How to Avoid the Dreaded Exposition Dump

Every story needs exposition; there's no way around it. Whether you're writing a gritty, modern thriller in the heart of New York City, or your tale takes place in a fanciful kingdom several worlds away, you need to explain to your audience just what the hell is going on. Without at least a minimally set scene it doesn't matter how great or lovingly you rendered the world; your story won't make sense.

Which way did it go George, which way did it go?

The necessity of exposition has, unfortunately, led to what most people refer to as the exposition dump. This is when writers decide to break all of their action around page five or so (earlier in short stories) in order to shoe horn in a bunch of facts that the reader probably needs to know in order to translate the world, but which have the effect of an anvil dropped from a great height. Some readers might slog through the dump in order to get to the rest of the story, but a lot of them won't.

Fortunately, if you're willing to roll up your sleeves and fire up the backhoe, we can turn this dump into a cleverly camouflaged piece of scenery that's just as effective.

Tip #1: If They Don't Need to Know, Don't Tell Them

Because examples work best, I'll use one to illustrate this point. About a year ago I was invited to participate in an anthology called "Sidekicks" (great book, check it out here), and I wrote a short story titled "Relic of the Red Planet". The simple plot is that in a futuristic, space opera sort of world a collector of rare, alien artifacts has been murdered. His granddaughter enlists the help of an old friend, adventurer and antiquarian Galatea Jones. For backup Galatea calls in a favor from her friend, Martian gun-for-hire Doomsday Blues. Using a public auction as bait to lure out the murderers, whom Galatea suspects were trying to steal a secret part of the dead man's collection, mayhem ensues. When the dust settles, our heroes are victorious.

Now, the story itself is a simple little mystery told in about 5,000 words or so. I could very easily have confused the story, and completely hammered my readers, by including a bunch of extraneous details that, while they would have made the world clearer, simply didn't matter to this particular telling. For instance, did the reader need to know that all of the "aliens" were genetically modified humans designed for life on the more hostile planets of the solar system many thousands of years ago? No, not really. Did I need to make a big deal about what year in the future it was, or how planets like Venus had been altered to support life? Nope. Did I have to explain how interplanetary travel was so advanced? Not in the slightest. All I needed to do was focus on the essentials, which is what I did.

It was just like this. Except with ray guns and aliens.

When writing a story, any story, look at what is essential to understanding the world. You, as the creator, need to know all of it. But if you're loading down a story with a bunch of extraneous material that really doesn't matter, consider cutting it out in favor of keeping the story going.

Tip #2: Show, Don't Tell

I've said it before (right here in this post, in fact), writers should show readers a scene whenever possible. Not only does it keep the story flowing, but it will camouflage the fact that readers have been given critical information. It's kind of like dicing up vegetables and putting them in something tasty so that kids will eat them without even knowing they were there.

Here's a quick example for you. Say you're writing a high fantasy series, and in this series there's an order of knights known as the Foresworn. Now, the important back story might be that these knights are all noble warriors who have fallen from the kingdom's grace, and they are considered persona non grata by the populace at large. They're given suicide missions, and those who survive may once more attain their former rank and earn forgiveness for whatever sins they've committed. Take it a step further, and say that the order is made up of men and women, with ranks and symbols that include death's heads, weighted scales, and black wings.

Being this guy is enough to warrant a life sentence.

Now, assume for a moment that the reader needs to understand some of that in order to grasp why these characters are important. You could go and give an account of how the Foresworn were formed, and list out what each mark of rank means. But why do that when you can just show us a member, and let us draw our own conclusions? Maybe the representative you give us is a big man with a stubbled jaw and greasy hair. Despite his brusque manner and brutish appearance though, his weapons are immaculate and he fights in a way only someone born and trained to war can do. That single action sequence would show us what members are capable of, without the writer having to talk the knights up.

If a single glance isn't enough, then drop a few more hints. Have someone ask him what act he committed to be stripped of rank and title, perhaps. This would let the reader know that despite the armor, and even his birth, the warrior is not considered nobility any longer. Maybe have a member of this organization mention in conversation with her fellows that she's only got two more missions until redemption. These three things give the reader a solid grasp of who the Foresworn are, especially when combined with their name. No matter how cool the history of the order is, or how epic the first knights who began it were, if the readers don't need to know it, see Tip #1.

Tip #3: It's a Bird, It's a Plane... It's Exposition Man!

If you must tell the reader something, then it's best for the statements to come out of your characters' mouths. Cue Exposition Man! By day a humble pathologist, psychologist, neighborhood baker, or dope peddler, but as soon as he comes into contact with protagonists he simply cannot resist the urge to spew forth plot-related details just as quickly as they can ask questions!

You know, it's funny you should ask...

Exposition Man is something of a trope, but he/she/it can often be a very useful plot device. What he does is deliver key information to the reader in such a way that it looks like two characters having a conversation. When done properly Exposition Man has every right to know the things he/she knows about the world and plot, so when the talking trope decides to open up about the goings on of the local crime boss, or expound on the different oaths the Monks of the Eternal Silence supposedly take, the reader doesn't balk and demand to know why they're being made to read pages of text.

Tip #4: Spread it Out

Exposition is hard work. You have to know what you want the reader to know, and you have to dress it up in a way that's pleasing to the eye and easy for the mind to take in. Doing all of that at once is not easy, and in fact it can give you a mental hernia.

Pictured: A wild metaphor in its natural environment.

Don't try to tell your reader absolutely everything up front. For one thing, it creates an information overload that can read like an essay rather than a novel. Secondly, if you actually expect readers to remember content that took place on page 5-7, then said content needs to be short and snappy in order to claim brain space. If you put a guide to your world there, no matter how necessary it might be, readers aren't going to remember it. They sure as hell aren't going to flip back and look things up, either.

In the end, too much spice will spoil your story. Spread your exposition out, and ask yourself how much of it is necessary at this very moment. If you can cut down on exposition in a scene without losing anything, do so. If something is necessary, find a way to include it. If it's something you just think is cool but would need an entire flashback, side conversation, or out-of-nowhere discussion to even bring up, chances are you don't need it.


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"Sexy" and Other Words Writers Need to Stop Using

As an author who doesn't have his own marketing department, I tend to use a lot of social media. This means I belong to a lot of promotional groups on Facebook, I follow a lot of writer-themed blogs on Tumblr, and in general I try to stay plugged into what my fellows in the field are doing. The advantage is that sometimes I find really intriguing books, such as the Gonji trilogy by Ted Rypel, or Ghosts in the Yew by Blake Hausladen.

Because holy damn, that's why.

The disadvantage is that my feed gets crammed with promotion for a lot of books I'd really rather not see. Books that, when I pause to read the description, give me barking fits. After destroying a dozen chew toys and getting a calming belly rub though, I finally figured out what all these bad book summaries I keep seeing have in common. It isn't genre, it isn't plot, and it isn't even the target audience. It's the shallowness of the language used to describe the story.

Huh?

That's what I thought you were going to say. Since examples tend to work best, and I don't want to name names and earn the enmity of fellow authors, I will give you a paraphrased version that I keep seeing over and over again. It goes something like this.

Sexy female lead, getting involved in a dangerous or personally distressing situation, must seek help and join forces with sexy, alpha male lead. Will the two of them find the answer, and will their raging libidos get the best of them?

If you don't feel this is an epidemic then I urge you to go to your local bookstore and read some dust jackets. Romance, erotica, mystery, thriller, suspense, modern fantasy, classic fantasy, science fiction, it's showing up everywhere. The pacing might be slightly different, the plots might vary, but there are certain buzzwords that are showing up repeatedly. This is a plea to my fellow authors, and a warning to future ones; stop it. You're making us look stupid.

What's Wrong With Sexy?

As a concept, not a damn thing. Some genres are predicated entirely upon telling sexy stories about sexy people. The problem is the word itself. What is sexy? I guarantee you that whatever you're thinking, the next person to pick up the book and read the same sentence will not be thinking the same thing. It's lazy writing, pure and simple.

What is it that makes someone an alpha male?

Don't get ahead of me, stock photo philosopher. The term alpha (it's just assumed that the character is male, which goes to show we need more alpha females in our fiction) has the same problem from a completely different angle. What is an alpha? Is it a man involved in the leather and BDSM scene? Is it a wolves-of-Wall-Street type in a ten thousand dollar suit with a watch that cost more than most people's cars? Or is he a muscle-bound noble savage, free from the constraints of your society who makes his own rules? Those are just three images that came to mind off the top of my head, and there are likely a dozen more where they came from.

So What Do You Suggest?

I'm glad you asked that, bolded, italic type face. My suggestion for all my fellow authors out there is when you're coming up with your dust jacket hook that you cut the fluff. Language that tells us nothing about the characters, or is misleading, sensational, or flat out lazy needs to go. Period. It's the modern day equivalent of saying "and she meets a tall, dark stranger." Even if she does (or he, let's be inclusive here), could we perhaps come up with a better reason for us to care? Do a little more showing, a lot less telling?

What more do you want?

I want character descriptions that tell us who we're actually dealing with. I want robust language that draws me in and makes me want more. Honestly I'd prefer if writers stopped trying to be edgy and let their stories speak for themselves, but I'm not asking for miracles. Mostly I'd like a carefully crafted hook that makes me sit on an uncomfortable floor in a bookstore for hours just to find out what happens. What I want to see less of is writers using empty shorthand to convince me that these characters are different from every other pair in the genre. I'm also tired of my fellow writers showing off their leads' toned abs and curvy hips just to persuade me to buy their books. I have the Internet, I can see all the sexy I want any time on demand. What the Internet isn't providing me with are deep characters that inspire me, and whose stories I genuinely care about.

Next time you're describing your plot or your characters, sit down and ask yourself how you'd feel describing real people this way. Is the most noticeable feature of a dedicated, hard-nosed police detective that she's sexy? Or is it that she takes dangerous assignments and never quits until the job is done? Is the most dominant personality trait of a business tycoon that he's mysterious? If so, you might need to dig a bit deeper because you've only scratched the surface. If there is more to them, then show us. Give us an elevator pitch that makes us skip our floor.


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Show Don't Tell: The Case For Story-Showers Vs. Storytellers

I've seen some terrible shit as an editor. Stories with plot holes big enough to accommodate a longshoreman's forearms, characters so shallow they had "no diving" tattooed on their foreheads, and honest-to-gods villain monologues have all made their way across my desk. If I had to pick the one thing that keeps coming back like a monster movie slasher though, it's writers who didn't get the "show, don't tell" memo. Rather than just complain about a problem though, I want to try and help writers of all levels stop being storytellers, and start being story-showers.

So, let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

Yes my map is a circle. Yes it still has a beginning.

What Does "Show, Don't Tell" Even Mean?

I have no idea who first coined this phrase, and the Internet has let me down on discovering the origin. However, famous writers as venerable as Ernest Hemmingway and as recent as Chuck Palahniuk have endorsed the advice. One of Hemmingway's most famous quotes regarding the advice of "show, don't tell" uses an ice berg as a metaphor. It goes like this:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

This confuses a lot of people, but what big-daddy H is laying down is pretty simple to pick up. He's saying that if a writer needs to tell the reader every little thing, then that often represents a failure of communication. Story-showing uses words to craft a scene which the reader can take in, and draw the proper conclusions from.

What Does That Look Like?

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words. I'm not going to write that many, but an example will probably help. So, here, take a look at this image.

A look. Singular.

If someone were to describe this in the storytelling method, it might look like this:

The dancer was sexy.

You can replace "sexy" with whatever subjective word you want, point is that you are telling the reader how to feel about her appearance. You are, in essence, deciding how the reader is supposed to react and dictating accordingly.

Now, a description written in the story-showing style might look more like this;

She was music made flesh. Every sensuous curve gyrated, striking the bells on her hips and ankles in time with the plucking strings. Her smile was slow and wicked, like the sickle-grin of a Cheshire Cat. She swayed, and all eyes followed her hypnotic grace.

All right, maybe the second passage is laying it on a little thick, but look at the differences in context and in what the reader sees. In the first example words like "sexy" and "dancer" aren't very helpful to conveying the image to the reader. One reader might find women with large breasts and broad hips sexy, while another prefers slender, more athletic women. Some readers won't find women sexually attractive at all. Some people will think of ballet dancers, others of strippers, and still others will think of flash mobs or club dancers. By showing the audience the scene, by spending the time to draw out the details without just telling the audience what to feel, a story is greatly improved.

The Difference Between the Two

Some writers might be tearing out their hair, and angrily demanding of the screen if they're just supposed to never make statements about what's happening in their stories. If, to be considered good story-showers, they have to work purely in innuendo and couched terms in order to try to get from A to B.

No. No you do not. That isn't what I'm saying at all.

Then what DO we do?!

What you do need to do is to ask whether you are showing the audience what's happening, or if you're simply making the decision for the reader. For instance, you could say "John's car was a beat-up old rust bucket with peeling paint, but it was all he could afford and it still ran," or you could say "John drove an old '69 Gremlin, with mismatched doors and more primer than paint." By naming the car, you didn't tell your audience how to feel about a situation. You simply provided a detail to help set the scene. That is a "good" use of telling.

A "bad" use of telling would be to say something like "Jim was a real asshole." How do we know that? Subjective descriptions, whether positive or negative, should not be used in description. Dialogue is fine, because dialogue is where characters express their opinions. However, if you want readers to figure out Jim's disposition then you need to show him in a negative light. Have him telling racist jokes, blowing cigar smoke in people's faces, making threats, shoulder-checking people in the hallway; whatever it is that Jim does to make him dislikable, show that. The audience will get the picture you want them to get quickly enough, and you won't have to actually tell them.

One Last Thing...

Every story is going to have a certain amount of telling in it. Sometimes there's really no efficient way to get important data to the reader except to just tell them about it. That said though, it is best to let the readers draw their own conclusions whenever possible.

Nowhere is this more true than with characters' thoughts and feelings.

Except in some, extreme circumstances.

Sometimes writers can get away with this. First person stories, particularly gritty, noir style stories, are renowned for feeding us exactly what a character is thinking and feeling. We let it pass because we are supposed to be riding around in that person's head. If we are not jacked into that person's inner Twitter though, then you should not be giving us the play-by-play of feelings and thoughts.

This mistake happens a lot. It's most common when writers want to convey important feelings to an audience. Love between two leads, hatred between rivals, etc. It's tempting to use words like "angrily" to modify speech, or to just say "hate was written all over her face." Your writing doesn't have a broken leg, and it doesn't need a crutch. Roll up your sleeves and shape the important stuff with the same dedication you do all your other writing. Give us facial expressions, body language, word choice, and all of the other nuance that you have at your disposal to make us hang on your description. Draw readers in, and they'll never want to leave. Tell them how to feel, and they'll slam your cover hard enough to billow your dust jacket.


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