THE STORY VAULT BLOG
EXPLAINING EXPOSITION (A less than comprehensive guide)
I admit the first half of the title is misleading. I'm not explaining anything. We all know what exposition is.
I'm here to talk about one way to deal with it.
As I said in an earlier post, exposition can be very useful. Nearly every movie has it. It's not the exposition that's the problem...it's how it's delivered. (Just the way dialogue is not a problem...it's how ti's written that matters.)
In Moorland I have a character whose backstory is absolutely critical to understanding what motivates him (his life purpose, basically). But I realized that if I fed the audience his backstory in bits and drabs it was...
!) going to have less impact
2) going to slow the pace of the story
So I decided I would use exposition as a short cut.
Now, in the past, when I was a devotee of screenwriting books, I would take the predominately proffered advice. (Did that sound awkward? That sounded awkward.) Introduce conflict. This would either distract audiences so they didn't realize they were being fed a set of facts...or be the sugar that made the medicine go down. So that's what I did.
It still came across as exposition.
I feel the scene containing Caleb's backstory not only works, but it's a lot of fun. I believe it's the kind of scene that actors would love to play.
So what did I do differently?
I stared with an advantage. Caleb is a very dramatic, larger-than-life character. He's been described as Shakespearean...and to a degree that's accurate. So the first thing is
Caleb's delivery is very sincere and dramatic. This helps immensely.
It's not enough.
I then introduced conflict...but very specific types of conflict.
Not a conflict of ideas like "the only way to get the prisoner to safety is to go over the top of the mountain" vs. "are you crazy? we'll freeze to death before we reach the summit...we need to commandeer a boat and go by sea." Unless you're a mountaineer or the captain of a fishing boat it's hard to get emotionally engaged in that debate.
The type of conflict I engaged was one of values. We may not have an opinion on "by land or sea," but we have an opinion on values.
Third, I introduced humour. The humour is integral to the conflict and reflects the conflicting values of Caleb and Leticia.
To this point we have:
1) Over-the-top delivery
2) Conflicting values
3) Humour
There's one more ingredient...and this is as important as anything. And to be honest, I don't even know if I could pull it off again.
4) There's a payoff.
Early in the scene there's a setup so subtle that it doesn't appear to be a setup...but it's paid off at the end. A throwaway question that gets buried...only to suddenly resurrect itself.
I wish I could say I thought of all of this before I began writing the scene. But it just happened. The pieces fell into place.