inconsistency to my thoughts, as I kneeled down and leaned a shoulder against the wall. I decided to give myself away to my pursuer, to exhaustion. And I would be dead to the world before the rest of me ever hit the cold concrete floor.

I'm not sure if the piece makes sense after my edit. But you get the idea.

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I'm not clear on the timing. Is this first person narrative in the moment, or the narrator recalling the event after the fact? If it is the former, it is overwritten by about 100 to 1, since someone that exhausted shouldn't be able to think such detailed imagery. If it is the latter, the present tense should be changed to past tense.

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Try this:

My eyes flickered into darkness due to exhaustion.

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