Writing Tips

The fish out of water

We’ve already touched on this above. One of your protagonists (or occasionally a minor character) is new to a job or situation and needs things explaining to them. Although this method might be overused it’s often the most efficient and natural way of delivering an exposition dump. After all, every story involves a character being exposed to something new and/or unusual so it’s not surprising that they would actively seek out information.

However, what should be avoided are situations where a protagonist is managing to extract information from someone who normally wouldn’t want to give them anything at all, for example, the secret agent holding a gun on a rival and getting all the details of the super villain’s hidden base (down to the villain’s inside leg measurement). If two characters would naturally be antagonistic towards each other we should give them a strong motive to cooperate, even if unwillingly. Ideally this motivation should be more interesting and complex than a simple desire to avoid pain and death.

The voice-over/screen text

Many creatives consider the use of a narrator’s voice-over (or hearing the thoughts of a character) to be an admission of failure, but sometimes it might be your only solution, especially if you’re quickly trying to get something complicated across. Both the movie versions of Dune use these techniques and, given the depth of Dune lore and the consequent potential for audience bafflement, it’s forgivable. Screen text also falls under this category, perhaps the most famous example being the, now iconic, rolling text at the start of every Star Wars movie. Some novels, often those on a fantasy theme, have their own equivalent of screen text with chapters being preceded by snippets of information taken from other sources connected with the story (diary fragments, written histories, quotes etc.). It’s perhaps no mystery why these techniques are often used in science fiction and fantasy properties which are often based on a great deal of complex world building

Visual storytelling

This applies as well to novels as it does to movies and television. A huge amount of exposition can be delivered through scene setting and non-verbal communication. If a character walks into a building like they own it, the chances are that they do own it. Humans are adept at summing up people and situations quickly and often only a fleeting look at a person or the placing of a few clues in their living space is enough to tell you their age, profession, prosperity, pastimes etc.

Many television series and movies use visual storytelling as the background to the opening titles to help the audience get up to speed with the story before the formal start of the action. In the opening of the Harrison Ford movie Patriot Games a single shot moves through the main character’s house and virtually tells us his whole life history through the examination of family photos, awards and newspaper headlines. The opening titles of the Expanse television adaptation is another example of this, a series of sped-up graphics showing the spread of humanity across the planets and moons of the solar system. We don’t get much actual plot, but the visuals and the ethereal, other-worldly (actually Norwegian) singing that accompanies the graphics do a great deal to seal the location, themes and tone of the series.

Hidden exposition: the 2+2 rule

A better way of dealing with exposition is to try and hide it. Find ways to drip-feed your audience information without letting them know what you’re up to and trust them to be able to figure stuff out for themselves. Zoo animals often enjoy their food more if they have to look for it. For this reason keepers hide fruit in odd places or hang up meat where it’s a challenge to get at. In the same way your story-hungry audience will appreciate being made to work a little rather than being constantly spoon-fed exposition. In other words, if the answer is ‘4’ give the audience the ‘2+2’ (or ‘3+1’) instead and let them do the maths.

Let’s say a key plot point in your story is that one of your characters (Vince) robs the apartment of another character (Jim). We don’t know about the robbery yet and we see Vince at the bus stop. He take off his beanie to scratch his head and a small piece of broken glass falls on the pavement. Vince flicks it into the gutter with his foot. No explanation is offered. Later, we see the police at Jim’s apartment looking at the signs of a break in. In the background there’s a broken window and shards of glass on the floor. How much attention you give to the glass will depend on how heavily you want to get the hint across. Eventually the truth will be revealed, but in the meantime you’ve given the audience a clue — something that not only provides them with information but also invites them to become more engaged with your story as they mull over the possibilities.

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Don’t tie yourself in knots over exposition. Sometimes a little quick and dirty exposition might be your only way out of a fix, but the trick to good storytelling is to look ahead and avoid any narrative traps you might be heading into. If you know your character needs to go from A to B at some point in the future, figure out how they’re going to get to A in the first place and then what will propel them to travel to B. If your best solution is that a ‘mysterious stranger’ pops up and tells them to go to B, then you need a better solution. If the character finds a written clue on a scrap of paper telling them to go to B, then fair enough, but give them a good reason to pick up the paper in the first place. Think ahead and don’t rely on coincidences — many great writers have relied on coincidences to propagate their plots (Charles Dickens, for example) but it’s more usually the sign of bad planning.