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October 4, 2007

Exposition -- No Whine, Just Champagne Writing Discussion #180

March 07, 2012 10:29 PM UTC

views: 0 | 4 people recommend this | comments: 53

According to Leonard Bishop, author of Dare to be a Great Writer, exposition is a device for introducing characters, to provide setting, for creating tone, to explain ideas, to analyze background. Exposition should be immediately related to the event that causes its presence. The subject should be relevant to the circumstances, otherwise it is a distraction that does not contribute to the story.

The setting of a scene is used to support the action. Details that are unimportant to the action or to understanding the character or his motivation are also distractions that confuse the issue and dilute the impact of the scene.

Description should be visually logical -- first things first. From the size of a person to the face to the features. From the size of the room to colors and mood to furniture. From a panoramic view of a setting to a mid range view to close-up details.

So, let's talk about exposition, setting, description.

As always, any topic that will help us improve our writing is fair game in these discussions, so feel free to bring up any of your writing concerns.

Let's talk.

The group No Whine, Just Champagne will meet here at this article for a live discussion about writing and the writing life on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 9:00pm ET (8pm CT, 7pm MT, 6pm PT). Hope to see you, but if you can't make it then, the discussion will continue during the days afterward, so please stop by and tell us what you think.

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Sheila Deeth

James R.

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Comments: 53

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:14pm UTC

There are so many ways this can be played out too.

My favorite is introducing the scene which sets the mood and tone, the emotions of the situation, and then introducing the character by describing details of the character that put them into the scene and give a feel for the character before they even start to play their part.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 9:19pm UTC

That's a good way to do it. It makes the scene immediate, and puts the character in a setting. Too often, writers go heavy on dialogue, without giving readers any sense of place, and it feels as if the characters are just hanging in the wind.

Other authors, of course, go the opposite direction, and tell us way more than we need to know to set the mood, tone, and sense of place.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:21pm UTC

exposition is basically just describing the scene instead of only writing it through the actions, thoughts, and words of the character.

Kind of slipping into narrator mode in between the character living the scenes.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 9:26pm UTC

Big chunks of exposition is never a good idea (though I always tend to have a character who lectures, which is a cheating way of doing exposition and not recommended). If you use it to set the scene, tell just enough back story so your readers understand your character's motivation, then it becomes an almost invisible part of the story. If you paste exposition into your story with a broad brush, using long paragraphs and little character interaction, you tend to lose your readers because they don't know why they should be interested in your commentary.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:28pm UTC

That's why I go back and add the character dialogue etc. I have no problem adding character's thoughts, but dialogue is harder.

And when the story flows it's all description and feeling flowing almost too fast to type. If I didn't go back and add in the rest, the whole story could end up being nothing but exposition.

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Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 9:22pm UTC

Noah Baird wrote a great piece about story telling on the Second Wind blog today, What Writers Can Learn From Playwrites. He said that playwrites are aware of how their characters occupy space. I thought that was such an interesting comment, and one I am going to remember. Our characters do occupy space, not just the space between our ears.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:27pm UTC

That is definately a good way of putting it. The scene itself is broken into bits. What the reader should feel about what is going on, what the writing is still hiding about what is going on, the setting itself takes up space, as does the events occuring around the characters even as they go through their own personal turmoils and the events of the story that can happen entirely outside the events around them (making it seem just a little bit more removed and surreal, adding a little more life), and each character has to have their own space too.

Like pieces of a puzzle. Some are bigger, some are smaller, but they all take up a certain amount of space in the puzzle.

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L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:23pm UTC

I find I write first by describing the scene, the emotins, the characters, the events, and pouring into it what the reader should be feeling. Then I have to go back and add in the characters' dialogue and the little bits that help round out the characters and the story.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:23pm UTC

oops, typos

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 9:57pm UTC

In the initial writing, I also find it helps to get emotionally caught up in the scene and bring it to life through lots of description and let the story pour out. Then, later, you can look at the words and see if they convey what you intended. The changes might be to descriptions -- adding or paring -- or to add dialogue if that seems to be missing.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 10:00pm UTC

James, I wish I could write like that, just let the scene flow, but so often, I have to pick my way through a scene, word by word. The only time words flow is stream of consciousness writing, and that isn't the sort of writing one needs to create a story. At least no for me. Some people seem to be able to do it, and more or less just watch the story streaming out of them.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:11pm UTC

I think I'd describe it more as feeling the story or living the story as it flows.

If I'm not right in it, feeling it and living it, it just doesn't have the same feel and I find myself picking away at it instead of really writing it.

It's more like your fingers putting out the story on the page as fast as you can read it. The story is as new as reading a new book because you haven't written it yet, it's just coming from your own imagination instead of someone else's.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:32pm UTC

Pat, I write like that -- where the story flows and just pours out -- in fits and starts. When that's happening, I just keep writing and try to get it all out. In those cases, I'll worry about tidying it up later.

But other times, it feels like I'm pushing a boulder up hill.

It's one reason I like writing on long plane flights. Sometimes that gives me the time to get so involved that I can do 10 or 20 pages at a single stretch. It's much harder to get that kind of momentum when nibbling away 300 - 500 words at a time.

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Barbara H. Mar 8, 2012, 9:42pm UTC

All of this is very interesting and I'm glad I came upon it. I'm working on a memoir, the story encircling my mother, the main character.
I thought I'd begin with the grab idea that explains how, even though we constantly bumped heads, in the end, when I lost her, I finally saw we were so much alike, although now that I am a senior citizen, I realize it took the time it did for the realization to be made. Nothing could have changed because of the circumstances.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 9:45pm UTC

That's one of the lessons of grief and of time. You were who you were, you acted the way you did, because circumstances dictated. There is a lot in common about writing a memoir or writing a novel -- both are about characters/people and why things happened the way they did.

Barbara H. Mar 8, 2012, 9:52pm UTC

I just lost my second husband in December after twenty years. I was a widow at fifty after 32 years of marriage with the first and father of our four children. I have so many LIVES that I wish to share. At 71 I figure if I am able to do that, it will fill out the last of my years. Although I write daily already. Your comment makes clear and true a very important fact toward writing anything really. Thank you.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 9:57pm UTC

I'm sorry about your losing your husbands. It's a hard experience to have to deal with once, let alone twice, so it's a good thing you have your writing. I wonder if you will see various themes in your life. Those themes would serve as something to build a memoir around.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:02pm UTC

I am so sorry for your loss. Both for your mother and more recently your husband.

And I'd bet after raising four children and being widowed twice, you would have an amazing list of lives to share.

Myself, I think more in terms of the life you are living at the moment being a single life. Childhood is one, coming to adulthood another. Each major segment of your life is like a mini life that affects who you are and who you become.

I also apply that to my characters, the same I do other observations I've made about real life. It makes the characters themselves more real to me.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:18pm UTC

Barbara, you clearly have seen a lot of life and it sounds like you do have a lot to share. One of the nice things about writing is that we can use it to work through our experiences and try to make sense of them in words. When done well, the reader will be taken to places and emotions that go beyond their own lives, but will ring true.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 10:22pm UTC

Lori, that's a good point about each segment of a life being a mini life. Even though you weren't addressing me, I see myself in your words. I'm still in a hiatus, a mini life right now, but after my father goes, I'll be starting over completely. It's odd to be in the same place now where I was in my early twenties -- not sure what I want to do with my life, not sure where to go. I hope I can view it with all it's potential rather than the bleakness of being alone. I wonder if I can write my future as if I were writing a book.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:26pm UTC

Pat, you can write your future, but it seems like a more natural activity when we're younger. When I was about 35, I wrote about my ideal day. Some 6 years later, it had almost all come to pass, which meant -- yup, time to figure out what came next.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:27pm UTC

It's funny how things come back around. We start as helpless infants and often end up pretty much the same in our final years (if we live that long), which is actually damned scary for me considering all the bad stories you hear about care homes and elder neglect and abuse.

And even through our productive years, we come back in so many ways to the same places (in life and how we feel about it, not geographically) that we've been before.

You probalby could write your own future as if you were writing a book. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll actually follow what you wrote in what you do. Hell, you probably could write your future in a book, literally.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:36pm UTC

Lori, that sense of cycles is so true. Years ago, I was the child and my parents raised me. Now, it feels like the tables have turned -- they're in their late eighties and in assisted living, so my brother and I deal with so many things they once handed themselves.

We do go through cycles, but it's hard to keep perspective when you're living through busy times.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:37pm UTC

handed = handled

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 10:45pm UTC

I like how a discussion about writing leads to a discussion about life and vice versa.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:52pm UTC

Probably because we put so much of life into writing to make it come alive for both ourselves and the reader.

I find that keeping in mind that real life = good story helps bring a world of reality for me to the story I'm writing. I try to add those little real life oddities that bring it home.

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James R. Mar 8, 2012, 9:45pm UTC

I don't consider descriptions of settings to be exposition. I try to visualize the scene and then bring it to life with salient details. If it works out right, it will place the reader in the scene.

In my earlier writing, I tended to go over the top on descriptions. Now, sometimes it goes the other way. I'll get caught up in dialogue between two characters and have to sometimes force myself to make sure the sense of place is also being conveyed. Usually upon re-reading, I can tell whether there's a good balance between dialogue and the sense of place.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 9:49pm UTC

It's always about balance. You need enough description to set the scene and mood, but too much throws the story out of whack. Some people still insist on writing long description, insisting they can write however they want, but if a writer focuses on the story and the story's needs, significant details are more important than minutiae.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 9:56pm UTC

Mine alway seems much heavier in the descriptions and lighter on the dialogue.

For me expostion (the most basic meaning is letting the reader know the basic facts of character and setting) is adding in those details the characters themselves can't show you. Where you turn to describing what is happening instead of writing it entirely through the characters thoughts and words.

But, as with everything, this is open to personal interpretation.

So what do you consider to be exposition? This is a term with wide meaning.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:11pm UTC

I tend to think of exposition as filling in back story elements. It can be done a lot of ways. For example, Evelyn Waugh did a fine job in laying out the back story in Brideshead Revisited through narration that had an elegaic tone, but quickly gave us a sense of time and place, filtered through emotion.

What I don't like is exposition in the form of infodump, where the author lays in whole paragraphs of back story, without weaving it in to the main narrative.

Another form of exposition is using it to quickly summarize details which are useful but not critical to the direction of the story.

For example, the writer could say: They argued about any number of things that night, but Donald knew he'd crossed the line when Sally tossed the chicken lo mein in his face.

That could lead to a real time scene, where Donald and Sally confront each other, or to having Donald spin it back in his mind to see where he went wrong. Or, the writer could change his or her mind, and decide the scene is critical enough to be expanded, replacing the exposition.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:15pm UTC

I hope my wip isn't coming off like that.

Now that I'm towards the end and things are wrapping up to come together, there are so many things popping up that add to it and make it work that they seem to be all happening at the same time.

While I hashed out the outline for the last chapters, I tried to put those things where they should go, noting that some need to be put in earlier chapters. But is still all seems to be coming in one avalanche at the end.

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:16pm UTC

I mean, I hope it doesn't come across as an info dump at the last chapters.

But there is also a lot that is revealed only at the end.

James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:23pm UTC

It sounds like some of the information needs to show up at the end, where it will fill in missing pieces that reveal the whole. Getting all or most of the loose ends to dovetail and resolve can be a challenge. I like your description of the avalanche. If there's a lot happening, the reader will likely be kept busy enough so they won't be worrying about just exactly how all of the story threads weave together. Hope it works out well for you.

Pat Bertram Mar 8, 2012, 10:24pm UTC

Can you do a slow reveal, reveal parts of the ending beforehand so that what is revealed at the end comes as punch, not a rolling cart?

L V Gaudet Mar 8, 2012, 10:57pm UTC

I've gone back and jotted notes about things that need to be revealed or hinted at so that the end comes as a surprise, but not a punch in the gut surpise.

I'm sure on editing I'll find myself moving things, and I know the end is the big climax, but it is still a lot happening all at once in those last chapters.

I'm coming on 60,000 words, with I think about 10 chapters to write to break out the last scenes because there is a lot of back and forth, but there is also so much happening right there.

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James R. Mar 8, 2012, 10:56pm UTC

Pat, fine discussion as usual. As writers, we take words and use them to describe life. Not too surprising that bits of different lives found their way into the conversation tonight.

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