My position on Exposition

Renee wafts around the seating arrangement, gliding past all of the highly cultured customers, undettered from enjoying the works of art presented before them. Jimmy and Chace follow, awkwardly shambling past seats, disrupting waiters carrying plates, and generally finding themselves on the receiving end of glares and utterances of disgust. Jimmy turns to confront one of the patrons, but before he can fire off a scathing remark, Chace turns him away. As Jimmy turns, he spots Renee, sitting in a booth at the far rear of the restaurant.

Jimmy slides onto the long seat, sitting directly opposite Renee, who's already sipping a cocktail.

"We shouldn't be disturbed here," she says.

Chace scoots up right next to Jimmy, pushing him into the wall.

"The heck? You ever hear of personal space?" he growls.

Jimmy scowls at Chace, who's reclining in the seat in shame. Renee glares at them both.

"Well? Let's get on with it then,"

Jimmy pulls Chace upright, clears his throat and wipes himself down. Chace, straightening his posture in his seat, takes a folded cut of paper from his pocket. Unravelling it, he begins to speak.

"Let me tell you everything you need to know about exposition. Exposition is a systematic, usually written statement about, commentary on, or explanation of a specific subject. The act of expounding or setting forth information or a viewpoint..."

Imagine reading an engrossing adventure story, with such immaculate pacing and tension, that you didn't want to risk your eyes missing a single second of it. Suddenly, all the action stops, so that you can be told 'all about the secret of the setting'. While the subject matter may be interesting, it certainly doesn't hold the same level of intrigue that the content preceding it did. As a result, you find yourself being pulled away from the narrative, the plot progression broken, and you now realise that the story has lost all of it's tension.

This in itself is not inherently bad, however exposition should be handled appropriately to the demands of the story. If it is necessary for the audience to be made aware of something, you should make effort to ensure they are informed. However, there is one thing to note if you want to hold a reader's interest.

Show & Tell

A simple approach that makes it easier to keep your audience captivated by your story is to show the information you want them to acknowledge. Rather than spoon feeding exposition, if you present it's elements and let the audience build the information themselves, you are encouraging active participation, to a degree. Some mediums benefit from this approach more than others, especially those that have interactive components. Despite this, a "show" approach still engrosses a reader much like a practical assignment engrosses a school student. Getting the audience involved, even if only mentally, can keep up the entertainment value, in moderation.

To illustrate this, I have prepared two simple film scripts built off these two concepts. One script utilises the Tell approach, while the other uses a Show approach. I'll let you decide which one:

• Conveys information better
• Is more entertaining

To begin with, we have the Tell approach:

Now compare that to how I constructed Show:

There are key differences behind the presentation of these stories. The important element is to note that the approach changed the way I articulated the occurrences. When I was focused on telling the audience the exposition, I couldn't logically include Take; a character I prepared before I started writing. I felt his inclusion would've been unnecessary and contrived, as the information you needed to know during this scene had already been established.

However, when I focused on showing the reader what was happening, I had to incorporate more elements to convey as much exposition as possible. Suddenly, we start to see a stark contrast between the personalities of each character. The Man in the Chair sounds snarky and smug, yet when threatened, loses that spunk and recoils. Delia is presented as quite clumsy, yet caring and considerate. Take is much more collected and calculating than Give, who emerges as an aggressive man with a foul mouth and short fuse to match.

Conclusion

While both approaches certainly do have their merits, I personally think that "showing" is far more effective than "telling" in the majority of cases. For one, to successfully execute a show approach, you have to consolidate all elements of your story together into a cohesive whole. You have to consider subtext, and that presents the opportunity to learn the skill of interweaving the plot and the wider narrative together. It becomes a fine balancing act between making the plot understandable while also adding, not detracting from the plot with the subtext and world building. For the audience, it presents something to think about. They get to engage mentally with your story, which changes a passive experience into an active one. It's far easier to captivate someone's interest once you start making them feel like they are involved in the story.

When done correctly, the challenge of presenting exposition without simply telling it does wonders. It makes it far easier to convey the thematic concepts accurately, and the active involvement ensures that your story will leave a lasting impression.