To be fair, you don’t have to avoid exposition 100% of the time. There are plenty of books where exposition is necessary. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.
First thing’s first:
What is exposition anyway?
Exposition is explaining, basically. But what I think it does more than anything is something much more harmful for fiction (and the suspension of disbelief).
It shows your hand as the author.
And sure, readers know someone wrote the book. But they’re reading so they can forget that people exist and replace their current circumstances with whatever you have written. So if suck at explaining your world and plot, the reader will start to think they’re reading something that you wrote.
Which, you do not want.
You want them to assume your book wasn’t written at all and exists purely in their minds.
It sounds weird. I know. But this is why being able to weave the “need to knows” of your book into the narrative in a way that feels natural and a part of the story, and not as an aside, is important.
Important note on exposition:
I feel it’s vital to add, again, that exposition can and does serve a purpose in stories. But if you can mask it in some way, it’ll make your writing that much stronger. For example, you can use a character who knows of the time/place/whatever your protagonist is in and that feels less like you, the author, are telling the reader and more like one character informing the other.
But to be able to tell a story where the reader walks away understanding the world, the rules, the ins-and-outs without you needing to explain anything that feels like an aside…that’s powerful writing. It’s immersive.
Avoid Exposition Like the Pros
- the idea is to connect the information. Make it smooth. Less jumping to an explanation. More embedding information in narrative through character POV and the connection of ideas
- move in and out of present happening–but keep the pace (slows pacing fyi)
- use example from TWO with moving in and out of present but the look-backs make sense with what she’s doing and where here mind is at
- find more examples of this–hunger games
- third person example
