How to do exposition without it turning into an infodump

Sneaky world building and layering of information

Mar 27, 2023

∙ Paid

I was in conversation with the inimitable

earlier this week, discussing the difficulty of explaining things to a reader without killing the story dead in its tracks. As Elle put it:

‘“how do you crack the whole ‘explain what needs to be explained’ without making it a boring dialog chapter?!”
Elle Griffin

Reader, I had thoughts.

Being able to ‘explain what needs to be explained’ is vital for all writers, and is arguably what storytelling actually is. Exposition gets both more important and more tricky for writers of speculative fiction, who don’t get anything for free. A contemporary literary novel at least gets to use the real world as a backdrop, which can be quite freeing. If you story is set in the future, or in space, or in a fantasy world, you need to somehow depict that place without turning into a dull lore encyclopedia.

It’s not just about world building. Exposition is relevant to plot, character, theme - just about anything of substance in the story. Some of the old ‘show don’t tell’ mantra is relevant and helps to distinguish a ‘story’ from ‘an explanation’. A dictionary’s job is to tell people hard facts; a story’s job, broadly speaking, is to reveal something meaningful about those facts.

This was also on my mind after reading this excellent post from

Matthew Claxton

Unsettling Futures

Genre writing, show don't tell, and what actually sells

I’m about a third of the way through Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, a book I picked up at the library on impulse. It’s far too early to say whether I like it or not but I’m fascinated. One of the things I’ve been trying to do over the last few years, in fits and starts, is to read more what might be considered mainstream literary fiction, contemporary fic…

2 years ago · 17 likes · 6 comments · Matthew Claxton

I’ve spent a long time wrestling with exposition over the last decade. My first book was a high concept, deeply weird thing about shapeshifters that required a lot of heavy lifting to explain the world. My second was a fantasy adventure set in a fictional place, with a rich back history and a mystery at its centre. My third was a post-apocalyptic road trip that was as much about moving forward as it was looking back. And Tales from the Triverse, which I’m writing and publishing here, is a detective series with crimes to investigate and solve.

All of these books have needed a lot of ‘explaining’, so I’ve had practice at finding elegant ways to do that.

So. Deep breath.

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Write More with Simon K Jones to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.