How to Write GOOD Exposition

Exposition is any sort of explanation or explanatory description in a story.

Every story NEEDS exposition! It’s not a bad thing. But when done poorly, it can be painful to read.

However, it doesn’t have to be that way. So let’s take a look at some GOOD examples!

During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to write good exposition.

You can watch the full video here to or scroll down to for highlights.

What is Exposition?

• Any sort of explanation or explanatory description in a story.
• Example: “Once upon a time, there was a castle with a princess. She was very lonely. Probably because she ate everyone who came near her.”
• Exposition is used to introduce characters, setting, background information, history, etc.
• Every story NEEDS exposition! It’s not a bad thing. But when done poorly, it can be painful to read.

Example of BAD Exposition

• “This is my friend Ted. We’re best friends. We’ve known each other since kindergarten. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve still remained close over the years. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Ted, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for me. I know that for a fact.”
• This is bad because it’s just TELLING us information
• Good exposition doesn’t just relay information, it either shows the information, or tells it in a way that’s fun to read
• So let’s take a look at FOUR WAYS to write good exposition, with examples from books

#1. HIDE THE EXPOSITION
Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Harry put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn’t much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.

“Thirty-six,” he said, looking up at his mother and father. “That’s two less than last year.”

“Darling, you haven’t counted Auntie Marge’s present, see, it’s here right under this big one from Mommy and Daddy.”
“All right, thirty-seven then,” said Dudley, going red in the face. Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.

Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, “And we’ll buy you another two presents while we’re out today. How’s that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?”

Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, “So I’ll have thirty… thirty…”

“Thirty-nine, sweetums,” said Aunt Petunia.

“Oh.” Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. “All right then.”

Uncle Vernon chuckled. “Little tyke wants his money’s worth, just like his father. ‘Atta boy, Dudley.”

• We are never TOLD that Dudley is a horrible brat and his parents indulge him, we are SHOWN it.
• The exposition is hidden in the actions and dialogue of the characters.
• This is an example of GOOD exposition through dialogue. Bad exposition through dialogue is stuff like: “We’re best friends.” or “I can’t believe Aunt Lucy, who moved away last year, is finally back in town!”
• Those are examples of things people would never actually say, and they feel forced, taking the reader out of the story

#2. KEEP THE EXPOSITION RELEVANT
Excerpt from The Hunger Games

(Earlier in the chapter) This is the day of the reaping.

…

(Later on in the chapter) Shutters on the gray squat houses are closed. The reaping isn’t until two. May as well sleep in. If you can.

…

(Even later) The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch — this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.

• The opening chapter of The Hunger Games is almost entirely exposition, but it doesn’t feel that way because the exposition is only given when it’s RELEVANT
• The “reaping” is brought up several times in the first half of the chapter, but it is never explained until it is actually HAPPENING.
• Don’t give exposition about a character’s dad when they’re walking to school, don’t give exposition about their school when they’re visiting a friend, keep it relevant!
• Hidden exposition here: in delaying the explanation, there is a lingering sense of dread throughout the entire chapter, as if the reaping is something the main character doesn’t want to acknowledge

#3. MAKE THE EXPOSITION FEEL REAL
Excerpt from Gone Girl

I wallowed in bed, which was our New York bed in our new house, which we still called the new house, even though we’d been back here for two years. It’s a rented house right along the Mississippi River, a house that screams Suburban Nouveau Riche, the kind of place I aspired to as a kid from my split-level, shag-carpet side of town. The kind of house that is immediately familiar: a generically grand, unchallenging, new, new, new house that my wife would—and did—detest.

“Should I remove my soul before I come inside?” Her first line upon arrival. It had been a compromise: Amy demanded we rent, not buy, in my little Missouri hometown, in her firm hope that we wouldn’t be stuck here long. But the only houses for rent were clustered in the failed development: a miniature ghost town of a bank-owned, recession-busted, price-reduced mansions, a neighborhood that closed before it ever opened. It was a compromise, but Amy didn’t see it that way, not in the least. To Amy, it was a punishing whim on my part, a nasty, selfish twist of the knife. I would drag her, caveman style, to a town she had aggressively avoided, and make her live in the kind of house she only used to mock. I suppose it’s not a compromise if only one of you considers it such, but that was what our compromises tended to look like. One of us was always angry. Amy, usually.

• All of the little details comes together to make this exposition much more FUN to read than something like: “Our house was a McMansion.”
• Exposition is already going to be one of the weakest parts of your story. If it’s even weaker by not feeling real, then readers will not suspend their disbelief and will check out, even if it’s a “realistic” story
• Hidden exposition: conflict/animosity between husband and wife

#4. GIVE US THE EXPOSITION IN THE CHARACTER’S VOICE
Excerpt from An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

I was very much feeling only human as I dragged my tired ass down 23rd Street at 2:45 a.m. after working a sixteen-hour day at a start-up that (thanks to an aggressively sh*tty contract I signed) will remain nameless. Going to art school might seem like a terrible financial decision, but really that’s only true if you have to take out gobs and gobs of student loans to fund your hoity-toity education. Of course, I had done exactly that. My parents were successful, running a business providing equipment to small and medium-sized dairy farms. Like, the little things you hook up to cows to get the milk out, they sold and distributed them. It was good business, good enough that I wouldn’t have had a lot of debt if I’d gone to a state school. But I did not do that. I had loans. Lots. So, after jumping from major to major (advertising, fine art, photography, illustration) and finally settling on the mundane (but at least useful) BFA in design, I took the first job that would keep me in New York and out of my old bedroom in my parent’s house in Northern California.

• April’s voice is so strong here that it feels like a REAL HUMAN BEING real human being telling you their story
• What she’s saying isn’t that interesting, but HOW she’s saying it is very interesting! All of her unique ways of expressing things make it a delight to read. You’d read anything in her voice, even the phone book
• Hidden exposition: we learn a lot about April from what she tells us, but we learn a lot from HOW she tells us too — she is an outgoing, awkward, sarcastic individual who is not afraid to speak her mind

OVERALL!

1.  HIDE THE EXPOSITION
2.  KEEP THE EXPOSITION RELEVANT
3. MAKE THE EXPOSITION FEEL REAL
4. GIVE US THE EXPOSITION IN THE CHARACTER’S VOICE

QUICK EXPOSITION TIPS!

• Another good way to give exposition is by using fake article excerpts, letters, e-mails, etc.
• Don’t be afraid to vomit out tons of exposition on your first draft, then cut it away on the second.
• Putting your main character on the same page as the reader is a great way to make sure that new information doesn’t feel forced (ie: Harry learning about the wizarding world, Neo learning about the Matrix, etc.)
• Remember! You are the GOD of your story’s world. You can change WHATEVER you need to SHOW us the exposition better: the items in your character’s living space, their job, their family, their personality, etc.

After that, chat voted that we write a story using what we went over about exposition for this prompt: You wake up at your own funeral. Again.

Here’s what we came up with: (Exposition bolded)

How is life worth living if you know that you will never die? That’s what I’m sitting here thinking as I wake up at my own funeral. Again.

Oh, I’m not in the casket, of course. That would be creepy. Imagine all of these nice family and friends of mine gathered here in the church, no longer weeping and playing games on their phones as the priest drones on, but shooting to their feet and fleeing for the doors when I pop up from the casket and yell out, “DIDN’T I TELL YOU TO PLAY GREEN DAY AT MY FUNERAAAAAAL!”

No, I’m sitting here, in the audience, in my brand new stolen body. From the smell of it, it looks like I’ve been reincarnated as my teenage cousin Melville. Trying not to arouse the attention of anyone nearby, I look over my hands popping out from my oversized suit, clearly a hand-me-down from some uncle. They’re pretty small, not the chunky sausage fingers I’ve been used to for the past decade. It’s kind of nice to be able to wiggle my digits and not have them always rubbing against each other.

Right now, those digits are wrapped around a phone. With my newfound youthful dexterity, I click on the camera, reverse it, and take a look at my new body’s face.

Yup, Melville all the way. His—I mean, my—blond hair is a surfer’s delight, waves for days, crashing along the finely-pruned sideburned edges. My glasses, hopefully thick hand-me-downs from some spiteful aunt and not chosen by my own tastes, are nearly half the size of my oily face. Even my resting expression is so smug it looks like I might crap right out of my chin-butt.

I’d better get used to it though. Melville and I are gonna be real close friends from here on. And I’d better get used to his weak skin too, which gets a painful jab from his mother, my Aunt Becky, sitting beside me.

“Get up!” she hisses, leaning into my ear so close that her bargain-bin JCPenny perfume nearly chokes me to death. Wouldn’t that be hilarious. Dying twice in one day. Not even I’ve accomplished that yet.

Aunt Becky—it’s gonna be a long road to calling her “mom”— pushes me out of the pew, her plastic bead necklaces clacking against her red sequined dress that struggled to contain her bulk. Both of us stand in line behind a dozen others waiting for our casket time.

It’s always enlightening to see how people react to your death. I guess that’s something I should be thankful for, an experience that, as far as I know, I’m the only human that’s had it. Over and over and over again.

This time around, the only big surprise is my ex-wife Amy sitting in the front row, blabbing her eyes out. We haven’t spoken in ten years? I dunno, maybe there was still something there. My current girlfriend Melissa is a few rows behind her, legs crossed, staring into her phone. She never looked good in black which might explain why she’s wearing a sundress to a funeral. That, or she’s just feeling relieved. We were already on the fringes, and my untimely death saved her an awkward conversation. Having someone just die is way easier than breaking up with them.

Other than that, it’s just the usual friends and family tears. All of them have no idea how lucky they are that they missed the ultimate dodgeball thrown right at their souls. Except for Melville. I guess that’s what he gets for being picked last in gym.

Finally it’s my and Aunt Becky’s turn at the casket. I step up to it, stare down, and shiver all the way down from my peepers to my sneakers.

It’s me, lying there in the casket, dead. My overweight face is still round, like an albino potato, with some tufts of tar-black hair sprouting from the top. Eyes closed, forever.

Although I suppose it’s not really me. It’s Gerald Baker, who was me for five years, who was the brother of Judy Baker, who was me for nineteen years, who was the friend of Elisa Fritz, who was me for eleven years, and so on and so on until I guess there was an original me at some point. It’s been so long now, so many centuries of this weird reincarnation, that I don’t even remember my original name. Was I a man or a woman or a Roman peasant or a British king? Who knows. My family tree is an overgrown compost heap at this point, full of everyone’s rotting branches and a dash of that JCPenny perfume.

Every single time I die, I wake up as a friend or family member of that person. I have no idea why or how it happens, not that the universe seems to care to explain it to me anytime. I’ve woken up as people I had no idea even existed before, and wouldn’t you know it, but living as someone like that isn’t easy. A few times I’ve gotten thrown away for insanity, since I acted so out of character, so I do my best to at least have a decent knowledge of the people in my most recent body’s social circle. Studying up on Melville’s personal life isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, but it sure as hell beats spending another lifetime wasting away surrounded by padded walls.

I’ve mostly gotten used to it at this point. Accepted it and tried to move on with my life. My lives, I guess. Try to make the best of it, see the good sides, like being able to attend my own funerals. It’s not all bad, I suppose.

There’s only one aspect of my whole “reincarnation situation” that still keeps me up at night. What happens to the displaced souls of those whose bodies I hijack?

Aunt Becky jabs me in the side again, and I mumble some incoherent words to my old corpse. Seemingly satisfied, she places her hands on my shoulders and ushers me away back to our seats.

That’s when I see it.

In the back of the church, passing through the front door as if it wasn’t even there, is a translucent mass of ghosts all glued together haphazardly as if by some maniacal preschooler. Their empty eyes and mouths are screaming silently, all focused entirely on me.

“We’ve found you!” they all hiss in unison.

Did you notice what techniques we used during the exposition? Be sure to check out the video for more!

If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.

And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.

Hope to see you next time, friend!

Featured image: Pakutaso