Monday, July 25, 2005
Exposition: How much is enough?
One of the most common beginner's mistakes is "information dump." That's when the writer floods the beginning of the story with information about the main character. Who she is, how she came to be the way she is, her likes and dislikes, etc. Usually the writer does this to make the character likeable and make the reader bond with her.
But expository passages are incapable of achieving this noble goal. It's not their function, like a hammer is incapable of tightening a screw. It can help the reader understand the character, but that's no guarantee she's going to like what she understands.
Exposition stops the story. Large passages of it--or, heaven forbid, an entire prologue or chapter--never lets it lift off the ground.
Generally, the reader doesn't need to know half of the information the writer thinks she does. But the writer needs to know it all before she can judiciously determine how much to feed to the reader.
One of the best ways to uncover necessary exposition is to write a character biography from birth to present story. Some authors write it in first-person in the voice of the character. RITA award-winning author Robin Lee Hatcher: "I write first person autobiographies of the main characters, from birth to the moment my novel begins. I do this so that I, the author, will know what has happened to them in their pasts. This helps me understand their motivations for all they will do during the course of my novel and makes it easier to know how they will react to any given circumstance. It isn't nearly as important for the reader to know most of this as it is for the writer to know it. Some things that I write in these autobiographies will appear in the story but only a small percentage."
Other authors conduct character "interviews" to ferret out the expository information they need to know. RITA award-winning author and writing instructor Alicia Rasley has created an outline of a sample character interview here.
Other authors discover all the expository information they need to know while writing their first draft, then go back and erase most of it. It's rare for any writer not to discover something she didn't expect about her characters or story while writing it, no matter how previously prepared.
Either way, the wise writer finds out everything she can about the main characters... then makes peace with herself that only ten-percent or less will make it into the finished story.
Next, what to tell the reader when?
(To be continued…)
But expository passages are incapable of achieving this noble goal. It's not their function, like a hammer is incapable of tightening a screw. It can help the reader understand the character, but that's no guarantee she's going to like what she understands.
Exposition stops the story. Large passages of it--or, heaven forbid, an entire prologue or chapter--never lets it lift off the ground.
Generally, the reader doesn't need to know half of the information the writer thinks she does. But the writer needs to know it all before she can judiciously determine how much to feed to the reader.
One of the best ways to uncover necessary exposition is to write a character biography from birth to present story. Some authors write it in first-person in the voice of the character. RITA award-winning author Robin Lee Hatcher: "I write first person autobiographies of the main characters, from birth to the moment my novel begins. I do this so that I, the author, will know what has happened to them in their pasts. This helps me understand their motivations for all they will do during the course of my novel and makes it easier to know how they will react to any given circumstance. It isn't nearly as important for the reader to know most of this as it is for the writer to know it. Some things that I write in these autobiographies will appear in the story but only a small percentage."
Other authors conduct character "interviews" to ferret out the expository information they need to know. RITA award-winning author and writing instructor Alicia Rasley has created an outline of a sample character interview here.
Other authors discover all the expository information they need to know while writing their first draft, then go back and erase most of it. It's rare for any writer not to discover something she didn't expect about her characters or story while writing it, no matter how previously prepared.
Either way, the wise writer finds out everything she can about the main characters... then makes peace with herself that only ten-percent or less will make it into the finished story.
Next, what to tell the reader when?
(To be continued…)
