Guilt is a bar of soap

[twilight661]

Nice improvement, BP. I do feel you've followed the advise a little too direct. Like you've lost some power on me, 2nd person is better as far as I am concerned.

[prendrelemick]

Liked the first one (sorry) The new one is less unhinged, almost calm. The first one had a marvellous sense of rising panic, like the guilt was destroying him right there infront of your eyes.

[Delta40]

I'm thinking you should try it in the third person and see how you go.

[aBIGsheep]

I slouch in my golden-tapped shower, curdling the bar of soap in my gnarled hands.

I'd take out gnarled. That's only because I think it soundsweird to me. Are you using the right denotation of 'curdle'?

Mulling, a thousand fireworks of thought thunder fast in my mind, but my brain is binary, so I slouch.

Take out the comma after 'mulling' and add a double dash before 'but'. The double dash is a great way to create an abrupt pause while still being able to continue the thought. Take out the 'a' and make 'thousand' plural and add a hyphen in between 'thought-thunder'.

Just because the brain is binary does it mean it'll slouch? I don't understand. Binary is often associated with computers, math, and sets of 2. I'm guessing you're talking about the hemispheres of the brain, but I don't understand why either hemisphere would cause the character to slouch.

I shiver, letting the blue water drip off my nakedness, and I say whisper to myself. I whisper nothing profound, my brain is binary. I whisper to myself: guilt is a bar of soap.

I'd combine the sentences:

I shiver, letting the blue water drip off my nakedness, and I whisper nothing profound: guilt is a bar of soap.

Try and make everything as short and direct as possible. It flows better.

The soap is green; my sins are red.

Soap is green and sins are red.

I stretch a little, blink a dozen times, and smile yellow teeth beautiful. And at that this moment I think I’ve lifted the burden. But Allah almighty, this isn’t gonna happen. I can feel it, the bomb planted to the bottom of my stomach, ticking. This is me, this is my guilt, this is how it’s gonna end.

Change beautiful to beauty. Take out 'and at that this moment I think'. Just leave everything that's absolutely necessary.

Y

our uncle Amir Shah imported this for you, as a present. He paid £44 for this. It was made in one of the 27 Dutta Factories in Lower Baghdad, Iraq, on the 5th August 2006, by starving children; the four that were involved in producing this piece of soap were Ali Sharma, Mohammad Rao, Ali Mehta and Khan Tamba, aged 6, 7, 6 and 8 years old.

Don't go overboard with specifics. I like the names and ages, but going so far as to describe the dates and factories is a bit much.

The green soap doesn’t wash away my red sins, but does have a pleasurable texture, so this is okay.

Get your tenses to match. Present or past -- one or the other. I really don't think that the colors symbolize much of anything. I think it's a gimmick -- something that tries to have depth and meaning, but only gets as deep as the kiddy pool. You can keep it, but I really don't think it adds much of anything to the story. Just more adjectives which I try and keep to a minimum.

I shake my head, wanting to deny everything. This is my fault. Bombs laugh. This is what I have done. I see clearly for the first time, for the last time. Perhaps it isn’t too late; perhaps if I dive onto the straight and narrow, I may not get recognized. I may be accepted. I may have a chance to do right.

Bombs laugh? Like bombs explode? You see everything clearly for the first time? Like a bomb exploding in your face? Are you a suicide bomber?

Questions are a good thing. Only if they eventually get answered, of course.

I shake my head, I wish I could go back and ... well be honest I wouldn’t change what I did. But I wish I could go back, I wish I could act righteous. But, deep down I know, if I went back I would act the same. I would terrorize, and for what? My only motivation was, and still is: cash. And I have millions of it, and I slouch.

Contradictions! From what I've garnered, I think the character is a Arab terrorist. Ask yourself, wouldn't the character believe that they were already acting righteously? When you say that they wish they could go back, they're being guilty. But then you say that they wouldn't change anything -- what the hell? That means that they're not guilty at all.

The soap is green; my sins are red. All I can wash away is grease.
I need some cheering up. Perhaps, when I’ve showered, I can head off to London, right into the city. Buy something — if that doesn’t cheer me up, nothing will — but what? I’ve got a £1,000,000 to play with. I paid for the shower with this. I paid for the tasteless mansion with this. I paid for the sex with this.

I'd say take out 'if that doesn't cheer me up nothing will'.
Buy something -- but what?
Take out the numerals and just put millions.

I paid for this shower, I paid for this tasteless mansion, hell, I even paid for the sex -- but for what?

I've gotta go.

[dingyjoe]

ironically i prefer the orinigal!!

[burntpunk]

Unsure if I mentioned this before, but this was submitted as a piece of coursework for my English Language AS, and in terms of marks, it was nearly a perfect ace.

Thanks for all of the critique. ^^

[Astronought]

It reminded me very very much of Chuck Palahniuk. The machine-gun prose and the destructable main character both lend themselves to his style. Kind of like a sub-Bret Easton Ellis. I sort of liked it, but I think this style is becoming "played-out", as the kids would say.

[prendrelemick]

Thats great punk. When are you going to post something else?

[AuntShecky]

As previous replies have indicated, the second person singular pronoun really isn't effective in a work of fiction. It was trendy back in the eighties, with the Yuppie authors such as Bret Easton Ellis Jay McInerney and ; now it just looks affected and passé.

Same with the verbs in present tense. That was also a fad in fiction when everybody was trying to imitate the inimitable Raymond Carver.

Because there are no characters except for the protagonist who doubles as the narrator, my impression is that the piece isn't so much fiction as a prose poem, with the narrator's having a dialogue within his mind.

So, for what it's worth, my advice is to rewrite the piece as a poem or prose poem.