Exposition gets a bad rap. It shouldn't.
Words Count | Kathryn Mockler on Exposition
On Exposition
Types of Exposition
Exposition is a way to give information to the reader implicitly or explicitly.
You can give information to the reader through
Narration (via different viewpoints directly expressed – often provides necessary context)
Summary (allows the writer to move through time and space in story and can impact pacing)
Description (images, details, and actions)
Internal monologue
Dialogue
Scene and half-scene (combination of summary, description, dialogue)
Flashbacks or flashforwards, memories, daydreams, visions
Media such as text message, email, newspaper, social media posts, letters, TV, radio, film, and music
These forms of exposition can operate alone or simultaneously.
Show don't tell is often advice given to encourage new writers to avoid heavy handed info dumps. However that advice is often overused and has become somewhat of a cliché of the writing workshop. Show don't tell is just one approach of many.
Exposition is an important part of storytelling. While we don’t want to spoon-fed information to the reader, we do need to provide them with context so they can understand the characters and the story.
Only showing and not telling can be a problem because you're making assumptions about your audience that you have a shared point of view, and often you don’t, and your audience needs that information.
When a reader says that your writing is expositional, they are saying you have delivered information in a way that is showing itself or being clunky or info dumping.
Exposition is often best delivered within conflict or tension or through a unique narrative voice or in a way that is unobtrusive to the reader. We need the information but we don’t want to be aware that we are getting information in an obvious way.
Examples
Narration/Summary/Description
By high school, everyone had grown a second head and extra limbs. Couples clicked down the hall like two-headed spiders, weaving around each other delicately. Lainey spent much of her time just off school property in a defunct tennis court reserved for smokers called The Cage. There were two-headed beasts there too.
—Ian Williams, "Is Liable to Imprisonment for a Term Not Exceeding Seven Years," from Not Anyone's Anything
Narration/Description/Half-Scene
Margot met Robert on a Wednesday night toward the end of her fall semester. She was working behind the concession stand at the artsy movie theatre downtown when he came in and bought a large popcorn and a box of Red Vines.
“That’s an . . . unusual choice,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually sold a box of Red Vines before.”
Flirting with her customers was a habit she’d picked up back when she worked as a barista, and it helped with tips. She didn’t earn tips at the movie theatre, but the job was boring otherwise, and she did think that Robert was cute. Not so cute that she would have, say, gone up to him at a party, but cute enough that she could have drummed up an imaginary crush on him if he’d sat across from her during a dull class—though she was pretty sure that he was out of college, in his mid-twenties at least.
—Kristen Roupenian, "Cat Person," New Yorker
Narration/Description/Memory
I went to the walk-in clinic because I’d started falling asleep in weird places. The first time happened in a grocery store. I was holding two boxes of cereal and I got tired, so I sat down in the aisle. I’d never thought to just sit down in a grocery store, but when your eyes are burning and the blinks come slower and slower, it becomes impossible not to. So, I sat. And then I leaned. I should never have leaned. I should have sat up straight, like someone who does yoga, but I don’t do yoga. I don’t even stretch, really. So, I sat, then leaned, and then a man with a brown coat and black sneakers started shaking my shoulder, asking me if I was dead. Okay, he was asking if I was fine, but basically that’s the same thing. So, he asked me if I was fine and I said no. And then he just walked away. Like, who does that? I said no, you’re supposed to help, but he walked away. I got up. I didn’t even buy any cereal. I just went home.
—Francine Cunningham, "Asleep Till You’re Awake," from God Isn’t Here Today: Stories
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