I would add--consider whether what you want to explain needs to be explained at all. I think Isaac Asimov said "The door dilated open" to explain that it was not a regular door. He didn't explain that it was a circular door and it rotated in a way that opened the aperture--it "dilated", which is an idea most people already understand intuitively.
That way the thing you need to explain becomes *experienced* rather than *said*. If it's complex or philosophical, sometimes leaving it unstated can be better for the reader, and let the reader fill it in.
There's a lot of tricks you can do with non-visual storytelling. I once listened to a podcast called "Sparks nevada, marshal on mars" and they did lots of clever things like having an "inside out ray" that turned people inside out. The imagination fills in all the blanks and neither the ray nor how the person is inside out needs to be explained.
This all depends on what you're explaining though.
Some of my writing is done in a metafiction style, where it's a text from another world that's merely been translated into English. So I include footnotes that outright explain things because it fits into the feeling I want, that being something similar to reading an old epic or saga where you have footnotes giving cultural context.
Battles Beneath the Stars is framed like a fighting game guide/wakthrough, so I can use exposition tools that video games have. Such as dedicated profiles for each major character going into detail on their backstory, and NPC dialogue I can use to give worldbuilding details without having to exposit it in a major scene. With the 'NPC' dialogue I try to make sure they all have clear opinions on the information they give readers. And sometimes the opinion is the information.
A funny thing with exposition is that there's one video game series where I really like the expo dumps. The Zero Escape trilogy often has long tangents on pseudoscience and weird theories/events that aren't always relevant, but for me it's part of the appeal and I really like them. I guess it's because the concepts themselves are interesting to me.
Awesome job on this, Simon! I like that you called out speculative fiction because it can be especially difficult with vast worlds not to just dump the entire folklore. I think spreading that out makes it more exciting for the reader. It's like unraveling a mystery.
I’d like to extend all this to include not dumping the entire world’s/character’s/supernatural race’s entire backstory into a prologue. I’ve seen so so SO many prologues used this way and I find them both jarring and boring. Just getting smashed in the face with exposition right off the bat is not a way to keep my attention (personally), and if it’s being told to a character that’s in the past or not present all that much in the story, I get thrown off on whose story it really is. Or if it’s a high impact prologue because this cataclysmic thing set this story in motion, it causes a grinding to a halt of the story in the next chapter because that’s not the start to THIS story. It’s a hill I’ll die on.
As for what I do, I sprinkle it throughout. In my dystopian novel, PROJECT TITAN: DEFECT, my character lives in a world that used to be San Francisco, so when she’s walking somewhere, or standing somewhere, or driving somewhere, I make it a point to see through her eyes, at least a little bit. A sentence or two, maybe. When she comes in contact with a new character to a reader, but an older relationship to her, I give her some inner monologue in that moment, a flash of memory that may take a minute to read, but would only last a second for her to process. When something upends her previously conceived ideas of things, I use that to explain how she thought it was and how it looks, using other characters to fill in blanks if they’re in scene.
Overt exposition is the single biggest 4th-wall-breaker for me. I'll drop a book (and a film, because it can be just as prevalent/potent in films when exposition is done badly) if it happens too much.
There's a fine line, to be sure. It's something I'm constantly fearful of in my own writing. Great article, Simon. Thanks for posting.
It occurs to me that your suggestions are good, but as a reader I like the process of gradually piecing together what the background is, by inference. We don't usually need to be told.
Great tips. I’ve been worldbuilding a planet and thinking about how to explain the parts of the society without this info dump. Island by Aldous Huxley is an info dump, so is The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon. A character asks a question and someone goes into this endless diatribe explaining all about the society. While I do find value in those stories, it’s great as a lesson of how to show who people are. You can maybe tell by their gait or build what they do for a living, that they’re spiritual or skeptical. This is a good article to come back to when I need some inspiration. Thanks.
No love for the epigraph? None? I'm shocked. Especially, "as you know" how I wrote more in praise of the epigraph than any other technique over the weekend.
*Shakes head* I get quoted and there's an its/it's typo which will haunt me to the grave, and a typical juxtaposition of a word like "diegetic" with a "blah-blah, etc." Heh.
I'm just going to type "diegetic" again, because I'm wondering how many times I have to type diegetic* before my phone's autocorrect finally learns the word "diegetic." Answer - the one with the asterisk.
Ironically my autocorrect never suggests "autocorrect*" when I'm trying to type autocorrect. Until the one with the asterisk.
I would add--consider whether what you want to explain needs to be explained at all. I think Isaac Asimov said "The door dilated open" to explain that it was not a regular door. He didn't explain that it was a circular door and it rotated in a way that opened the aperture--it "dilated", which is an idea most people already understand intuitively.
That way the thing you need to explain becomes *experienced* rather than *said*. If it's complex or philosophical, sometimes leaving it unstated can be better for the reader, and let the reader fill it in.
There's a lot of tricks you can do with non-visual storytelling. I once listened to a podcast called "Sparks nevada, marshal on mars" and they did lots of clever things like having an "inside out ray" that turned people inside out. The imagination fills in all the blanks and neither the ray nor how the person is inside out needs to be explained.
This all depends on what you're explaining though.
Some of my writing is done in a metafiction style, where it's a text from another world that's merely been translated into English. So I include footnotes that outright explain things because it fits into the feeling I want, that being something similar to reading an old epic or saga where you have footnotes giving cultural context.
Battles Beneath the Stars is framed like a fighting game guide/wakthrough, so I can use exposition tools that video games have. Such as dedicated profiles for each major character going into detail on their backstory, and NPC dialogue I can use to give worldbuilding details without having to exposit it in a major scene. With the 'NPC' dialogue I try to make sure they all have clear opinions on the information they give readers. And sometimes the opinion is the information.
A funny thing with exposition is that there's one video game series where I really like the expo dumps. The Zero Escape trilogy often has long tangents on pseudoscience and weird theories/events that aren't always relevant, but for me it's part of the appeal and I really like them. I guess it's because the concepts themselves are interesting to me.
Gah! You quoted me!?! ......maybe i shouldnt have said "dump" so much 😂 LOVE the image of spinning plates - so much to keep up at one time.
Thank you so much for your help with my chapter. I’m reworking the whole thing with this advice in mind. So appreciate it!
Awesome job on this, Simon! I like that you called out speculative fiction because it can be especially difficult with vast worlds not to just dump the entire folklore. I think spreading that out makes it more exciting for the reader. It's like unraveling a mystery.
I’d like to extend all this to include not dumping the entire world’s/character’s/supernatural race’s entire backstory into a prologue. I’ve seen so so SO many prologues used this way and I find them both jarring and boring. Just getting smashed in the face with exposition right off the bat is not a way to keep my attention (personally), and if it’s being told to a character that’s in the past or not present all that much in the story, I get thrown off on whose story it really is. Or if it’s a high impact prologue because this cataclysmic thing set this story in motion, it causes a grinding to a halt of the story in the next chapter because that’s not the start to THIS story. It’s a hill I’ll die on.
As for what I do, I sprinkle it throughout. In my dystopian novel, PROJECT TITAN: DEFECT, my character lives in a world that used to be San Francisco, so when she’s walking somewhere, or standing somewhere, or driving somewhere, I make it a point to see through her eyes, at least a little bit. A sentence or two, maybe. When she comes in contact with a new character to a reader, but an older relationship to her, I give her some inner monologue in that moment, a flash of memory that may take a minute to read, but would only last a second for her to process. When something upends her previously conceived ideas of things, I use that to explain how she thought it was and how it looks, using other characters to fill in blanks if they’re in scene.
Great roundup!
Overt exposition is the single biggest 4th-wall-breaker for me. I'll drop a book (and a film, because it can be just as prevalent/potent in films when exposition is done badly) if it happens too much.
There's a fine line, to be sure. It's something I'm constantly fearful of in my own writing. Great article, Simon. Thanks for posting.
In my experience the worst examples of this may be found in science fiction. There is even a word for it: infodump. I wrote a spoof example of it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/terryfreedman/p/experimenting-with-styles?utm_source=direct&r=18suih&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
It occurs to me that your suggestions are good, but as a reader I like the process of gradually piecing together what the background is, by inference. We don't usually need to be told.
Great tips. I’ve been worldbuilding a planet and thinking about how to explain the parts of the society without this info dump. Island by Aldous Huxley is an info dump, so is The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon. A character asks a question and someone goes into this endless diatribe explaining all about the society. While I do find value in those stories, it’s great as a lesson of how to show who people are. You can maybe tell by their gait or build what they do for a living, that they’re spiritual or skeptical. This is a good article to come back to when I need some inspiration. Thanks.
Great "As you know, Bob." cartoon!
No love for the epigraph? None? I'm shocked. Especially, "as you know" how I wrote more in praise of the epigraph than any other technique over the weekend.
*Shakes head* I get quoted and there's an its/it's typo which will haunt me to the grave, and a typical juxtaposition of a word like "diegetic" with a "blah-blah, etc." Heh.
I'm just going to type "diegetic" again, because I'm wondering how many times I have to type diegetic* before my phone's autocorrect finally learns the word "diegetic." Answer - the one with the asterisk.
Ironically my autocorrect never suggests "autocorrect*" when I'm trying to type autocorrect. Until the one with the asterisk.
Thanks Simon. You help me teach an AI.
Excellent, Simon. Thank you.