How to Write Great Exposition for Your Book, Part 1

​Today I’m going to be discussing how to write great exposition for your book. But first, let’s establish: what is exposition? It’s a literary device to communicate background information to your reader, whether about the characters, the setting, an event that happened before the story began that the reader needs to know about to understand the plot better, or etc.
 
(If you’d like to view this post in video format, click here. It’s part of our “Advice from an Editor” series on YouTube.)

​Generally speaking, when discussing this topic, there are two rules of thumb to follow. The first is that exposition should be a natural, organic part of the story, not bring the story grinding to a halt or take the reader out of it so they say to themselves, “My goodness, that was an exposition dump.” The second major rule is that you shouldn’t explain anything that you don’t actually need to explain. If you treat your reader as intelligent and able to follow along with your world, for the most part they will. You don’t have to tell them every little detail.
 
In order to show you how the different types of exposition interact, and how you can put a lot of information out there for your reader, I’m going to first go through the three major types of exposition—which are: explicit exposition, implicit exposition, and non-exposition—and then give a story example to show how they interact.
 
1. Explicit Exposition
 
This is when you tell the reader something straight-out. For example, let’s say that we want to exposit that turning into a werewolf is painful. Using explicit exposition, we could say: “Jimmy went to the old werewolf. ‘Turn me into a werewolf,’ he said. ‘You don’t want that,’ said the old werewolf. ‘Turning into a werewolf is painful.’” Or: “‘You don’t want that,’ said the werewolf, and Jimmy knew he was referring to how painful it was to turn into a werewolf.” In both examples, you’re clearly, very explicitly telling the reader turning into a werewolf is painful.
 
Explicit exposition is by far the most intrusive of the three types of exposition, and it should therefore be used the least—because when you use more than one or, at most, two sentences of explicit exposition for any certain thing that you are expositing, it becomes very noticeable. And if you have a lot of it, it’s what we call an exposition dump, because it feels like you’re dumping exposition on the reader.
 
That being said, explicit exposition is an essential part of good writing because it presents small amounts of information in a way that can’t be mistaken. And it can be shocking, and it can make sure your reader doesn’t misunderstand something important. It can be shocking because explicit exposition can be used to take a lot of information, a lot of implicit and non-exposition that’s been built up, and present it to the reader in an “Aha!” moment. For example, in Star Wars, we learn a lot about Luke’s backstory, we hear this and that about his father, we have these hints, we see these strange things with Darth Vader, but we don’t put it all together in that “Aha!” moment until “No, Luke, I am your father.” It is such a powerful line! And wouldn’t it have been ruined if Darth Vader had then gone on to explain everything? I mean, poor Luke, he would’ve just been like, “Oh my gosh, Dad, that’s so embarrassing, that is such bad writing.” (Haha!)
 
The other place it can be used is to make sure that the reader absolutely, totally understands something. Interestingly enough, the place where I see confusion from exposition most often has to do with emotional sequences. Because when the reader is super invested in what’s going on and their feelings are invested, most readers tend to assume that how a character reacts is how they would react if they felt the same way. For example, let’s say that the old werewolf became Jimmy’s mentor and then died, and Jimmy reacts by screaming and kicking the body. Now, a reader who has a lot of experience with transforming grief into anger in order to cope with it would see this as a sign of Jimmy’s great distress. And a reader who would react by sobbing would see this as proof that Jimmy was a cold, horrible person who never actually cared about his mentor and “Oh my gosh, now he’s abusing the body. What is wrong with this person?” It’s really hard for the writer to tell how the reader’s going to react, because of course the writer knows “My character’s feeling this—aren’t his emotions just pouring onto the page?” . . . Sometimes. Sometimes not.
 
The best way to tell if you need a line of explicit exposition to clue the reader in to what’s actually going on, is through the use of beta readers or critiquers. I’ll go into this more in the future, but to be short, I recommend three critiquers for each draft of the story, because you want the different viewpoints from different sorts of people to know what different sorts of people might miss. And if you ask specifically, “Does Jimmy—does my character—ever seem emotionally cold, or to react in a way that’s out of character or unpleasant or not how you would react, or you don’t understand it?” And if your critiquer tells you that his motivations and reactions are not what they were expecting, or that they were other than you intended them to be, you might just need to rewrite the scene, or you might need to add in a single line of exposition saying something along the lines of: “Jimmy was devastated. So devastated he just couldn’t handle it and had to force himself to be angry instead.” Explicit exposition can be essential—when used properly.
 
2. Implicit Exposition
 
The second type, which I’d say has a medium level of intrusiveness, is implicit exposition. Implicit exposition is when you’re still telling the reader something, but you’re disguising it a little bit instead of telling them straight-out. To use our earlier example:

“I want to be a werewolf,” said Jimmy. “No, you don’t,” said the werewolf, his careworn face etched deeply with the years of pain.
 
OR: “I want to be a werewolf,” said Jimmy. . . . “Have you ever stepped on a nail?” said the old werewolf. “Have you ever had your skin boiled from your bones? Has every bone in your body suddenly twisted and torn apart? You don’t know what pain is. You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
 
Again, the message is clear: Turning into a werewolf is really painful. But it’s not stated straight-out, and because this sort of exposition isn’t stated straight-out, it’s less intrusive and less obvious. You can have several paragraphs or even a couple of pages of it before it starts feeling like an exposition dump. And perhaps more importantly, you can use implicit exposition to surround your explicit exposition. It’s like the summing-up in mystery novels. You have all these facts; now let’s bring them to light with a single line of explicit exposition: Whodunnit?
 
But although implicit exposition is less intrusive than explicit, it’s still exposition. Therefore, for the vast majority of your world-building and of showing what’s going on, your best bet is non-exposition. Or in other words, don’t explain. Just throw your reader into the story and expect they’re going to keep up.
 
 
We’ll talk about non-exposition next time, and I’ll describe a great formula for combining explicit and implicit with non-exposition.
 
Do you have any other advice to add about using explicit or implicit exposition? Leave it in the comments section below!
 
For more writing tips, check out our Advice from an Editor YouTube series, or this set of blog posts.

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Deborah J. Natelson

Deborah lives with a fluffy member of fauna named Flora. She is the author of Bargaining Power, a smart, twisty fantasy thriller; The Midnight Files, a serialized, action-packed dark fantasy on Kindle Vella; and various other books. Her author website is www.deborahjnatelson.com.