Listen, if you have to institute exposition to convey critical information, then you at least should do it with style, putting it in a voice that is not only readable, but compelling. I Would Listen To That Guy Read The Phone Book That’s not to say you can’t make a heist-planning scene evocative and with its own dramatic action and tension, but only serves to show that action needn’t be - and perhaps shouldn’t be - separate from exposition. Instead of putting forth a scene where characters plan a heist, get right to the heist - the heist reveals the plan. As action unfolds, it reveals data you want the audience to have. Fold Exposition Into Action, Like Ingredients Into Delicate Batterĭramatic action is - a-duh - action infused with drama, like vodka infused with elderberries and/or the screams of my enemies. Two characters talking about shit they should already know? One character descending into a bizarre, out-of-place soliloquy? Giant cinder block paragraphs that fall from the sky and crush the audience beneath them? Identify exposition where it lives, fucks, and eats. Learn to mark its footprints, its scat-tracks.
#EXPOSITION EXAMPLES HOW TO#
You can’t cure exposition unless you know how to spot it. When parts need to come out and play, let them.
Open up a separate document from script or manuscript. Lock Up The Backstory In Its Own Plexiglass Enclosure On subsequent drafts, chop and whittle any exposition to a toothpick point. Vomit forth great globs of word sauce ’til it hardens. Write a zero draft with as much exposition as you can fit in your fool mouth. Like bury that “ice cream” in the Mojave desert. In other words: cut the shit and hurry it up. Even better: imagine them slapping billy clubs against their open palms. Imagine when writing your story - script, novel, short fiction, whatever - that the audience is sitting there, making that gesture. Point is, when that happens you gotta ramp it up.
#EXPOSITION EXAMPLES TV#
“C’mon,” they’ll say, making some kind of impatient gesture because, uhh, hello, the season finale of The Bachelor is on? You greedy asshole? God forbid you don’t get your reality TV fix, you mongrels. Imagine The Audience Is Sitting There, Staring At YouĮverybody tells stories, and everybody’s had that moment where they start to lose the audience sitting in front of them. And by “ice cream” I mean “dead stripper.” 3. You can’t eat ice cream that ain’t in the freezer. Start the story as late into the plot as you can extract yourself at first opportunity. This is the key to exposition always, always, always: stop telling, start showing. The latter is engaging: action and example. The former is dull: a narrative name-tag, a Facebook profile. Here’s an example: consider the difference of you telling me “John is an assassin,” and you showing me the act of John stalking and killing a dude on the job. Exposition is often the biggest customer in terms of telling-above-showing, and it reeks of amateur hour karaoke. And yet, the advice remains true just the same. After all, what we do is called story telling, and then in the next breath we’re chided for telling and not showing. Like most easily-digestible protein-nuggets of writing advice, Show-Don’t-Tell is one that ends up confusing. I present to you, 25 ways to twist exposition to your will, turning it into a dancing gimp that will serve you… All I’m trying to say is, you want to write a story, you’re going to have to deal with exposition in some form, and this list is about that. Okay, that last one maybe isn’t relevant, but it remains fact just the same.
Possums breed in dead bowels.įact: exposition remains necessary to convey information in storytelling.įact: exposition must be handled by a deft touch for it not to bog down your narrative ball-sack.įact: pterodactyls are really quite cool. Fact: when executed poorly, exposition is a boat anchor tied to the story’s balls.
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