Exposition is architecture for your story

Part 1: Doors, walls, gates, corners

You often hear writers, editors and critics complain about a work’s use of heavy, forced exposition. This happens when a story stops the plot to give the audience lore, background information and explanations for a given plot point. If your story has, for example, a magic system, you do need to explain (at least a little bit) how that magic system works. This isn’t necessarily a problem with the exposition itself – more a problem of where and why that exposition appears. Timing and pacing are usually just as important as the exposition’s architecture.

You can use exposition in your story without making it feel forced. I like to think of this as using “doors”, “walls”, “gates” and “corners”. (There are probably more formal terms for this idea, but this is how it stays useful for me.)

You can walk through a door, into or out of a room. So, door exposition confirms that a piece of information is true.

You can’t walk through a wall, and you can’t see through a wall. So, wall exposition confirms that a piece of information is false.

You can see through a gate, but you can’t walk through it. So, gate exposition doesn’t confirm if your piece of information is true or false. Instead, a gate can suggest that some of your information is correct but not all of it. Or it can encourage you to reconsider the information you already have.

Let’s go through an example I’ve made up just for a demonstration:

“The wizards were skilled in Aqua magic, which they could use to conjure water. When they waved their arms and said the magic words, large droplets of water appeared before them. With another wave of the wizards’ arms, the water flew across the room, following their gestures.”

This is door exposition. I’m sitting the audience down and explaining how the magic system works in context. The example just gives you information.

“All her life, Mary only knew for certain that fire was the energy that warmed her home on cold nights. Fire was the glowing helpful hand that made food safe to eat. Fire was the signal that summoned curious bugs and kept away hungry wolves. She could not believe that a man holding fire in his hands would destroy her village.”

This is wall exposition. We’ve set up the idea that fire is a helpful magic with a lot of social and technological utility in the story, and then countered that idea with destructive aspects of fire.

“Susanna was certain that a man stood still in the middle of the earthquake that destroyed her town. Her sister still insists that there was no such man in town that day. The nightmares say otherwise.”

This is gate exposition. We’ve set up some ambiguity because characters are reasonably disagreeing with each other.

One of these is not better than the other. They are suited for different purposes. BUT if your readers offer feedback that your work is “exposition-heavy”, the problem is probably 1) you have a lot of exposition AND 2) you are using a lot of doors.

Throughout the plot, characters ask questions and learn answers. When that exchange of information is based on your character’s motivations, you’re moving the plot forward. What the characters are willing to ask or not ask – willing to know or not know – willing to do or not do to get that information – that’s where your drama comes from.

You can use walls and gates to make your exposition feel less heavy. Characters might get some answers they need, but not everything. They might get answers out of context. They might get wrong or misleading answers. They might have to sacrifice something to get an answer.

Stories often keep questions and answers in an approximate balance. If you’re asking a lot of questions and not getting a lot of eventual answers, then you might be making a puzzle box by accident. If you’re giving a lot of answers but not asking many questions, then you might be info-dumping.

If it feels like you have a lot of doors in a small plot beat, you might actually be in a corner. Your character is stuck and has to get out somehow. You have to make new information or change information you already have so your character gets out of the corner. Corners can happen when:

·        Your characters are in the middle of a problem with no method for solving the problem, so you have to give them a way out – a “deus ex machina”.

·        Your character has to know some type of information or have some skill which they did not access before, especially if the reasons for not accessing that information/skill are not present in the rest of the story – a “Mary Sue”.

·        Your character who has previously had a lot of downtime now has to take action

When your characters are stuck in corners, you make doors to keep them moving. That’s not a problem with your story’s moment-by-moment drama, but a sign of a larger architectural problem.

Turn corners into gates by:

·        Putting a solution in front of its problem, forcing your character to figure out how to use it

·        Foreshadowing the stakes of using inaccessible or forbidden information

·        Using downtime to lay traps or distractions

Skilled storytellers can offer exposition that reveals multiple pieces of information at once. I’m using animated movies and video games as examples here because they’re not as spontaneous as live-action movies or even books. The information they exposit (and when and where that exposition appears) is usually more of an intentional choice.

Example 1:

The opening sequence of “Beauty and the Beast” that contains “Belle” and “Belle (Reprise)” is a fantastic example. In this order, the sequence:

·        establishes the setting with minor characters’ routines,

·        introduces Belle and Gaston with notable solo parts because they’re main characters,

·        overviews their motivations through interactions with minor characters,

·        foreshadows the magic elements (Belle mentions “a prince in disguise” and “here’s where she meets Prince Charming / But she won’t discover that it’s him ‘til chapter three”),

·        AND shows Belle is much more aware of her surroundings than she appears as she reads.

It feels like door exposition at first because it’s introducing the audience to the setting. But I think this is actually gate exposition because the sequence focuses on Belle’s negative reputation. Townspeople describe Belle as “strange”, “peculiar” and “funny” while showing her totally comfortable in her element.

Example 2:

The Tai Lung flashback in “Kung Fu Panda” also gives a mix of door and gate exposition because it has multiple purposes. This sequence:

·        broaches a taboo topic that strengthens Tigress’s characterization and her relationship to Shifu,

·        reveals the villain Tai Lung’s motivations and relationship to Shifu,

·        gives more detail about Shifu’s emotional conflict,

·        helps the main character Po bond with his allies in plot downtime,

·        AND cements the conflict between the Furious Five and Po – that the Furious Five have worked their whole life to train in kung fu without living up to Shifu’s trauma-response high standards, and that Po seemingly does not take his own kung fu training seriously.

Example 3:

The opening sequence of “WALL-E” establishes that humans are long gone from Earth and left behind garbage on a geographic scale. The setting is cold, desolate, and empty of anything but trash. And then WALL-E starts moving.

This mixes together wall exposition – the humans we’re expecting on Earth are not here – and gate exposition – the characters we’ll spend the most time with in this story aren’t humans at all.

Example 4:

The opening sequence of “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” lets Link wake up, references his “long slumber” (door), describes him as a light “that must shine upon Hyrule again” (gate), and then sets him loose into the Great Plateau. Link meets an old man who tells him more about the immediate setting (door). The setting is relatively peaceful except for a few tutorial monsters and ruined buildings to explore (door). And then Zelda reintroduces Ganon at Hyrule Castle, changing the tone (wall). It was quiet at first, but Link still has a job to do.

Plot twists, when they are told to the audience, are often a gate type of exposition. Readers are usually much more willing to accept door exposition – even heavy door exposition – if it means opening some gates they had questions about or offering new context to previous plot points. The wizard is more powerful, but their magic is less controllable.

SPOILERS FOR A 14-YEAR-OLD PLOT TWIST FROM NARUTO SHIPPUDEN

Example 5:

The reveals to Sasuke and Naruto about the true nature of Itachi’s plot role get away with otherwise long monologuing because they clarify that plot-driving mystery, change multiple character’s motivations, and increase the scale of Naruto and Sasuke’s conflict to world wars and mythology. The scene with Naruto also skips past information we already learned with Sasuke to focus on highlights.

SPOILERS FOR BLEACH: THOUSAND YEAR BLOOD WAR

Example 6:

The flashback of Kyoraku asking about the painting of Yamamoto’s Bankai puts emotional weight onto that ability when it’s used again shortly before Yamamoto is killed. We’re familiar with these characters and their relationship already. We’ve just seen how powerful and potent the Bankai is – and then we see Yamamto’s emotional conflict about having to use it at all. Like the Itachi reveal, Yamamoto using his Bankai was something that had been hyped up before throughout the plot. This is a huge gate, showing the power of a tool that could have turned the tide of the entire conflict and then removing that tool.

Some plot situations allow for more blatant door exposition. A fighting tournament with characters using a variety of techniques is an opportunity for commentary, as long as it’s balanced out with dramatic fighting and fast pacing. A character falling ill or other pauses in action can help the audience understand techniques, stakes and relationships.

Part 2: You are making a building for your characters and readers to live inside

The best way to avoid doors and walls is to put your expository information in context.

One reason you hear often about starting as close to the action as possible in a story is because the audience can experience the action all on its own. Doors help explain the action and makes sure the characters have questions that exposition can answer. This is a gate itself, instead of door, door, door…

Give your characters opportunities to ask questions, jump to hasty conclusions and make mistakes, get desperate, get excited, get distracted, set up doors and walls and gates of their own.

Put obstacles in their way, like you would for the rest of the plot.

SPOILERS AHEAD in the examples!

Turn doors into gates by:

·        Making certain information uncomfortable – and therefore dramatic – for the expositing character

·        Connecting the backstory directly to a character motivation

·        Foreshadowing plot points the audience will have more context for later

·        Taking advantage of environmental cues

·        Highlighting moments of character consistency and inconsistency

·        Making the tools you show off fragile

·        Being picky about when you give information. Let your character see the events for themselves or have an emotional stake in the information before they get it. Even doors that are obnoxious at face value can turn into hype when the door makes a nonsense plot point more plausible.

“Show, don’t tell” is a common writing aphorism especially for movies because your audience will care more about a dramatic event you can show visually on screen than one you tell only in dialogue. Yes, the opening crawl of Star Wars is iconic, but the shot immediately afterwards of a small Rebel ship trying to escape from the huge Star Destroyer expresses the relationships better than paragraphs of text.

Doors and walls are free. Corners are cheap. But gates are costly, and for that reason, they force your characters to make interesting choices.

Give your characters character instead of making them stone statues guarding too many doors. The advice is same for both your characters and you: Now you have this information. What you do with it is your choice.