How To Write Bad Exposition

Yesterday, I talked about the importance of hooking the audience and creating a strong beginning to your script. It is vital that you establish the protagonist and draw the audience into the world that your story takes place in. Unfortunately, every single screenplay in existence requires a significant amount of exposition in order to explain the script’s world to the audience (or the reader). This is something that many aspiring screenwriters are really bad at.

I have read a lot of screenplays which have sucked at exposition for many reasons. Often, it is pure ham-handedness which is the culprit. For example:

Aargh!! That right there is awful writing. Who the hell even talks like that? It’s clumsy and it’s unnatural and it is guaranteed to make the script reader your enemy. You don’t want the reader to be your enemy. You want the reader to really, really like you. Don’t be lazy. No-one ever said that exposition was supposed to be easy. Even if they did, I’m here to set the record straight: it’s damn hard. Regardless of whether you’re writing a high-tech spy thriller, some fantasy epic in a totally imagined universe or even an average-as-you-can-get romantic comedy there is some exposition that you need to get through. You can’t avoid it. Your characters are going to have a history which the audience needs to learn something about. There is some dilemma or goal which requires some kind of exposition to give it the relevant context. You cannot avoid writing exposition.

So how do you try to get the essential exposition in without it seeming forced? Like anything in screenwriting, I believe a good key is to cut it down to the bare minimum. What is truly essential? I can’t speculate on what your individual screenplay requires. You’re the writer. However, regardless of what your script is about you should avoid giving all exposition through dialogue like it was the plague. Sometimes, you’ll have to. That’s a given. But most times it can be avoided. Remember that film is a visual medium. Please don’t just have two characters talking and explaining something (remember too that there’s such a thing as context).

Take the awful example from above. Let’s have John on his own. A lingering stare at an old photo of him and Margaret together, coupled with a sad turning of the wedding ring on his finger should suffice. And all with no words! Always a plus when dialogue clearly isn’t your strong point.

But getting back to the necessity of a gripping first act… Here’s the key: don’t bog it down with pages and pages of exposition. Even if you’ve imagined a rich fantasy world that no-one has ever heard of before, filled with creatures no-one has ever imagined before – you don’t need pages of exposition! It will kill the pace, it will kill the structure! Not even the most sympathetic reader is going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Be conservative in the amount of exposition you dish out at any one time. Imagine you’re on the roof of a skyscraper and you’re feeding a rope to someone who is abseiling below. If you give them all the rope in one go they’ll drop a hundred floors in the space of a few seconds and end up a bloody mess on the road below. Imagine that the abseiler is your script and the rope is exposition. Don’t make your script a bloody mess. Feed the rope slowly, piece by piece and only when necessary. It will allow the abseiler to enjoy the journey more and get to the end safely and buzzing with excitement with what they’ve just completed. Comprender?

Trust me, there is nothing worse that a first act that is all exposition. Where’s the action? Where’s the story? All that exposition is not needed up front. I promise. At the end of the day, people are people and provided your characters are realistic portrayals of genuine human beings, chances are we can identify their emotions and understand their actions without them spelling it out for us in godawful monologues. And if your characters are not realistic portrayals of genuine human beings? Well then, your script has much bigger problems than poor exposition, my friend.

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