Show Don't Tell Is Terrible Advice

I hate the advice of show don't tell. And by the end of this video, you will too. So, here's a scene that uses telling instead of showing. Tell me, do you think this is badly written?

>> I am your father.

>> Textbook telling, no subtext in sight. So, does that make this exposition bad? According to the cult of show don't tell, it must because it breaks the sacred rule. This is a brutal metaphor, but show don't tell is the asbestos of the writing community. Everyone's been using it, but it's secretly been poisoning our stories all this time. Today, I'm blowing the whistle. I'm making enemies today. But once we're done here, your brain will be rewired. Like, I'm not just dunking on show don't tell today. I'm also telling you about a radically better way to write this stuff. And using it, your audience won't be annoyed by your exposition. They'll be too busy being delighted.

Here's another example. Is this badly written?

>> So, what's this, Spike?

>> It's the causeway.

>> Talk us through it.

>> It's the only way to the mainland, but we can only get here in low tide. In high tide, the sea covers it.

>> This is clearly telling, so it's therefore bad, right? Well, no. In fact, I reckon this is the best way the writer could have approached this scene. He made the correct call. So far in 28 Years Later, the pacing of the movie's opening has been nice and tight. If we were to make space for a scene that shows this instead, perhaps Spike is by the gate and some people are trying to leave, but they can't, and we piece together the tides are to blame, that extra scene would have really hurt the pacing. Showing here would have done more harm than good. Telling is so much quicker than showing. It can make a story leaner if used properly. That's a big virtue it's got going for it.

One of the many other reasons why I hate show don't tell is its insidious subtext. Covert is better than overt goes the advice. The natural belief that programs into people and it saddens me so deeply to see that so many writers out there believe this. They believe the device is inherently boring. How can exposition be anything but tedious if hiding it in their meal? if tricking people into learning things is the goal. But that's so obviously untrue. Exposition can be as dramatic and compelling as any other device if used properly. Again, case in point.

>> I am your father.

>> I'm not done. Another reason why Show don't tell sucks. As lovely as subtext can be, it doesn't account for how some parts of the audience will be more attentive than others. If the information in question is both complex and crucial because it will come into play later, maybe it's the mechanics of how FTL works in your universe, which will be a problem later on, or how rising tides affect the causeway they'll need to use. Showing it with subtlety means it may go over some people's heads. So, those people will be confused and quite unhappy when they're not grasping what's going on later in the story. If knowing the information is required to enjoy the story, telling just might be the best way to get it across. Forget show don't tell. A lot of the time you should tell, not show.

You know what show don't tell actually is? It's the mostly true lie a physics teacher tells their students to help them grasp the broad strokes of a complex issue only for them at a later stage of education to be taught the correct model. only no such model has been proposed. So today I want to propose my idea of what that model should be and I'll explain why it's so much better than the model of show don't tell at every step of the way. It divides exposition not into two types telling and showing but three. Type one is intrusive exposition. Type two is immersive exposition. And type three that's dramatic exposition. Now, type one exposition is usually very boring. Type two is usually incredibly immersive. But it's when you hit type three. That's when the magic happens. That is when your exposition elevates your story in the most fantastic ways. And what is type three? It's Luke, I am your father. It's Cooper realizing he's missed 23 years of his kids' lives. It's Harry breaking into Snape's mind and seeing how his father once bullied him. It's also Ned learning alongside the audience that Joffrey isn't actually Robert's son. It is the kind of exposition that is nothing short of a delight to experience. These are the moments that shatter the apocryphal idea that exposition is some inherently boring thing that needs to be disguised as if you're tricking your dog into eating medicine by wrapping it in cheese. And I'm about to share with you some very actionable ways to have exposition of this caliber in your story. We'll start by looking at some truly terrible examples. And as we go along, we'll climb the ladder of quality until we're analyzing the best kind of exposition it's possible to write.

Let's begin with type one. So here's a line from a recent movie. Why is it a bad one?

>> If any of that message is even remotely true, then you are exactly the kind of alien threat I was commandeered by the Green Lantern Corps to protect this planet against.

>> This isn't a terribly good line. What's quite revealing here is how if you ask this question to most writers, they'll say the reason why this sucks is because it's telling, not showing. The issue is, while that's kind of correct, it's detached from the actual reason of why this is bad. Show don't tell is a huristic. It's not an actual way to diagnose problems in a story, which is why as a writer, you should ditch it. Yes, this is telling, and yes, it's fairly stiff because real people aren't so long-winded. But if you ask me, the reason why this is a bad line is because this is clearly exposition for our sake as the audience. So, it breaks our immersion and it shatters the fourth wall. That's the reason why this line sucks. It takes us out of the story. A lot of folks aren't familiar with DC law. They don't know about the Green Lantern Corps or what its mission is. And Guy Gardner is clearly saying that here. So those people can be filled in. We can see the hand of the writer. A boom pole may as well have slipped into the frame because both would have had the exact same effect. Both would have brought us out of [music] the story. This being telling is merely incidental. In fact, this is classic type one because this is intrusive exposition. the most common type out there and by far the worst type. Suicide Squad, for example, has only type one exposition.

>> This is good.

>> Don't even need to play the rest of that clip. You've already seen it. Infamously bad. The Star Wars title crawls, as much as some like them, those are type one, too. Frankly, most writers use mostly type one. And this is why audiences everywhere have such a dislike for the stuff. Intrusive exposition gives the device a bad name. And it has a fairly simple definition. It is any exposition that makes the audience realize this is information said for their sake. It's essentially any kind of exposition that breaks immersion. Type one always breaks the fourth wall in some way. Hence why I call this one intrusive.

As a quick aside, my next video is all about how to write immortality. How would they think and act? How do you have stakes in a story when your characters can't die? If you don't want to wait, you can watch it right now on my Patreon. All you've got to do is pledge at the cheapest tier, and you'll get early access to [music] this and all of my videos from now on. Plus, there are workshops and consultations and stuff, but there's also a Patreon exclusive video essay I just released on how to write characters smarter than you are. There's a link to this all down below.

But have you ever seen a character say, "As you know, Bob," where they explain something that character already knows.

>> As we all know, the hive doesn't just destroy their enemies, they subsume them.

>> As you know, a blockade is perfectly legal.

>> This is called unmotivated exposition, and it's when there is no reason at all for the character saying what they might say. It is so obviously bad, but you'll see it everywhere. A close cousin to As You Know Bob, and it's one Hollywood loves to use, is having a newscaster at the start of the film rattling off exposition. Not only is it always tediously dry, they're saying information they have no reason to say because everyone in the world already knows it, and even worse, the information is often barely relevant to the actual news at hand.

>> Many blamed Ross for the collateral damage, believing it was his relentless pursuit of Banner's Hulk that led to the rampage. It also resulted in the president's Alexa estrangement from his daughter, Dr. Betty Ross, Bruce Banner's ex-girlfriend.

>> You don't want to be like this. This is disgusting. This is awful in every way.

>> Why are we being told about his estrangement from his daughter when it has nothing to do with the news? While this is blatantly intrusive, being so clearly for the audience's sake, I'm starting here because all of this unmotivated rubbish, this is barely type one. I want to create the label of type zero because it sucks so much. This is the worst kind of exposition conceivable. Even expository narration where they don't pretend to be diagetic or anything, they'll just say it to the audience is better than this.

Speaking of taking a tiny step up in quality, you have expository narration. While this is relatively better in the same way being kicked in the balls is preferable to being shot, it will break immersion. Bear in mind, I'm not talking about narration in general, mind you, as a person is telling you their story, such as in Fight Club or The Big Labowski. Pretty much every first person novel uses narration as someone is telling you their story. That's a different device altogether, which can work very well. I'm talking specifically expository narration, where the writer uses it at the start because they're drawing a blank on how else to get the information across.

>> It's been half a century since the [music] scavengers destroyed our moon. here. Each of us does one thing and we have to nail it every time.

>> It's dull, DULL, DULL. MY GOD, IT'S DULL. People despise this stuff for good reason. Most of the time, the writer won't even try to mask this as the storyteller spinning a yarn. You can tell that because after the opening, we never have narration again because that initial payload of exposition has been deployed. The literary equivalent of this is having an entire page which spouts off lore for no good reason. This is all type one. It pushes people out of the story. But it's worth mentioning this kind of narration can be done well. Lord of the Rings comes to mind as does Hellboy 2. We had to know how the Golden Army works. So they justify the exposition as a bedtime story.

>> No, no, no. No stories tonight.

>> Just one and then I I'll GO TO BED RIGHT AWAY.

And to give credit, this is a good usage of the device.

>> And King Balor, the onearmed king of Elfland, watched the slaughter in dread and despair.

It's well justified as to why the character is saying it, not some out of nowhere info dump about the world's general history, god forbid, and it's delivered as a story in itself that we can follow and be entertained by. So much so, this transcends type one because we're being swept up in a story. I'd argue this just about classifies as type two instead, but we'll get there in a second. We're slowly climbing the ladder of quality.

Now, if you're a longtime writer, you'll have probably heard of the various tricks you can use to smuggle in exposition. A famous one is the Pope in the Pool coined in Save the Cat by Blake Snder. It came from a screenplay he once read where they're in the Vatican, and they deliver exposition as the Pope swimming around. It's the idea that you say your stuff, but something so weird and strange is happening, it disguises that exposition. The Big Short did this where they had some really boring info to get across, so they cut to Margot Robbie explaining it in a bathtub.

>> Basically, Louisis Reer's mortgage bonds were amazingly profitable for the big banks. They made billions and billions on their 2% fee they got for selling each of these bonds. But then they started running out of mortgages to put in them.

Now, I've seen some writing gurus say this is a great method for delivering exposition, and I really have to push back and push back hard because no, this isn't a great technique. It's a cheap gimmick. Instead of thinking of this as a shorefire great way to do exposition, think of it instead as the Alamo, the fallback point as a writer, when every other conceivable way of delivering exposition organically has failed. So you must resort to the dirty trick that is the Pope in the Pool method. If you ever use this method, don't be proud of it. Feel filthy as you should. It is worth stressing here the screenplay Blake Snider read which inspired him to coin this phrase. It's never became a film. It doesn't bode well for a technique when its namesake comes from a screenplay so good they abandoned it and it's never went anywhere. Like, I know Hollywood's productions are a bit more complex than that, but still, it's not a good look. For a film like The Big Shaw, the amount of info they had to give to make the story understandable was absurd. They pretty much had no choice but to use these devices. And that highlights the important truth that sometimes every writer needs to use intrusive exposition. But the point stands, this technique is not quality, it's cheap. Why? Because the audience is clever. They understand exactly what you're doing here. So, even if you use this device impeccably, you're still breaking immersion as they can see the hand of the author sprinkling information onto the page.

Now, with these prior examples, you might think Type 1 is near always terrible rubbish. But what I want to stress is how all of those prior examples, those are the bottom of the barrel techniques. You can deliver intrusive exposition in far better ways than this. Also, what's worth stressing is how surprisingly subtle the immersionbreaking nature of Type 1 can be. Take that Superman clip. It does break immersion. It is for the audience's sake, but it's not this brazen, obvious punch in the face of a fourth wall break like those prior examples were. The sort that remind us we're sitting in a chair looking at a screen or reading a book. Don't think of breaking immersion as a simple binary value. The audience is either into the story or out of the story. It can be broken in some rather subtle ways. Subtle enough that we're still engaged more or less, but the road bump it presents stops the story [music] from flowing smoothly. Stops us from being truly swept up in the narrative. [music]

A great example here is the device of the layman. This is a classic. If you have a character who's new to things, explaining whatever it is to them is an opportunity to convey information. It is such a common device. If you're a writer, you haven't just seen it used 100 times. You've probably used it a hundred times. Anytime there is a mentee master relationship, this always comes up to some degree.

>> The force. The force is what gives the Jedi his power.

>> Shifue and Po, Neo and Morpheus, Sherlock and Watson, Gandalf and Frodo. This device is the vanilla ice cream of exposition. It is everywhere. Pretty much every writer uses it somehow somewhere. And if I had to review in one word, it would be fine. It's It's fine. Like, it's rarely exciting and it can become quite boring if you overuse it. Here's a good litmus test for you. If your layman character asks more than two questions thereabouts in any one scene, you've probably gone a bit too far with things, but it's okay on the whole. The issue is, despite this being a big step up on techniques like Pope in the Pool, this is still usually type one. Even if you're masking it effectively as this character needs to be filled in to understand. A lot of the time with this device, the audience can sense that this is still for our sake. Like just slap a post-it note saying the audience on the layman's forehead as they're being explained to because we can already sense it's there. Very often with layman characters, they're an obvious proxy for the audience.

And here's where my model of exposition gets really funky. Because while the layman is usually type one, it can be any of the three types. Take the architect rambling at Neo. That is some awful type one. Or what's the worst usage I've seen in a while is an alien Earth. She's explaining who her brother is, not even to another person, but to her toys. And it is so obviously infuriatingly for our sake.

>> Who does he work for? He works for Prodigy, just like us.

But then a stark example on the complete other end of the spectrum is this scene. It employs the layman and it is riveting.

>> When the king turned to flee, I drove my sword into his back.

We'll cover how you can write stuff of that caliber later, but some of you may be wondering, hold on. Isn't all of type 1 basically telling? No. There are some rare examples out there of a writer trying to show, but it's still breaks immersion. So, there's something about A Quiet Place that has always bugged me, and it's Lee's research board. Uh, not only does it make no sense because he can't even spell armor correctly, wears the U, but it's also involved in I'll just have to show it to you in the climax. So, the two people in the corner with a monster inches away and we get a visualization of the character's mental process. And this is showing right here. This is technically showing, but it is clearly the writer worshiping at the altar of show don't tell because as they show it, it's hilarious how forced this is. There is a question literally written on the board. What is their weakness? And that it shows her the hearing implant as she gradually figures it out. It is such a blunt way of showing a thought process that it took me out of the story somewhat. It is admittedly true that almost all intrusive exposition is telling, but sometimes if showing is botched badly enough, it can break the fourth wall.

But there's also something near every intrusive example we just went over shares in common. And it's not just breaking immersion. It's something else. It's killing the story's momentum. Intrusive exposition is often kryptonite to a story's pacing. Every example we just went over, 28 years later, Margot Robbie, Oblivion, A New Hope. The story stopped, perhaps only for a brief line or perhaps for a whole scene just to tell us [music] stuff. Type one exposition, especially when we get lots of it in one go. My [music] god, does it stop a story dead in its tracks. You can get cheeky with this, such as having characters walk across a causeway, offsetting this all by creating the illusion of progress by the characters physically progressing in some sort of task. But that won't wholly solve this problem. And if you overuse that, people will see through it.

Take a story like the Matrix. Throughout that first iconic scene and then with Neo and those robots burrowing into his belly, we never get intrusive exposition barring that moment where Smith talks about Neo's life. Our first proper scene of type 1 is deep into the story when Morpheus finally explains what the Matrix is to Neo. Even then, it's very well done. The effect of such sparingly used type 1 on the narrative is magical. It means that the entire first act is not just incredibly immersive, but also perfectly paced. This is how you want to open your story. If you can take notes, please write this down. You want to try as hard as you possibly can to have no type one in the opening scenes and chapters of your story. Trust me, move heaven and earth to cut all type one from at least your opening. It will make a big difference as to how much your audience enjoys your story. To see the reasons why, take a look at a film that goes in the opposite direction of The Matrix. Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning. By far, this is the worst paced film of the franchise for a very good reason. In every other film, while we do have a few briefing scenes, sure, these ones go on for far, far too long. We get two minutes of fanervicey flashbacks. Then the opening debrief runs for another 2 and 1/2 minutes. Then, of course, there's another 4-minute info dump. The first 40 minutes or so of that movie are excruciatingly slow, and it was almost entirely because we had too much intrusive exposition.

But enough winging and whining. Let's move on to the good stuff. Type two. This is what great writers use for the lion share of their exposition. It is often when a writer has internalized the truth that the audience has a far better time when they don't notice the exposition over the times that they do. Though while that's how most people will start writing type two, those people are usually still trapped in the show don't tell framework because there is a lot of glorious immersive exposition out there that they could be writing but they're not. their perspective on what consists of good exposition is still too narrow. Type two immersive exposition never ever gets in the way of the scene. It has a simple definition. It doesn't just maintain immersion. It often bolsters it. It's usually entertaining, but it is always immersive. As a writer improves their craft, they'll write more and more type two. And type one usage should shrivel up until it's barely being used at all. This is a really cozy place to be as a writer. Master type two and you'll create some stupidly immersive stories.

Avatar, while it has a lot of clunky type one going on.

>> This is why we're here. Unobtanium.

It also has one moment that is perfect type two. Jake has just arrived on the planet. He's rolling across the tarmac and then he sees some arrows sticking out from the wheels of a truck. This gets the viewer's mind worring. Who shot these arrows? Why? From this, we can deduce there are natives in the area and they're hostile towards the humans for some reason. Immediately, you can tell this is a huge leap in terms of quality from everything in type one because this is quintessential type two. If type one exposition pushes the audience out of the story, type two pulls them in. Often with type two, people don't notice being fed exposition at all because it's being done so subtly. All too often, type two is subtext in dialogue or a visual clue that engages our imaginations.

But, and here's where it gets interesting, type two can also be telling. This brings us to an important question I'm sure a few people have been asking. Hold on. Isn't intrusive exposition basically telling and immersive exposition basically showing? No, it is not. Those are not the terms we're defining these groups by today? And that's for a good reason. Ultimately, what is your main goal in your writing? Do you want to use the device of showing and that is the end unto itself or do you want to have the audience be swept up in the narrative? You obviously want the latter, right? And the problem with the former is while showing usually sweeps people up, it doesn't always. Results are not guaranteed. Case in point, that quiet place whiteboard. I can think of lots of different instances where you should on the side of telling over showing. And that is because showing is a storytelling recipe. But you don't want to be blindly following recipes as a writer.

Here's Brandon Sanderson to explain. So, as writers, I want you to be chef writers and not cook writers. A lot of writing advice you will get, a lot of the books you will read will outline recipes for you to use to make a story. Your ability to tweak the recipe to get the results you want for your specific instance uh your specific situation is going to be vital to you being successful as a writer. If all you can do is follow a recipe, your stories will start to turn out either bland or weird. As a novice writer, it's okay to follow a recipe. Such recipes might be the three-act structure, the hero's journey, show don't tell, but it's something that you want to outgrow. If you want to level up your craft, don't blindly follow recipes. Instead, gain an intuitive understanding of every ingredient, then freestyle your way towards achieving the effect you want to achieve. That is precisely how the masters do it. This is why I define types one and two not by any particular technique they employ, but by the results they achieve, by the effect. And this model defines them that way because that is the chef's way of perceiving things, not the cooks.

The truth is, as lovely as showing is, and it is lovely, it is also overrated. A writer might employ nothing but showing in a scene, believing they're making something of sublime quality, but that isn't actually the best version of the scene they could have written. They were too married to the recipe. A great example to site here is The Gentleman. It is an extraordinary film for a few reasons, but what I find so just enchanting about it is how from start to finish, it is taking the mother of all dumps on the storytelling convention that subtext is the way to go. If they had blindly followed the formula of show don't tell, they would have had to remove pretty much all of Fletcher's narration because he's telling us the backstories and personalities of every character.

>> Unique background, Hezel Mickey, Americanborn road scholar. So he's born clever but poor only.

His narration is the glue that binds the whole film together. Everything he tells us is immersive exposition, not intrusive because it's drawing us in the total absence of showing while at the same time being just an engrossing story is remarkable here. This is such an interesting case study as a writer. Here we're told to at every step of the way and the story is fantastic all the same. He explodes on the scene like a millennial [ __ ] firecracker.

>> We'll have to stop you right there, Fletcher.

>> That doesn't sound like the dry eye I know.

>> Just making sure you're paying attention. Raymond,

>> who'd have thought telling could be so fun.

>> It's warming up now, isn't it?

And take God of War. In that game, whenever you're in the boat, Mimir will tell stories that fill us in as to the law of the world. No showing to see here. It is exclusively telling and his stories are usually so fun to listen to the player won't dock the boat once they've reached their destination just because they want to hear a mere finish what's essentially a well-written info dump.

>> Odin carved them up to form the realms from his body and let the torrent of his blood nearly drown every giant alive.

And take this line from Alien Earth.

>> Specimens are the mission.

>> Easy for you to say cyborg.

>> Why does he call him a cyborg there? It feels just inauthentic, as if it's for our sake so we can learn he's a cyborg. This is textbook intrusive. But compare it to a similar scene in the same franchise. Well, they handle things far better.

>> He never said anything about an android being on board. Why not?

This is the same exposition in the same franchise, more or less, but one is infinitely better than the other. Ripley has a strong inch character reason for hating androids. bringing this up as if to protest him being there feels totally natural. And when to try and calm her down, he explains how his programming means that he's not a threat to her, delivering even more exposition, we're still totally immersed.

>> That could never happen now with our behavioral inhibitors. It is impossible for me to harm or by mission of action allowed to be harmed a human being.

>> You sure you don't want some?

What Ripley and Bishop just said there is telling, very on the nose, and it's also incredibly entertaining. There is a stark difference between the cyborg line and the Android one. The former is intrusive, the latter is immersive. Both are telling about now you may be asking, how can I take the device of the layman or expository narration, which typically fall under intrusive, but make them feel immersive like The Gentleman or Game of Thrones did? And the answer, there isn't a one-sizefits-all. Sadly, in The Gentleman is a combination of charming dialogue, excellent chemistry he has with the layman, a very voicy narrator, and a well-established framing device for why Fletcher is explaining all of this to us. But in your story, it may look entirely different, yet still be immersive. Again, be a chef, not a cook here. Perceive things in terms of the goals you want to achieve. That goal being to immerse and entertain. Don't blindly rely on any formula because no formula works 100% of the time. That said, there are some fairly reliable techniques that you can generally apply and they'll usually work a charm.

Why not bury your exposition in realistic dialogue? If a character sincerely asks how someone's family is doing and they reply, if it feels organic, then that's not going to take anyone out of the story at all.

>> Were your parents in New York when it happened?

>> Yeah.

>> [ __ ]

>> Yeah. Well, that's the world we live in now, isn't it?

That sounds quite natural and it's seeped in subtext too which gives us a nice little puzzle to dwell on as to what happened in New York. That is great exposition. Although admittedly after they do have this hamfisted line that doesn't feel quite right.

>> I haven't seen you for nearly 20 years and you come asking me for transit papers

and it was a great exchange until that point. It's a fairly subtle immersion break but him saying I haven't seen you in 20 years. It feels like it's for our sake so we can know that about their history.

Another great way to do it is having the exposition be seeped in conflict. If a character confesses something in a confrontation with someone else, as long as they have a good reason for saying what they do, that can be a great way to convey things.

>> No, you're not going. You're not leaving.

>> What do YOU WANT TO KNOW? WHAT? THAT I DON'T HAVE 12 BROTHERS?

>> THAT I'M A [ __ ] ORPHAN?

>> NO, YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR THAT. NO, YOU DON'T want to hear that. You don't want to hear that I got [ __ ] cigarettes put out on me when I was a little kid. that this isn't [ __ ] surgery, that the [ __ ] stabbed me. YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR THAT [ __ ] SKYLAR.

>> THAT RIGHT there is the layman. What we just said is usually intrusive exposition, but you hardly noticed it there. You're so swept up in the intensity of the scene. When you hit a certain threshold of experience, you'll find that you're delivering immersive exposition without really trying. Often if you just depict your character walking through the world, interacting with it as they normally do, every other moment is an opportunity to seamlessly convey exposition about that world while feeling quite organic. Just depict things as they would appear to your character, and that's usually enough. Trust me, the more you write, the better you'll get at recognizing these little moments for exactly what they are until you're conveying all kinds of stuff without really thinking about it.

Let's go back to Children of Men because that film crushes this. We get some lovely type two in that one. We see him on the train when people start throwing stuff at him. All right, we know there's a lot of civil unrest and the billboard saying avoiding fertility tests is a crime. That tells us a lot about the state of the world. But because it's conveyed to us so nonchalantly, it's incredibly immersive. While other writers have exposition that feels hamfisted, this exposition feels so laidback. Oh yeah, there are some cages at the train station filled with refugees speaking in German and other European languages. Whatever, that's a thing. Anyway, moving on. This is such a good way of delivering exposition. It is quintessential type two. While with intrusive exposition, the story feels as if it's desperately trying to tell you this information. With this style of exposition, it is the opposite. The story feels like it doesn't care if you see this stuff or not. It's there. You can notice it or not. Doesn't really matter. It's not important. And that lack of urgency the story has in conveying the exposition cultivates an incredibly immersive atmosphere.

In a video game, you can do something quite similar here by having letters and email chains left around for the player to discover. Because this is totally optional and not in the player's face, learning what these documents have to say is usually a super immersive way to convey information. But as lovely as this approach is, it won't work all the time. For odd bits of worldbuing, this is great. But for crucial bits of character backstory and how this magic system works and all this other need to know information, something a little more overt, perhaps even being intrusive, can be the right call. It all depends on the situation.

One more for fun, another way of turning what might be type one into type two, is anticipation. This is a great rule in general because if you can build a sense of anticipation around what's being explained, people will enjoy it so much more. An example that comes to mind is Red Dead Redemption 2. We've been with Arthur for about 40 hours now, and the whole time we've been wondering about his backstory. Like, why is he the way he is? Then, at one point, pretty much unprompted, he decides to confess all to a stranger.

>> You know, I had a son once years ago. Don't talk about him much.

And he proceeds to tell the tragic story of how his son died. Now, if we'd had this moment in the first hour or so of the game, [music] it would have felt intrusive. Even just hearing that clip out of context, it does sound a bit intrusive. But because the player's been wondering about his past for so long, when he finally opens up, the player does not think, "God, well, this is shoddy." They're instead enthralled as they're hearing the answer to a question they've been wondering about for ages now. The more the audience is looking forward to learning the truth, the more swept up they'll be when those answers finally come along.

But here's the rub. A lot of writers remain stuck using just type one and two because they believe the following lie. The delivery of information is inherently undramatic. A writer can be trapped in type 2 delivering merely good exposition because they're still trapped in that show don't tell framework. So everything they've been delivered has been treated as if it's like giving medicine to a dog by wrapping it up in treats. They're still thinking in terms of the pope in the pool. They've just mastered how to disguise information. A mastery of an aspect of the craft for sure, but one built on a rickety flawed foundation. Master type three and your exposition will be done so well it stops being a mere footnote of the scene and becomes the main reason why the audience might enjoy that scene. And when you do it right, embracing the truth that exposition can be as entertaining and dramatic as anything can be in a story. That's when you've mastered the device.

So what is type three? What is dramatic exposition? Well, it's this.

>> You're the Sith Lord.

It's also this.

>> The boy must [music] die. Yes, he must die.

As well as this.

>> I see dead people.

It's even this.

>> You're looking for me.

Defining it in its most simple terms, dramatic exposition is always a revelation and it usually changes the direction of the story. Type 3 is not telling the audience lore or details of a charact's past. With that alone, you'll never reach the heights of type 3. You'll notice how dramatic exposition is the next progression on the others. Instead of merely bringing the story to a standstill like type one or merely not interfering with the story's flow like type two, type three advances the story because this bombshell information, this revelation is progressing something. It could be a character's arc, the plot, or a grander mystery. Here's what distinguishes type 3 exposition from the others. Those types of exposition merely establish context, while type three is the story itself. With the first two, we'll learn about the characters, the world, and why both are the way they are. It has its place. But type three hits different. Cut out some type one or two, and the story will flow just fine, but the audience will probably be confused with it cuz they're lacking context. If you take out any type three exposition, that breaks the story. It stops working entirely because the revelation it brings impacts the story from then on. It's baked into its DNA. Pretty much whenever dramatic exposition happens, that is its own plot beat. Anakin learning that Palpatine is the Sith Lord. Classic type three. The learning of this information is a plot point in itself and begets the rest of the story as he reacts to that information. In 28 Years Later, when Spike learns the nature of his mother's illness, that begets the next beat of the story.

Ultimately, if you really want to boil it down, the definition of a murder mystery plot is a string of exposition dripfed to the audience. Yet audiences reliably love learning this information. Isn't that in congruent in a world where exposition is inherently boring? It's because all of that stuff is type three. It's dramatic exposition. In a story where every clue changes the direction of that story from then on, the audience is incredibly attentive and happily slurping up all of that information. A personal favorite of mine is the game Horizon Zero Dawn. The whole main plot is a mystery as you're trying to unravel how the apocalypse happened so you can prevent the next one from occurring. At several points, the game has you sitting through glorified PowerPoint presentations. But because what you're learning is so consequential, you're glued to the screen.

>> Life on Earth will be destroyed. Our planet reduced to a barren sphere. Global extinction [music] is inevitable.

But type 3 isn't always plot or mystery based. It can be character-based, too. Think about the video calls in Interstellar. Those are exposition as Cooper learns about his children's lives over the past few decades. But because this is coming as a revelation to Cooper, because it's breaking his spirit as he's realizing he's entirely missed the lives of both his kids, it's incredibly dramatic. It's [music] a key beat in his character journey. Like, how people are able to believe that exposition inherently sucks when scenes like this one exist. I will never understand.

And take Harry Potter.

>> My father was a great man.

>> Your father was a swag.

In that scene, Harry has his idealized perception of his father shattered.

>> Right. [cheering] Who wants to see me take off?

And then Game of Thrones when Jaime confesses why he killed the old king. It's quite similar to Snape's flashback. It comes as a grand revelation to Brienne and progresses our understanding of who Jaime is. This isn't just context. It's unraveling the psyche of the character and helping to change our perception of him from villain to hero. It's incredibly dramatic. Audiences reliably love this stuff.

And how do you write dramatic exposition? Well, it's either plot-based, mystery based, or characterbased, though it can be all three at the same time. Horizon Zero Dawn's another great example here. The mystery of how the protagonist was born is tied into the main mystery, which is tied into the main plot. We'll routinely uncover bits of information which advance all three. It's very impressively written. If it's mystery or plot-based, honestly, it's quite intuitive to write. Look at your outline, and from your mystery, ask how you can add revelations, which move things from one plot point to the next. It's not that tricky. But here's a fun way to do it. The character doesn't actually need to know the revelation. It can just be the audience who's in the know. Take the Truman Show. We have a cutaway explaining that it's actually all a show. The audience is filled in. It's dramatic exposition, but the protagonist is kept in the dark. Although, I've seen a few theories saying that Truman knew it was fake from the very beginning, but the point still stands.

If your type three is character-based, start with character. Ask what opinions they have. Then have something come along that totally disproves that worldview. They could believe that the evil dark lord killed their father. Oh, scratch that. It turns out the dark lord is their father. They might think that the current heir to the throne is legitimate, only for Ned to realize that he isn't actually the king's son. Now, a character changing their opinion on something is one thing. Beliefs are another. Challenging opinions is entertaining. Challenging beliefs is captivating. It is the bread and butter of good character arcs. How do you break your character by proving to them that the most deeply held beliefs are rubbish? Find the answer to that question in your story and you'll be writing some S tier dramatic exposition in no time. Bruce Willis believing he's alive, a pretty big belief that gets shattered. Or it could be Paul learning all of his noble ambitions are going to lead to ruin. He's destined to become a wararmongering tyrant. So from here on he's battling with that prophecy trying to stop it from happening.

And remember none of these brilliant examples and these are the creme de la creme of exposition. None of them deliver their revelations through just showing. They show and tell. Hell, half of these examples forget the showing entirely and just go straight to telling. Both are incredibly effective devices. Yet, either may be the wrong call in any one scene. The more you write here, the better you'll be understanding which to use. And with all of this stuff, I'll make a video on it one day, but you can't write in a vacuum. One of the most important yet also the hardest parts of writing is breaking free from one's perspective and seeing your story through a different set of eyes. How can you fix a mistake if you don't know you've made it? That's where Priting Aid comes in. There is a reason why they're a longtime sponsor of my channel because it's the most useful writing service I have ever used. And it's also free. Not only does it correct your grammar, punctuation, and all of that line level stuff, they've got an automated critique feature which will tell you about the grand problems with your plot, themes, and character arcs. That is all dead useful, but that's not where I'm finding it the most valuable right now. Where I am is a new feature they've added that's effectively given me a marketing plan. The truth is 90% of unpublished writers never think about who they're selling their fiction to. Where does it belong on the shelf? Who is the target audience? And when you neglect that, you really aren't going to sell many copies, and I've been neglecting that, so I've been very naughty. But with their new marketability analysis feature, it's given me so much clarity here. It gave me a hypothetical profile of my perfect reader, which stories out there are most similar to mine, what the conventions are for book covers in my niche, which is crazy valuable. And most of all, I've been struggling with which angle to lean on most in the marketing. But based on the market, apparently the most effective move for me is focusing on my cynical, competent protagonist who has funky magic powers. But they're also slowly killing her the more she uses them. This is just one extra feature to what's already the best fiction editing software out there, and I'm using it now for all of my editing. And if you want to join me here in improving your fiction, all you've got to do is click my link in the description and try it out for free today. And then if you like what you see, you can upgrade and use my code closer 20 for 20% off their yearly plan. Do click that link down below if you're interested. This has been my model. I hope you find it useful in your writing journey. But thanks for watching. Keep writing and I'll see you guys next time on the Closer Look.