This video is brought to you by Curiosity Stream
Ah! Aspiring one! Stay awhile, and listen! It’s time for you to hear the tale of exposition!
For you see, many years ago there was a golden age in science fiction and fantasy when writers
could merely front load all of the exposition into a story. Sometimes this happened in chapter
one. Some even had entire primers consisting of walls of text before the story even began.
Why back in that golden era science fiction writers could expound upon
in length the bloated workings of their setting’s technology side by side with fantasy writers who
could dump the entirely of their setting’s history into a single long chapter without care! Those
were indeed better days. Then came the modern writers! Those fiends, forever curse their names,
found ways to seamlessly weave their exposition into the story and thus ruined information dumps
for the rest of us! Yet I have come to you, noble acolyte to teach you the old ways so that we may
return to the golden era where information could be dumped freely and without care!
Join me and I shall show you the true way to handle exposition in a story!
Exposition in story telling is when a story conveys information about the backstory, prior
plot events, history, and any other information about the setting that may or may not be needed
to understand the story. How to handle exposition is a question I get asked a lot. Well that wish
is granted today! Terrible Writing Advice is here with a dump truck’s worth information to infodump
it all onto the laps of aspiring authors so they can do the same in their stories!
Now remember that handling exposition is super hard and that amateur writers should regard it
with fear and only see it as something that cannot be surmounted. Mastering the flow of information
in a story isn’t a skill that is honed and aided by a wide array of tools at the writer’s disposal,
but rather something that writers should just flail about randomly before giving up
and gracelessly dumping it at the audience's feet. Exposition should be seen as homework
that the audience has to do before they are allowed the enjoy the story. No exceptions!
Handling exposition should not be about deciding, critically,
what kind of and when information is needed to be passed along to the reader. Nor should a writer
worry about how to convey that information to the audience in a way that matches the tone,
doesn’t disrupt the story’s pace, and is woven into the narrative with a natural feel.
In other words, exposition should always stick out to the audience and never feel like a natural
part of the story. This is something that can’t be learned as it’s simply too difficult to do which
is why a writer should just forget all of that and stick the easy ways of handling exposition.
The easy ways are either infodumping or just not bothering to explain anything at all!
Infodumping is when the story dumps a massive amount of information onto the audience all at
once! Remember, the audience needs to fight their way through the author’s worldbuilding
to enjoy the story, like a siege or attrition warfare. Forcing the audience to wade through
a massive chunk of exposition will in no way would put anyone off and bore them to tears. The
pacing may come to a complete halt, but that’s simply unavoidable and thus can be written off
as the cost of doing writing. Do these details even come up in the story later on? Well no,
but I wrote it in my setting notes so it must go in the story somewhere. On the other end
of the spectrum, it’s also okay to give the audience no information whatsoever and just
keep throwing unexplained proper nouns at them until they get frustrated and wander off.
Finding a sweet spot between these two extremes takes way more effort than I’m willing to put in.
Now some genres tend to have more exposition than others. Hard science fiction loves it’s
long winded explanations of how its technologies work while Epic Fantasy just will not shut up
about its world’s lengthy history. That means that the audience of these genres are more accustom to
heavy chunks of exposition. As such a writer is free to abuse these expectations well past
any reasonable limit! And if any audience members fall asleep then just yell “It’s a
genre convention” and they’ll wake right up. See! I’m excused from good writing! My genre says so.
Also, as an aside, infodumps are great for animated series as exposition scenes make
excellent filler material to pad the runtime while saving on the precious animation budget.
Nothing gets my blood pumping in the middle of a fight scene quite like a long winded explanation
of how everyone’s powers work complete with charts and graphs. Even better when the people
fighting stop mid battle to politely explain to their enemy how their powers work rather than,
you know, beating their opponent?
Now infodumping is all nice, but what should be the vehicle of delivery for this information?
There are a number of ways to do this; dialog,
narrative, or flashbacks to name a few. Let’s start with dialog.
The trick to using dialog to relay exposition is to flat out avoid characterization,
tension, or conflict in a scene. Big, unwieldy chunks of expository dialog works best especially
when delivered in drab monotone. Basically just copy and paste the author's notes into
a pair of quotation marks and done! That was easy and painless… well for me anyways.
What if the exposition is something an in universe character would already know? Well,
as you know, Bob, this technique is called “As you know, Bob” when a character explains
something to the audience under the guise of lecturing to a character
even if that character should already know the information being presented since they
live in the setting. The trick to this is to make it as clumsy and out of place as possible
kind of like a cashier explaining to me how a fuel injection engine works while I’m buying groceries.
For example, monsters threaten the protagonist’s hometown.
Does the grizzled monster hunter struggle to figure out exactly what critical information
to give the protagonist about the monster in order for them to survive the encounter?
Does he have to rectify the protagonist’s pitifully incomplete knowledge on the setting’s
monsters? Does he have to quietly explain how to defeat the monster while it hunts them?
Does a second hunter argue with the first over the best method to kill the monster while they
clash over details of the monster’s biology? Does the protagonist try not to panic as the
hunter explains exactly why they don’t want to get caught by the monster alive and as the
protagonist’s once purely academic knowledge must now face the test of actual experience?
No. Instead the early action scene comes to halt as the hunter calmly explains the
setting’s monsters while the monster itself politely listens and waits for the exposition
to finish. We can’t have conflict or character development in our expository scenes after all.
While I’m at it I think I’ll have a character whose only purpose is to dispense exposition.
In fantasy, this usually takes the form of a small annoying magical creature and in science
fiction this usually falls to either a professor character or a robot. Does this character have
a character outside of explaining things? Do they get their own character arc? Are they at
least really funny? No. Instead I store them in the janitor’s closet after I’m done with them.
Speaking of professors, what about an in universe lecture? What a great idea!
Let’s take the most boring part of school and make that the primary delivery method of
in story information! Just have a professor lecture about how the magic system works in
class to a captive audience. Could we instead have the protagonist square off against their
rival in class with a practice magic duel to demonstrate to the class how the magic works
while the professor explains the specifics? What about having an antagonistic professor
put the protagonist on the spot by asking them a specific question about the magic system?
Could the protagonist brag about knowing the magic system inside and out only to realize that they
made the rest of the class jealous and thus add tension to the scene? Nope. Just stick with a
boring, dry academic lecture and hope the audience doesn’t nod off along with the rest of the class.
Man, this reminds me of the time I talked about flashbacks in the Beginning a Story video.
“Rather than using that flashback to show a key character moment, let’s instead use it
to reference an event that will in no way shape the protagonist’s outlook or ever come up again
in the story. Still not enough? Let’s flashback within a flashback! That won’t be confusing.”
Oh that’s right! Flashbacks within flashbacks are the best. Now using flashbacks to convey
information can be useful as they allow a writer to show rather than tell the
audience that something happened. They are such a handy tool that they should be used
all the time with no regard to how they affect the story’s flow. Don’t worry about
how difficult it can be to justify a flashback in a story or find a way to smoothly transition
to a flashback without it just showing up out of nowhere like the audience suddenly stepped
on a landmine that blew up the plot’s forward momentum. Flashbacks also make great filler in
visual media because you just reuse old footage by putting a black and white filter over it.
Though in this case it’s less exposition and more unneeded recap or bottle show.
What about exposition in the narrative itself rather than through dialog or flashbacks?
The same technique applies in that the exposition should be delivered to the
audience in the same dry, unpalatable clump used in every other delivery method mentioned so far.
Could this exposition be charming like the opening of the Hobbit? Could it at least be
really funny like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Nope. Narrative exposition is free
from having to have exposition match the tone or theme of the rest of the story and
can stick out like a sore thumb without worry. Remember to cluster it together too and never
consider breaking up larger clumps of narrative exposition and sprinkling it throughout the story.
Remember that exposition only works when wielded like a club to face. For example, what if the
writer wanted to tell the audience about the Great Backstory War? A dull, play by play account
is obviously the best method. If the writer wants to stress that the Great Backstory War was really
bad, then they should avoid having like say, a normally cheerful and boisterous character known
for embellishing stories revealed to be a veteran of that war and that they just flat out don’t want
to talk about it. Don’t tease out little details that could tell the audience more about an event
than a ten page essay on the subject. Never turn tidbits of exposition into compelling plot hooks,
foreshadowing, or interesting mysteries that tease out future possibilities. Remember, exposition
should never excite the audience or challenge them in anyway, other than their patience.
Now what about deciding on when exposition is even needed? Is the information ever relevant
to the plot? Does it ever come in the story at all? Does it create new story possibilities
somewhere down the road? What does this add to the story? Nothing! It’s just there to make me sound
smart! For example, what if I wanted to explain my science fiction story’s faster than light drive?
Does this drive’s function ever come up in the story like a drive failure mid jump
that could leave the crews’ atoms scattered across the cosmos? The chief engineer could
explain exactly why’s that’s bad to stress to the young officer protagonist that the
FTL drive indeed does need to be fixed now, but do I really want the exposition to drive
the narrative stakes and tension in my plot? No. If people are too immersed in the story then how
will they ever realize how clever the pseudo physics nonsense that powers my FTL drive is?
Exposition should always be in the story, but never a part of the story, kind of like
a brick in your breakfast cereal. And if anyone complains about all of the information dumps then
just say that’s how the classics did it because I’m sure the same audience standards still apply.
Expository scenes cannot be layered to pull double or even triple duty. They are not allowed to be
fun or interesting in any way. Successfully relaying information in a story is all about
ignoring the massive array of tools a writer can use to convey information to the audience. It’s
all about perspective, mainly a perspective that a writer should see handling exposition deftly
as an insurmountable wall and then turning that insurmountable wall against the audience instead.
KNIGHT COMMANDER: NOOOO!!!!!
GREED: Well now that that’s done we can move on to more important matters.
DARK LORD: Like you surrendering all of the sponsors to me!
GREED: See. This is part of the problem. Look at the state of things? What a mess you all have made
of something that could be far more profitable. So much time wasted on pointless grandstanding,
needlessly complicated plots, short term profits, squandered potential, shallow dogma,
rudderless revolution, wanton blood-lust, and worst of all unpalatable preaching.
DARK LORD: You think you’re better than us? Greed is evil too.
GREED: I disagree. I am elemental and not just an intrinsic part of this world,
but a fundamental aspect of all life. When the first cell decided to store energy was when my
power truly began. I am life’s very motivation, a desire to better one’s self and situation. Greed
is evil? No. Greed is fundamental to life’s very survival. And I shall see to it that this world
survives as well in spite of the peril you have placed it in with your lackluster performance.
DARK LORD: Lackluster?
GREED: Indeed. Let you show you how’s it done. There is only one way to save the TWA
expanded universe now. For you see these videos come out a few hours earlier on
Nebula, a streaming service built by a host of educational creators here on YouTube. Nebula
also features original content by these creators as well without the yoke of YouTube’s timidity.
Nebula has even teamed up with Curiosity Stream,
a subscription streaming service with thousands of documentaries and nonfiction titles.
Like Dream The Future, a documentary about protecting and preserving our
knowledge from destruction in an increasingly digital age narrated by Sigourney Weaver.
DARK LORD: Preserving things? Why would I want to do that?
GREED: Ah, but Dark Lord, don’t you want to the support the channel?
Don’t you want to see more of these funny skits?
DARK LORD: Uh…
GREED: You see, I have a deal on offer. TWA fans can sign up at CuriosityStream.com/TWA and get 26%
off Curiosity Stream’s annual subscription for less than $15 a year. That’s $14.79 using the
code TWA to get both CuriosityStream and free nebula access, including ad free TWA videos.
DARK LORD: Wow… So if you offer people something rather than just
threaten them with death and torment, they will be more likely to do what you want?
GREED: See what happens when you unleash Greed? We all get nice things.
At any rate, I’m done here. Now it’s time for everyone present to make a… choice.