Conquer exposition once and for all!!!
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about exposition. The reason for that is, most writers who’ve broken into the professional ranks don’t have exposition issues. They might be struggling with other aspects of storytelling. But exposition is, for the most part, a beginner and intermediate problem. Therefore, I’m not running into tons of exposition issues in the pro scripts I review.
But when I’m reading the Last Great Screenplay Contest entries, I’m seeing exposition problems all over the place.
Why is exposition a problem? Well, the number one reason exposition is problematic is that it’s a dialogue killer. You can’t focus on the more advanced things that make dialogue work if you haven’t mastered exposition.
So what is exposition? Exposition is any information about your characters or plot that you’re trying to fit into your dialogue. So, for example, if it’s important that the reader know your character was a former karate champion (because, later in the movie, he uses karate to beat someone up), exposition would be two characters mentioning, early on in the screenplay, that this character used to be a former karate champion.
The super beginner screenwriter might formulate the conversation like this…
DOUG: Hey, how’s the karate coming along?
FRANK: Oh, I haven’t done that in years.
DOUG: But you used to be a champion, right?
FRANK: That was a long time ago.
Extremely on the nose, right? A more experienced beginner might tackle it this way…
DOUG: Guess who I ran into today? Bill Lane. He mentioned that old karate tournament you used to compete in. We were trying to remember where it was.
FRANK: Encino.
DOUG: Right. Encino. Anyway, he was telling me he just got divorced…
A teensy bit better. But still bad.
What I’m going to do today is cover two strategies you should always consider before using exposition. Then I’ll go into the two main approaches I endorse for writing exposition.
Let’s start with the strategies. The first strategy you should consider when facing exposition is not including it at all. Most of the time we THINK we need exposition when we don’t. Let’s say you’re writing a Fast and the Furious type script and you feel like you need to establish that your hero, MIKE, has an extensive history with a character who will be appearing in the story later, DERONIS. Maybe they sold drugs together, raced cars together, STOLE cars together. Whatever.
So you include a scene early on where Mike is talking to his wife and says, “I’m going to have to see Deronis this weekend.” We can tell his wife isn’t happy about this. “When was the last time you talked to him?” “Barbados. ’04. When he was running Kamikaze’s business.” “When he ratted you out.” “Yeah.”
This isn’t the worst dialogue but you have to ask yourself, do you really need it? Consider the alternative. Don’t mention any history between the two of them and then, when they meet, Deronis says, “Hey Mike.” “Hey.” “Haven’t seen you since Barbados.” Mike offers a tight smile. And that’s it. Or, you don’t even need the Barbados part. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” followed by a tight smile. That gives us all the information we need. These guys have a history and it isn’t all good. This should always be your first weapon against exposition. Cause the best exposition is no exposition.
Strategy number 2 is show us rather than tell us. If you have to use exposition, come up with a visual way to do so. And no, that does not mean cut to a karate champion trophy to convey that the character is a karate champion. Or, one of my favorites, the “series of pictures” to show what’s gone on in the family. The first picture is a happy family of four. In the second picture, placed next to it, the mother is bald and pale. And in the third picture, it’s just three family members, the mom dramatically gone (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve encountered this). Sure, these are viable ways to convey information in a pinch. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about if you’re writing Star Wars and you want to convey that Darth Vader is the most feared man in the galaxy, you don’t have two characters discussing all of the awful things that Darth Vader has done in the past. You simply show Vader demanding information from a Rebel soldier and when the soldier doesn’t reply, Darth Vader lift him up off the ground and crack his neck. Showing us that is better than anything you can tell us about Vader.
But let’s say there’s information you really feel that the reader needs to know. And there isn’t any natural way you can provide the information by showing. In that case, you want to use the “Spotlight and Shadow” approach. The big mistake newbie writers make when writing exposition is that the exposition becomes the reason to write the scene. As a result, the scene feels utterly unnatural. The reader senses that the only reason the characters are talking is to give information to them. In this case, you are spotlighting the exposition.
What you want to do instead is play exposition out IN THE SHADOWS. The thing you should be spotlighting is the ENTERTAINMENT. A character wants something in the conversation. That something has stakes attached to it so it feels important. There’s conflict. There’s drama. And for those reasons, the scene is fun to read. What the reader doesn’t realize, however, because you’ve put the spotlight on the entertainment, is that IN THE SHADOWS you’re disseminating exposition.
The example I always love to use is the scene in Ferris Bueller when he calls his sick friend, Cameron, and tries to convince him to ditch school with him. The spotlight is 100% on the entertainment. Ferris has a clear goal. Convince his friend to ditch school. His friend doesn’t want to, which creates conflict. And so all we’re focused on is whether Ferris is going to convince his friend or not. Meanwhile, we get exchanges like this: “If you’re not over here in 15 minutes, you can find a new best friend.” “Ehh! You’ve been saying that since the fifth grade.”
That line is exposition. It just told the audience that these two have been best friends at least since the fifth grade. But even the keenest moviegoer probably wouldn’t have identified that moment as exposition. It’s just a natural extension of the conversation they’re having. AND THAT’S THE POWER of the spotlight and shadow approach. The spotlight is so far over here on whether Ferris is going to achieve his goal or not that all exposition is happening in the shadows.
The beginner writer would’ve made Ferris and Cameron’s backstory the spotlight of the scene. Ferris might’ve called Cameron just to see what he was doing. And now, the beginning screenwriter thinks, I can get them talking about their past. So Badly Written Ferris says something like, “Do you remember when we first met?” Badly Written Cameron replies, “Of course. Fifth grade English class.” “Missus Baxter.” “Oh, she was the worst!” “She smelled like fungus. And what did I say to you after you failed that test?”
Is that the worst dialogue? I don’t know. I guess it’s not bad. But what is bad is that all we’re focusing on here is learning things about the characters that the writer wants us to know. That’s what you’re doing wrong. The spotlight is on the wrong thing. You need to spotlight an entertaining scene and then hide your exposition in the shadows of their conversation.
Okay, but what happens when you need to convey SO MUCH EXPOSITION that there’s no shadow big enough to hide all of it? You usually run into this problem in heavily plotted movies where you need to tell the audience a bunch of information about the plot so that they understand what’s going on.
An obvious example would be a heist movie where the group has to explain to the audience things like what time the bank closes, what the group has to do once they’re inside the bank, what each individual person’s job is. If you don’t tell us these things and just jump to this heist, we’ll likely be confused about what’s going on. You see these scenes all the time in the Mission Impossible movies.
If you’re in this situation, I want you to use a device similar to the spotlight and shadow approach. I call it the ‘balancing scale.’ You know what a balancing scale looks like. It’s got two plates, one on each side. We’re going to call the left side the ‘entertainment’ side and the right side the ‘exposition’ side. Whenever you’re writing one of these scenes, make sure that the entertainment side is always more weighed down than the exposition side.
Where writers make the mistake is that they pile too much exposition onto the right side of the scale. Writers will use the term, “exposition dump.’ It’s a term I detest. Never ever write a scene whose only purpose is to dump exposition. EVER! You can always make a scene entertaining. Even ones with lots of exposition. And the more the left side of the scale (the entertainment side) can outweigh the right side, the less people are going to realize the exposition.
Unfortunately, it’s never clear how to create the entertainment side of these scenes. You have to be creative. One trick I like to use is to see the scene as its own little movie. And how do I tell a story (that has a beginning, middle, and end) within this scene. The scene where Doc teaches Marty about his time machine could’ve easily been an exposition dump scene. A bad writer would’ve had Doc call Marty over to his garage where he very casually showed him the time machine and explained how it worked.
Instead, the writers start the scene off with a mystery component. What is Doc going to show Marty (the beginning of our mini-movie)? Then, instead of Marty being a passive participant, the writers make him active. Doc has him record the demonstration for historic purposes. Then, we do a test run. So there’s an exciting element to whether the test will be successful or not. The focus at every point is on the entertainment.
In the meantime, the writers are slipping exposition into the crevices of the scene. One of the most important pieces of exposition in the movie is how the time traveling works, from the three separate timing displays to the 88 miles per hour. Again, the scene is designed so that Doc is making Marty tape all of this for prosperity’s sake. The reason he’s showing him these displays is not because he wants to. It’s because he has to. The time travel needs to be documented.
That scene has more exposition in it than any scene you will ever write. So if they can do it, you can do it too. It just takes work. Believe me, I know it’s easier to sit two characters down in a chair and have one reel off the 20 time traveling rules to the other. It takes zero thought. But if you want the reader to actually enjoy themselves, you need to do the hard work of entertaining them as opposed to educating them.
Now get back into your screenplays and banish all that exposition!
Good luck!
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
