Talk:It Breathes, It Bleeds, It Breeds/@comment-27516784-20160314205605/@comment-25941663-20160604121516

I'm not thinking you are trolling, and I know you are genuinely trying to help. I'm just throwing another opinion around, because I disagree with yours.

I think that exposition (in literature) is backstory + information the reader will need (like some background info, setting info etc). I've seen many writers and literature folks using the term like this and the dictionary definition agrees too.

The telling example you mentioned, yes, technically is telling, but he also has more than four paragraphs showing that exact same thing. It would have been a bit boring to have more than 1/10th of the story be about book reading, and it would have certainly been unnecessary.

The mention about his loneliness being telling is also wrong in my opinion. Through his lack of interaction with human beings and his attachment to the parasite we are more than shown that he is desperately lonely. Yes, he did tell us that he was lonely and without close ones, but that was in the exposition part of the story right at the beginning. It is like saying a writer can't write "X had brown hair" because it is telling. No, you don't have to show every single tid-bit of information, especially if you are going to expand on it later (like Emp did).

Dude, the thing about enhancing gore through interaction with other characters is simply your preference. For me, here, it is the exact opposite. Don't go around like your opinion is fact, because it isn't. Also, short stories aren't about people interacting with another. Short stories are stories that are short. They can be about people interacting with each other, they can be about butterflies attacking the Kremlin, they can be about anything. Don't attach restrictions where they don't belong.

I even disagree with the last point you made, that this needed a proper character arc. I don't think it did. The character had stalled as a character because of his crippling loneliness and past tragedies, and he became the epitome of desparation and devastation of a guy with nothing in the world.

I'm not trying to start a pissy-fight with you here. I think though that your opinion is solely based on the fiction classes you took, but here you use them out of context. In fiction there are no traditional rules that you must follow and trying to apply said rules in a story isn't a guaranteed success. Every story is unique.

I think if we are to continue this conversation we must take it to our talk pages. We have already said everything to say about the story.