Talk:It Breathes, It Bleeds, It Breeds/@comment-27516784-20160314205605/@comment-26030957-20160604013927

Ah, dude, the definition of exposition is back story, so you saying that "the exposition is just back story" is redundant and ridiculous.

The guy asked where he could improve and one of the first things you learn in fiction writing is not to start a story with a big information dump. I liked the story and was just offering an opinion.

It works as a creepypasta but short stories are about how people react and interact with one another. An absence of other characters in no way makes Gore stronger. If the protagonist interacted more, had some dialogue, the reader would feel more for him, hence the Gore would be stronger felt. We never see him dealing with, or even thinking about (besides his mother) another person. The story is basically told in a vacuum.

Saying things like,  I am lonely and have no friends, is telling. Having a character interact awkwardly with others and not be able to connect, dreamily talking to a girl and having her ignore him, then going back to his apartment where he scans the internet desperately looking for someone to talk to shows that he is lonely. Get it?

"We spent the entire night reading and telling stories"--that is telling.

"Perched on a stool as the darkness gave way to morning, I opened another book and leafed through its pages, searching for a story I remembered my mother reading me" that is showing.

There is a lot of telling in this story, but that is the nature of the beast. It is a creepypasta, after all, written, most likely, with narration in mind.

If there was a small glimmer of hope in there, brought about by another character, and the protagonist had a true, a realized character arc, it would make the ending way more devastating. It is a tragedy by definition--in that they both die--all of these devices would make it more tragic. Not just a gross out.

These are well known things in fiction writing, nothing I am just making up to be a troll or something.

But it's fine the way it is. Empy is a great writer with an absolutely amazing imagination, he just asked what could make it stronger and I offered him my opinion.