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What strikes me most about your excerpt is that you're speaking in vague generalities, which on their own feel somewhat bombastic. "People have given up," there is "an unarticulated notion of defeat," and "they [i.e. everybody] has overestimated themselves." That's a sweeping, bombastic statement, and without shoring it up with some actual detail to support ...

Get someone else to read the story and point out the sections that would require more fleshing out. As the author your perception of the text is tainted with the imagination of the scene. Things that appear obvious to you may be entirely unclear for the reader. The talent to forget what you know and read the story you wrote as if you'd have read it the first ...

Focus on the effect you are trying to create in the reader. Maybe the most important of those is the emotional impact you are trying to create. Then: Choose the details that help to create that emotional impact. What details would help us to understand the character better? To understand what the character wants, and why it's so important to them? To ...

I have faced the same problem. Going to professional editors/critique groups didn't help, as they all want you to rewrite the story as they would. Which is why you get scenes that spend a whole paragraph describing what the character wears. Here's what worked for me. Imagine you are standing in the scene in your novel. Describe the scene as your main ...

First off, I don't like the first sentence: Outside my window you can make out the figures of people who have simply given up. The my works to reveal the narrator's "ego fixations" – but why is that followed with a you? "Make out" reads awkwardly simplistic. And why "figures of people" and not just "people"? Then, the rest of the paragraph seems too ...

I will lead off by saying that I like the passage as written, but I feel it conveys a very different character from the one you describe that you want. The character you have written, as I see it, first comes across as arrogant and pompous as he describes the uninspired, defeated losers he is watching, and then hints that he might have experienced something ...

Flatten the scope - you are attributing personality to the people he sees, but the words imply they have none. Also focus on the self-obsession of the narrator ( as per @J.R. ). Just my suggestion for re-working it: "Outside my window I make out figures who have simply given up. They glance in the bathroom mirror and are met with defeat. ...

To make it dark, you would have to focus more on the atmosphere. Something about Julian's surroundings or something about your style of describing his situation has to suggest that darkness. Stay in the scene for a bit longer. When Julian is outside: Are there shadows forming around him, expanding and flowing into mysterious shapes? What about the fog? ...