Transcription
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 at length upon the bloated workings of their setting’s technology, side by side with fantasy writers who could dump the entirety 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 storytelling 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 of 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 to 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 to 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 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 its 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 accustomed 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; dialogue, narrative, or flashbacks, to name a few. Let’s start with dialogue. The trick to using dialogue to relay exposition is to flat-out avoid characterization, tension, or conflict in a scene. Big, unwieldy chunks of expository dialogue work 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 a 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 dialogue 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 the 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 any way, 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 up 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 crew’s atoms scattered across the cosmos? The chief engineer could explain exactly why 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 me show you how it’s 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, 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 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.