Exposition: Serious Business?

Inspired by this post first linked in Writer's Block Daily.

The topic at hand is exposition. Specifically what do we writers call exposition? What makes exposition good or bad in a work? How much is too much? Should it exist at all? How long is too long to keep readers in the dark before expo-dumping?

I challenge us as writers to answer these questions through examples you have written to show contrast with the many "bad" examples in published fiction.

And begin!

Exposition: All the explanations, details, motivations, and all the other stuff that's needed to make the plot understandable, but isn't the plot itself.

When it's to much: When your reader wants to chuck the book at your head to make you stop.

Exposition is a tricky thing. It's neccessary to explain motivations, the world, and just why the plot is going the way it is. The problem is, it's not plot. It's the opposite of plot. It stops the plot, if only temporarily, to explain what's happening. In a good example, it's only as long as is neccessary. When it's bad, it goes on, and on, and on until no one cares anymore.

To keep it under control, there's a simple question to ask. Does the reader need all this info right now, to follow what's happening? If not, skip it. If you want to slip in something as an explanation for later, fine, but keep it short please.

Another thing. I'm not smart. At all. Anyone who says I am is a liar. But even I can follow along most of the time. I can piece together details to fill in the blanks just fine, without the author having to fill them in for me. That only goes so far, of course, but I'm just saying.

One really, REALLY bad example of exposition (combined with horrible descriptions, but it's all tied together) was a story I read recently. In it, the author drops in all the details about the main characters apartment. For multiple pages. And this was the beginning, when I have no reason to care about any of this. And then, the details of who the characters actually ARE gets left out.

On the other hand, in Dracula, there's a scene where Van Helsing info dumps all about Dracula, how vampires work, and their powers. That isn't nearly as bad, because it's halfway through the book, we NEED information on how they work, and there's a damn good reason for it, as he's explaining it to the characters. And, we are already invested in the story, so we have an actual reason to care about this info.

My basic advice on exposition is, make me care about your story and world before you start explaining it. Start off with the explanation, and I will stop caring before you hit the five minute mark.

I'm going to go ahead and say that there is only one conceivable case where "expo-dumping" should ever be used - if it's an actual in-universe briefing or something for the characters.

In pretty much any other situation, it's best to parcel information out over time rather than dumping it on the reader in one giant mass.

and then, only if it's plausible that the characters who are being briefed should not already know the information - such as they are "rookies"/outsiders or some new game-changing development has occured (like a new breed of vampire that behaves differently from the ones they've been hunting for the last 30 years).

I assumed that was pretty much implicit, but yes.

Also, I think exposition in general can be overrated, in a way - while readers should be told everything they must know to understand the story, not every background detail needs to have its inner workings completely detailed for the audience. I feel that a lot of the reason science fiction has developed a reputation for Expo Speak is because writers feel this need to explain every detail of how their fictional technology works, even if it makes no sense in-story for it to come up, and even if it's not necessary for the readers to follow the plot.

Heh. If it were implicit, we wouldn't have so many writers out there giving detailed exposition in-universe to characters that should, by their nature, already know all that.

I've seen a number of things that have made it to print or screen that fall victim to that - so it not only brings the plot to a screeching standstill (as is the nature of exposition), it kicks the metaphorical dog of Willing Suspension of Disbelief on the way out with a jarring "WTF? These guys should already be well aware of all this shit."

It makes one very conscious that this is nothing but Exposition which, in turn, makes one very aware that it is a fictional work.

It's bad enough that I watch well-crafted movies and say "oh, that bit of exposition was really well handled" (TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life, indeed), without being sledgehammered between the eyes with well-crufted exposition that makes no sense in context.

Er.

The most important rule of writing is "write interesting". However someone writing exposition might not realize that exposition that's supposed to be entertaining is not actually. This is why beta readers are so damn important.

If people are not bothered by your exposition, there is no need to take it out.

Exactly.

The trouble is how to make exposition entertaining. Too straight-forward, and it's most likely plain. Too clever, and it'll probably annoy people.

In my eye, the key to doing exposition well, even useless exposition, is to "justify" it, in a sense. I remember I actually got praise for a bit of exposition that was obviously and admittedly totally useless in the context of the story because of how I pulled it off.

Basically, a guy and a girl were basking in awkward silence on a bus taking her home after she spent the night with him. I didn't just want to leave the bus scene at "they got on the bus. It was really awkward," so I, as the omniscient narrator, basically went on a random historical rant about the bus and bus system, saying countless times that the guy's know-it-all friend (who we'd met in the previous chapter), would have done so if he'd been there.

This thread has motivated me to rewrite my first chapter...

Sometimes random tidbits of exposition can be dropped in at random intervals but end up becoming important later on in the story.

A story that uses exposition very well is The Dresden Files. Of course, it helps that the narrator is the smartass Harry Dresden.

What I like to do is stuff exposition in the background, in descriptions of places and have it act more like the nuance of the setting.

However, things like explaining the magic system of the story's universe I feel are better explained as they are happened, and as certain things are relevant, and keep it fairly laconic. No need to get on and on all about it.