A Series of Funfortunate Events

"I already forgot what we were fighting about."

"Come here, let me hug you. I'm sorry too."

"I know. Me too."

"I'm the one that should be apologizing."

"You've always made it hard for me to stay mad at you. Come here."

"You did nothing wrong."

"It's okay."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Don't apologize."

"I can't believe you."

"Cut the bullshit."

"Don't lie to me."

"When I said I never wanted to see you again, did you not know what the word 'never' means?"

"You're either stupid or brave to be showing your face here."

"Fuck off."

"Did you expect that to be even remotely enough to fix this?"

"You're about to be."

*immediately escalates to physical violence*

Ways to Show a Character is Angry but Trying Not to Show It

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Their jaw flexes while their smile stays plastered on.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Responses get shorter, clipped: "Fine." "Sure." "Whatever."

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They stop blinking as often, eyes fixed a little too long.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Their body gets still, unnaturally still, like every muscle is on lock.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They press their tongue to their teeth before answering.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They set things down a little too hard, the glass, the pen, the keys. Not enough to break, just enough to say something.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They keep asking, "Why would you say that?" but never raise their voice.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ Their politeness sharpens into something cutting, brittle.

✮ ⋆ ˚｡ They laugh, but it's one note too sharp, too short.

In fact, I now often prefer them so I can just read back what they said even if I'm in a loud group of friends watching movies.

Well, then you’ll probably like ICARUS by yours truly!

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I think a lot of writers feel this way sometimes, especially because there are only so many ways you can begin a sentence when writing first person point of view. However, I would suggest trying to describe the events of the scene by starting more sentences with “the vase felt heavy in my hand when I lifted it” instead of “I picked up the vase” or “The room was dingy and dark with no hint of there being a living person there in ages” rather than “I looked around”. 

This is really more of a showing vs. telling issue, I assume, because if you’re describing everything in the form of “I did this, I saw that” you are probably missing a lot of opportunities to use imagery, which helps break up those uniform sentences so that they don’t sound as monotonous. 

So a few suggestions:

Vary sentence length, structure, and rhythm

Try using the “Only start a sentence with a certain word once in a paragraph” for a while until you don’t need to force the variation in sentence style anymore

Describe what the person is doing or seeing or hearing etc. without actually telling the reader that the character is using their senses, as that is usually assumed by the reader once the first person P.O.V. has been established.

Break up “I did this” and “I saw that” with imagery

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Wallace Stevens, ‘The Dwarf’, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens