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Writing: Exposition
Nov. 2nd, 2009 09:07 pmOK, now that all of the guinea pig drama seems to be over (Buddy is doing fine, so far), I can finally return to the writing posts I meant to do immediately after Albacon. This posts are based on the panels that I was on at the convention. I took notes at the time, but it's been long enough I don't know what some of the notes mean anymore, or remember what prompted the note in the first place, so this is just going to be me making comments about the topic, rather than an in depth report of what happened on the panel itself. I figured I'd start with the panel:
Exposition: I decided to start with this one because this is something that I struggle with myself. For every book that I've ever handed in, my editor has alway said for the revisions that I need to explain more about the world, that I need to show it. This more or less comes down to exposition. Part of the problem is that I, personally, don't feel that alot of what my editor wants in the way of explaining the world is unnecessary . . . BUT I've had enough people comment on my Throne novels that they wished I'd had more about the world in there that I've realized that my editor is right. (*gasp* Don't let her see this post!)
So, with the new work-in-progress, I've been trying to experiment more with adding in more world elements, and this means messing with exposition. You see, in the Throne books, the story was told through first person, so I introduced elements of the world exclusively through her by having her actually DO THINGS. I really don't like exposition. So everything came through as Varis, my main character, interacted with the world. When she went to the main street in the Dredge to steal food, you saw, through her eyes, the people of the city as they lived their lives. When she fled the Dredge, you were introduced to the "real" Amenkor as she experienced it herself. If there was something in the city that was interesting, but it never crossed paths with Varis, then you never learned about it.
The new books are all in the third person, so I can't use the excuse of POV to leave off the exposition. *sigh* So I've been working on getting in there somehow. Here are some of the other techniques I've been using; note I'm still getting the characters to interact with the world itself as the main method for getting this across.
Dialogue: Of course you can get some of the way the world works across using dialogue. This is tricky though, because an info dump in dialogue is still an info dump. What I usually try to do is incorporate the world information into a conversation that's really about something else. For example, today I wrote a scene where a young girl is recovering from an "illness" and is being taken care of by her father. While he feeds her soup, she asks him about a scene in the marketplace that she witnessed the day before that disturbed her. Her father then explains what the scene was about, thus revealing some of the politics of the world, but at a level that his daughter can understand and it's all disguised through the illness, which is the real focus on the conversation, since the father is trying to figure out what happened to his daughter.
Hearthfire Tale: This is another technique sort of related to dialogue. If you've got some heavy duty history to get across at some point, you can do it by having the characters sit around a campfire and share stories, or they can go into a bar or tavern and hear a hearthfire tale, etc. I was going to say that I haven't used this technique before but it was brought up on the panel . . . but I just realized that would be a lie. I did use it in the book that's "finished" and waiting to go through the rest of the publishing process. At one point my main character goes into a bar to get something to eat and hears the tale of something that happened while he was . . . well, let's just say "away." I needed to get this "history" across because it was the basis of a significant portion of the rest of the book, but the structure of the book didn't allow me to actually to do the story as narrative. So a hearth tale instead. The trick is to make the hearthfire tale sound natural and fit into the story.
Flashback: Ah, the tried and true flashback, where you mix exposition with narration. I probably don't need to say much about this, but the fact that it's so prevalent tells you that it's one of the easier and more effective ways to get in some exposition under the disguise of narration. The problem with this technique is that you REALLY have to be careful how often you use it. If there's another way to get across the information, then you should probably use that instead, even if the flashback would be "easier" to write. If you use them too much, they can get monotonous and the reader begins to wonder why you didn't just tell the story starting way back when, since you're flashing back to "way back when" so often. And they should be thinking that. If you're using flashbacks that often, it's probably a sign that you started your story too late and you need to go back and ask yourself whether you should start it earlier.
Prologue: And this is also a tried and true method for getting across some world story or back story that probably doesn't have anything do with the main characters of the book itself. (It's hard to have the character experience the world elements if they, say, weren't ALIVE during the actual event.) This is where the prologue comes into play. There's alot of discussion about whether prologues should be used at all in anything, and I say that yes, they can be effective. I intend to use one in my new work-in-progress, because those events are necessary to set up the main plot thread of the main novel . . . but then there's a significant time jump to where the main novel actually begins. It seems appropriate to offset these initial scenes as a prologue, even if it's a rather long prologue. It doesn't make sense to call it "chapter one" for example. So prologues are necessary in some books, in my opinion. Are the overused? Yes. I've read quite a few books where I felt the prologue was unnecessary OR that the prologue was actually chapter one and did not need to be offset with the "prologue" status.
And those are the things I've used (obviously) and been playing with for getting across exposition. I've been trying other things as well, but those are more at the line-by-line level and are harder to explain. And this post is long enough as it is. *grin* Hope there was something helpful in there!
Exposition: I decided to start with this one because this is something that I struggle with myself. For every book that I've ever handed in, my editor has alway said for the revisions that I need to explain more about the world, that I need to show it. This more or less comes down to exposition. Part of the problem is that I, personally, don't feel that alot of what my editor wants in the way of explaining the world is unnecessary . . . BUT I've had enough people comment on my Throne novels that they wished I'd had more about the world in there that I've realized that my editor is right. (*gasp* Don't let her see this post!)
So, with the new work-in-progress, I've been trying to experiment more with adding in more world elements, and this means messing with exposition. You see, in the Throne books, the story was told through first person, so I introduced elements of the world exclusively through her by having her actually DO THINGS. I really don't like exposition. So everything came through as Varis, my main character, interacted with the world. When she went to the main street in the Dredge to steal food, you saw, through her eyes, the people of the city as they lived their lives. When she fled the Dredge, you were introduced to the "real" Amenkor as she experienced it herself. If there was something in the city that was interesting, but it never crossed paths with Varis, then you never learned about it.
The new books are all in the third person, so I can't use the excuse of POV to leave off the exposition. *sigh* So I've been working on getting in there somehow. Here are some of the other techniques I've been using; note I'm still getting the characters to interact with the world itself as the main method for getting this across.
Dialogue: Of course you can get some of the way the world works across using dialogue. This is tricky though, because an info dump in dialogue is still an info dump. What I usually try to do is incorporate the world information into a conversation that's really about something else. For example, today I wrote a scene where a young girl is recovering from an "illness" and is being taken care of by her father. While he feeds her soup, she asks him about a scene in the marketplace that she witnessed the day before that disturbed her. Her father then explains what the scene was about, thus revealing some of the politics of the world, but at a level that his daughter can understand and it's all disguised through the illness, which is the real focus on the conversation, since the father is trying to figure out what happened to his daughter.
Hearthfire Tale: This is another technique sort of related to dialogue. If you've got some heavy duty history to get across at some point, you can do it by having the characters sit around a campfire and share stories, or they can go into a bar or tavern and hear a hearthfire tale, etc. I was going to say that I haven't used this technique before but it was brought up on the panel . . . but I just realized that would be a lie. I did use it in the book that's "finished" and waiting to go through the rest of the publishing process. At one point my main character goes into a bar to get something to eat and hears the tale of something that happened while he was . . . well, let's just say "away." I needed to get this "history" across because it was the basis of a significant portion of the rest of the book, but the structure of the book didn't allow me to actually to do the story as narrative. So a hearth tale instead. The trick is to make the hearthfire tale sound natural and fit into the story.
Flashback: Ah, the tried and true flashback, where you mix exposition with narration. I probably don't need to say much about this, but the fact that it's so prevalent tells you that it's one of the easier and more effective ways to get in some exposition under the disguise of narration. The problem with this technique is that you REALLY have to be careful how often you use it. If there's another way to get across the information, then you should probably use that instead, even if the flashback would be "easier" to write. If you use them too much, they can get monotonous and the reader begins to wonder why you didn't just tell the story starting way back when, since you're flashing back to "way back when" so often. And they should be thinking that. If you're using flashbacks that often, it's probably a sign that you started your story too late and you need to go back and ask yourself whether you should start it earlier.
Prologue: And this is also a tried and true method for getting across some world story or back story that probably doesn't have anything do with the main characters of the book itself. (It's hard to have the character experience the world elements if they, say, weren't ALIVE during the actual event.) This is where the prologue comes into play. There's alot of discussion about whether prologues should be used at all in anything, and I say that yes, they can be effective. I intend to use one in my new work-in-progress, because those events are necessary to set up the main plot thread of the main novel . . . but then there's a significant time jump to where the main novel actually begins. It seems appropriate to offset these initial scenes as a prologue, even if it's a rather long prologue. It doesn't make sense to call it "chapter one" for example. So prologues are necessary in some books, in my opinion. Are the overused? Yes. I've read quite a few books where I felt the prologue was unnecessary OR that the prologue was actually chapter one and did not need to be offset with the "prologue" status.
And those are the things I've used (obviously) and been playing with for getting across exposition. I've been trying other things as well, but those are more at the line-by-line level and are harder to explain. And this post is long enough as it is. *grin* Hope there was something helpful in there!
