Young Writers Society

I have absolutely no experience the expositions. In the stories where I have tried to write expositions, I have not gotten past the first four pages. For those of you who have read Flames of Lecraesa, you know it had little exposition and the tiny bit of exposition that did exist came after a major event.

Help! The Glaive requires some kind of exposition, and I am at loss. My characters are cooperating nicely and talking and acting, but I am worried about characterization without events to bring out their personalities. Would anyone give advice to the inexperienced exposition writer?

And where do I start? If I were to start at 'the beginning', the story would suffer large lapses of nothing happening, but if I start too far forward, there is too much to explain. In Flames, I started in the middle of a mess and scrambled to catch up later and it worked, but it was very stressful, and I really don't want to endure that again.

I always vote for finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Take someone making breakfast, for example. If they can't reach the top shelf, you'll know that they're short. If they use butter instead of oil, that might segue into the story of a fire when they were a child. Maybe they limp from the refrigerator to the sink. If they compost things instead of throwing them out, that'll show they care more about the environment.

I don't know if I've answered your question; maybe I gave examples of personality traits instead of exposition. Is there a certain type of information you're trying to reveal?

Exposition
1.a large-scale public exhibition or show, as of art or manufactured products: an exposition of 19th-century paintings; an automobile exposition.
2.the act of expounding, setting forth, or explaining: the exposition of a point of view.
3.writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation; explanatory treatise: The students prepared expositions on familiar essay topics.
4.the act of presenting to view; display: The singer gave a splendid exposition of vocal talent.
5.exposure (def. 10).
6.the state of being exposed; exposure.
7.Music. the first section of a fugue or a sonata form, in which the principal themes normally are introduced.
8.(in a play, novel, etc.) dialogue, description, etc., that gives the audience or reader the background of the characters and the present situation.


I'm not sure you're bad at exposition... it's just describing, right? Unless it's facts--then it's info dumping ^_^ although, good info dumping. Can you be more specific?

In this case, the exposition is introducing the characters and putting them in the correct position for something to happen. For instance, I have a glassmaker coming into town with his former master and I need to give some hints about what has happened in the past. It's a great opportunity for characterization, but I've noticed that when my story has little going on, my writing wanders and quickly melts into nonsense, so I need some pointers.

I'm assuming he's coming into town for the first time? Maybe you could expand on the stuff he's carrying with him?

I tend to use dialog to give past hints. or use a physical feature, or some characteristic to first hint at it, and then explain it.


I don't know... I'm not real sure how to help you with that #_#

My advice, read some beginnings of play for the exposition.



Erm, I'd just start writing and when I was finished then go back over it and pull it all together.

Ta,
Cal.