So you’ve decided to take up writing. Yay! Welcome to the club!
But oh dear, you’re used to taking a factual approach such as with research, report writing, journalism or non-fiction. And when you rest your hands on the keyboard, you’re not sure where to start.
The biggest challenge in making the switch to writing fiction is resisting the temptation to an over-abundance of exposition, also known as the dreaded ‘info-dumping’. After all, when you’re used to telling the reader what they need to know, it’s a hard habit to break. And it’s understandable, right? You want to put them in the picture, give them the background and context, explain what’s happening, and make sure they know what you know. Like a report.
And even if you’re not usually a non-fiction writer, exposition is still a common issue for writers because the skill development comes in not telling the reader everything. Until you need them to know it, of course!
Sounds crazy but it makes perfect sense otherwise every story could be delivered in a couple of pages.
So how do we do this?
Get it out of your system by writing it all down. Let’s say you’ve decided the protagonist, Saskia, attended university to get her nursing degree at the age of eighteen. She went to a university at the opposite end of the country from her hometown but visited her parents on a regular basis because she’s very close to them. At the age of twenty-one, she passed her degree, and was looking for career options. After taking a job doing night shifts at a nursing home in her university city, she finally got the job she really wanted, working on a surgical ward at a hospital near her hometown. What she hadn’t banked on was meeting a junior doctor, Roman, and feeling a strong attraction to him.
Now you’ve written all that, cut and paste it into another folder, marked ‘kill your darlings’ and keep it there for your own information so you can refer to it as needed. After all, you’re the only one who wants to know all that background because you’re the one developing the character.
So what’s next? Where do you go from here?
You could consider starting the story with the first time she claps eyes on Roman. It’s what the readers are interested in and is the hook that keeps them turning the page. The other facts about Saskia can be drip fed through dialogue or her internal narrative. And some of it need never be explained unless it’s necessary – because, let’s face it, does the reader really need to know which university she attended?
If you take this approach every time you feel the need to explain something, you’ll find your writing will gradually develop into a story-telling style.
Slow it down. Another way of avoiding exposition is to let a scene develop at a slower pace. The pertinent details of a scene can be scattered through, rather than chunked together in one place. You might find it takes two paragraphs to say something you could have covered off in one, but the reader has the chance to dwell in the important moment and soak up the emotions. There are two examples below. In the first you can see the exposition in italics and how the juicy stuff is left until right at the end.
In the second example, the last sentence becomes the first sentence, so the juicy stuff is right at the beginning, grabbing the reader’s attention. This is then expanded on, giving the reader a desire to invest in Saskia’s story. The whole of paragraph two is dedicated to what paragraph one only hints at in the last line. In addition, the details of the scene are dropped in, as observed through Saskia’s eyes.
The word count is almost the same but there’s no info-dumping and the reader is present in the moment with Saskia.
- With exposition
Saskia walked onto the ward and rounded the corner to where the morning patient meeting was about to start. The meeting took place at eight o’clock every day so the discharges could be discussed, and the new interns were attending for the first time in their new three-month rotation. As a result there was quite a crowd waiting for the Nursing Unit Manager to begin. Saskia leaned against the nurses’ station and at that moment, one of the interns chatting with his colleagues turned in her direction. Tall, blond and with a face brimful of humour, he stood out in the group and Saskia’s stomach flipped. (106 words).
- Without exposition
Tall, blond and with a face brimful of humour, he stood out in the group and Saskia’s stomach flipped. Who was he? She looked around at the cluster gathered at the patient board and realised he must be one of the new interns. When she looked back, his attention had shifted to the nursing unit manager leading the meeting, but as if feeling the pull of her gaze he looked her way. A super-charged frisson zipped through her, causing her breath to hitch, and she saw his own eyes widen in response. Oh boy, she was in trouble. (99 words).
We haven’t lost any important scene setting or details. In the second paragraph we can still see them at the patient board, we still know there’s a meeting and a nursing unit manager leading it, we also know there is a group of people, and that there are new interns present. And yet, these details don’t dominate the paragraph. Instead, they form the backdrop to a moment when two people meet for the first time, and, hopefully, the reader wants to know more.
I hope these two tips help! Happy writing!