Surface

Trevor, it's very brave to share your work, no matter whether if it's the first time or the tenth, so well done for sticking your head above the parapet!

What is it that you want to write, as fiction? What genre, or on what subject? A thriller, or a romance, or a journey of the soul? Popular fiction or literary? Whatever it is, that's what you should be writing now. Explore the possibilities of a plot and of characterisation, and see where they lead you.

What you've written is purely descriptive; you're investigating the veneer, and what lies beneath, of a lonely man. That's fine in itself; but it doesn't lead anywhere. It's a passage of introspection, but we have no idea who the character is, or why he is so insular. he's a man who likes to express his inner darkness with lots of words, which may be a little narcissistic.

If this were in a novel or short story, I'd want to skip it. I'd prefer to see all this revealed through what the character does, not what he thinks about. This would be part of the backstory - the knowledge that the author has of a character which informs the creation of that person, but which is never spelled out word for word on the page.

However, as a standalone piece, I have a few thoughts:

'The realisation that a scratch of the surface would burst the stretched canvas of my façade like an over filled water bomb.' - who is doing the realising? It's not a finished sentence. It's rather over-mixed: scratch, burst, stretched canvas, water-bomb.

'Eye contact is the most painful, my soul writhes, feeling exposed even behind the film of deceit, each second, waiting for them to realise who they really see. ' You should break this up with better punctuation. Try a semi-colon after 'painful', to put greater emphasis on 'my soul writhes'. Remove the comma after 'second' - you mean that each second he waits for them to discover the truth. Perhaps use 'every' in place of 'each'.

'Eye contact is the most painful; my soul writhes, feeling exposed even behind the film of deceit, every second waiting for them to realise who they really see.'

'And then they move on I'm left confused, how did they not see through, why can’t they see the black behind my eyes, relief that I've not had to expose what is held inside, saved from the conversation which would mean breaking the first crack in the dam.' This sentence is far too long. The first clause doesn't work - 'And then they move on I'm left confused' - do you mean, 'Then they move on and I'm left confused'?

You're mixing tenses: 'They move...How did they... why can't they...'

Break it up; shorter phrases are more punchy. Try this:

'Then they move on and I'm left confused. How do they not see through - why can’t they see the black behind my eyes? Relief! I've not had to expose what is held inside: I'm saved from the conversation which would mean breaking the first crack in the dam.'

'The dam holding back torrential emotions tearing me down to the empty husk I'm to feel.' - too many clashing metaphors here: dam, torrent, husk. (One peels back to a husk, rather than tears down.) What is tearing him down - the dam or the emotions? Not clear.

'To feel empty inside is yet a further layer upon which I hide' - does one hide upon a layer, or within it?

'The desire to tear through physical obstacles like disposable, insignificant details, craving of physical pain and breaking of my body to sympathize my internal plight.' - 'craving physical pain', or 'craving for', not 'craving of'. This sentence doesn't go anywhere - it's describing something, but that's all. Does he act on these self-destructive urges or merely talk about them?

'The desire to tear...Each wave of destructive desire' - repetition

'why can my heart keep on repeating.' - this is a question and so needs a question mark.

As an exercise in describing a sad and solitary man, it's fine; it tells us that that's what he is. But it hasn't got any sense of the reality of that man. You've hidden him behind the use of words. You're trying to mould phrases to fit what you want to say, rather than saying it.

The reason for that is that the character doesn't exist for you, except as an exercise.

Now try it another way.

Put him into a physical, rather than mental, context, and all will change. Instead of reporting how people don't see him, let's be there with him in the street, experiencing the eye-avoidance in real time. We need to walk in his shoes, and to feel his alienation first-hand. Let's see him wince away from contact, and drop his gaze, and do all the other things a person like this would do.

In other words, show, don't tell.

Above all, go on writing. You clearly love words and what they can do, but you're only putting your first foot down on the road to where they can take you. Experiment!

Hope this helps.

Lorraine