Exposition doesn’t have to be boring.
Let’s look at some examples of FUN exposition from books, then write our own together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to make exposition more fun to read.
You can watch the video here to or scroll down for notes/highlights.
How to Make Exposition FUN to Read
What is Exposition?
- Exposition is any sort of explanation 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 ONLY telling us information
- Good exposition doesn’t just tell information, it does it in a way that’s fun to read, such as…
Bad Exposition REWORKED
- Showing: “I opened my apartment door for Ted, and immediately our fingers collided like magnets. Our hands wiggled and bopped around each other, performing the same stupid secret handshake that we’d done since kindergarten.”
- Making it feel real: “If you have a friend like Ted, consider yourself lucky. That kid took a bullet for me back in kindergarten, said he was the one responsible for the yellow puddle on the floor under the cot after nap time. All year long, he was known as ‘Tinkle Ted,’ and I got off scot-free. I hope that my twenty years of undying friendship have at least somewhat repaid that eternal debt.”
- These aren’t perfect, but they’re at least more FUN to read
Let’s take a look at FOUR WAYS to make exposition fun to read!
#1. SHOW the exposition
11/22/63 by Stephen King
I remember I had a little headache and was rubbing my temples the way you do when you’re trying to keep a little nagger from turning into a big thumper. I remember thinking, Three more of these, just three, and I can get out of here. I can go home, fix myself a big cup of instant cocoa, and dive into the new John Irving novel without these sincere but poorly made things hanging over my head.
- This is the beginning of the story, when the main character is grading adult students’ essays
- Remember! The author could’ve easily just said: “I wanted to finish up my boring work and go home,” but he didn’t, instead he SHOWED the exposition rather than telling it
- This is the most important way to make exposition more enjoyable to read: any time you can show it, go for it
#2. Make the exposition feel REAL
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Electrified or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of District 12. Inside the woods they roam freely, and there are added concerns like venomous snakes, rabid animals, and no real paths to follow. But there’s also food if you know how to find it. My father knew and he taught me some before he was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There was nothing even to bury. I was eleven then. Five years later, I still wake up screaming for him to run.
- Hunger Games is FULL of exposition, it needs to be or else the dystopian story wouldn’t make sense
- But the author makes sure not to just write that exposition like a Wikipedia article, instead she writes it in a way that makes it feel real: in Katniss’s VOICE
- Remember! The author could’ve easily just written “My father knew and he taught me some before he died five years ago,” but that would’ve felt bland
- Adding those three little sentences at the end turns it from a boring fact into something that feels like a real person would say, oozing with personality
#3. Make sure the exposition is RELEVANT
Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
“Illyrio is no fool,” Viserys said.”The magister knows that I will not forget my friends when I come into my throne.”
Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things. But Dany knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”
“Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount.” He studied her critically. “You still slouch. Straighten yourself.” He pushed back her shoulders with his hands. “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. “Do you?” he repeated.
- Game of Thrones is FULL of exposition, it needs to be or else the fantasy story wouldn’t make sense
- But the author only brings up the exposition when it’s RELEVANT, like here: the exposition about Ilyrio comes right after they talk about him, and the exposition about Viserys’s anger comes right before it is shown
- Remember! The author could’ve easily just told us all about Viserys’s anger without it actually happening in the scene, but it would’ve felt out of place
- Keeping the exposition relevant to what is happening NOW makes it much more enticing for the reader to actually read it
#4. Keep the exposition SHORT
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling
(pg. 1) The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it.
(pg. 5) There was no point in worrying Mrs. Dursley; she always got so upset at any mention of her sister.
(pg. 7) “Er — Petunia, dear — you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?” As he expected, Mrs. Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister.
- Chapter 1 of Harry Potter wants to get across to the reader that the Potter family are wizards, but it gives it to us in small doses
- We get a bunch of short 1-2 sentence sections that allude to the Potter family sprinkled throughout the whole chapter
- Remember! The author could’ve easily given it to the reader all at once in several paragraphs, but that would’ve been boring, instead she broke it up between sections of Mr. Dursley going to work, seeing strange things, and then Harry being dropped off
- Breaking up a long stretch of exposition into smaller pieces can make them much easier to swallow for the reader
In Summary!
#1. SHOW the exposition
#2. Make the exposition feel REAL
#3. Make sure the exposition is RELEVANT
#4. Keep the exposition SHORT
- Remember! You are the GOD of your story. You can change anything to smooth out the exposition
- If you get feedback that a section is boring/expository, and you find yourself saying, “But I need that section to be there/be like that…” warning bells should go off that you need to do some of the above four things to make it more fun to read
After that, chat voted that we write a story practicing exposition. The prompt they voted on was this one: A local population has a myth about the Resonating Rocks and the “monsters” that appear when the rocks sing. Crack the right ones open and a hidden door opens up.
Here’s what we wrote:
Sarah set down yet another “singing rock” with a sigh. It lay with the others on the desk in her trailer, as silent as any other rock she’d ever tried to talk to. The only singing they’d ever done, as far as she could tell, was when she smashed them against each other at night while the rest of the crew was home in their beds and she was here, alone in a rusted camper with a toilet that didn’t even flush, trying to squeeze music out of stones.
Setting down that problem for now, Sarah stood up and dragged herself over to the kitchenette. She dug through piles of dirty cups and saucers and empty cans, sticky with beans or dried pasta residue, yanking out the cleanest bowl she could find. This one only had a few crusty red stains on it. Probably old tomato sauce, hopefully not blood. Although she could probably do with a bit of iron in her diet.
The cupboard spilled down empty Velveeta boxes and ripped bags of chips as she reached in for her last remaining can of Chef Boyardee. She’d have to go to town for more food soon, unfortunately. Every time she made it to the checkout counter, it was always the same conversation.
“You the one listening for the ‘singin’ stones?’” they’d ask, whether it was high school Frankie working after class or ancient, wrinkly Marv who’d been wearing the Stop n’ Save apron ever since he was Frankie’s age.
“That’s me,” Sarah would say. She was at least thankful the conversation distracted the cashier away from asking her about the twenty cans of ravioli and beefaroni and something else “aroni” that had never seen a real tomato in its life.
Frankie or Marv or Beth or whoever would then lean in and whisper. “Have you seen any monsters yet?”
“Not yet,” Sarah would say. “But if I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
So far there were twenty locals on her list that were to be “the first know,” and so far none of them knew anything more than Sarah. She’d come here five years ago to study the supposed Resonating Rocks of Reckspurt, Utah, but so far the only thing that had resonated with her was a cold bowl of carbohydrates at the end of another fruitless day.
This was supposed to be her big break. The joy she’d felt when she’d first gotten the grant five years ago was now just ashes in the wind from a once-burning fire. All her classmates from grad school had played it safe, becoming professors or interning at dig sites in Ethiopia or Brazil. The nights felt even darker as the light from her phone showed her all their accomplishments, while she sat hunched over, reading them, shoveling “ronis.”
As she sat down at her desk covered in the traitorous stones, preparing for another evening of envy, there was a knock at the trailer door. Her mouth full, Sarah merely mumbled to come in, and the door opened, pushing piles of used tissues and apple cores away in its path.
“Maybe we should start excavating this site of yours,” Arthur said, looking around. The construction foreman of the site, he was doing his nightly check-in before clocking out. He snapped on his hard hat’s light and shone it on the multi-layered mess in Sarah’s trailer. “Might actually find something worthwhile if we dig in here.”
Sarah grunted. “Have at it. Once the grant money is up, it’s all yours to crack open.”
“Only six days, four hours, and eleven minutes until then,” Arthur said, clicking off the light. “But who’s counting?”
“I’m sure you and everyone else is anxious to move onto other jobs,” she said. “And to stop being laughed at by everyone in Reckspurt.”
Arthur leaned against the wall, carefully avoiding the same brown stain that he always did when he visited Sarah. He smiled at her, that hopeful grin that had given her hope five years ago. Now there were slight crinkles around his cheeks, a reminder of how they’d both gotten older with nothing to show for it.
“Oh, won’t make much of a difference to me,” he said. “Old Arthur’s been the butt of Reckspurt jokes ever since Grandpa Jones went running naked through town, saying he heard the stones singing and—”
“—a monster had stolen his pants,” Sarah finished for him. She’d heard the story a thousand times at this point, from everyone in town. The story about an old, crazy naked man didn’t make her case for being a serious paleontologist studying a natural phenomenon any easier.
All of the anger bubbled over in Sarah in that moment, and she slammed the bowl of Chef Boyardee onto the table. Sauce and macaroni splashed out of it, all over the nearby stones.
“For god’s sake,” Sarah groaned. The stones were the one clean thing in her whole trailer. Now they were slathered in the sloppy arms of her great noodly god. At least cleaning them would actually accomplish something.
“Oh no,” Arthur said, his voice graver than Sarah had ever remembered. “What have you done?”
“It’s just some sauce,” Sarah said. “Here, hand me that tissue by your—
“Now you’ve done it,” Arthur said. He marched toward her, moving stiffly as she’d never seen him before. His form blocked the light from the one good fluorescent bulb behind him, turning his gaze dark. For the first time, Sarah felt afraid of him.
“Stop joking around,” she said. Arthur slowly raised a finger and pointed behind her.
“Look what you’ve done,” he said.
Sarah turned to the rocks on her desk and covered her mouth in shock and disgust.
Three of the rocks had open mouths and tongues writhing out of them, licking up the noodles that had spilled on them.
The sound started as a low hum, then grew to a whistle to a howl to a full-on unnatural symphony of singing stones. The three mouths opened wider, each emitting its own tone, a high-pitched train whistle attempting to gurgle words.
Inside the mouths glowed a rippling pool that the tongues detracted into, their feasts now complete. The three stones lay there, still singing their ghostly tune, as if beckoning Sarah to dive in.
“Just one more week,” Arthur said from behind her. “And then this should’ve all been over. I did my best to keep the stones’ secret safe, and your disgusting food away from them. One reckless splash and it’s all undone.”
Sarah forced her gaze away from the open stones. There was something hypnotizing about their shimming, liquidy innards.
“You knew about this?” she asked. “What… what are these then?”
When Sarah turned to face Arthur, she shrieked and covered her mouth. What stood before her was a slimy, pink-skinned horror, covered in pulsating suckers. It was still wearing the dirty hard hat.“They’re doors to other places,” it spoke to her. The words were garbled and wet as they came out from vibrating slits in its throat. “Say hello to Grandpa for me.”
The terror pushed Sarah, and she fell into the stone behind her.
Did you catch the exposition we put in there? Be sure to check out the video where we go over how we used all four different types!
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!