my old enemy, exposition

Some people write their novels start to finish. I am not one of those people. My writing process tends to be a bit more sporadic, jumping around the plot line to those scenes that just get stuck in my brain. Now, this can be a process that works, but it does present it's own unique challenges.

Right now I'm working on a scene that contains maybe the biggest revelation in the book, the main turning point, if you will. I'm excited about this scene because the art of crafting a character's discovery of something is really interesting to me. I have a pretty good grasp of what needs to happen in the scene and how the character will be discovering this important information. The scene sits totally on its own right now, though, and while I know the general context of the situation, it's hard not to cram all that exposition into this one moment. [As a side note, my husband can tell you that I tell stories verbally this way. I try to give all the background contextual information that is connected to the story even though it is generally unnecessary to make the story itself make sense, haha.]

Exposition can be kind of a bear to deal with sometimes. The novels we write will always need some degree of exposition though the amount can change depending on the story and the style. Most of us can't do without exposition but too much of it all at once can suffocate a good story and a reader's interest in it.

Genre fiction can really suffer from this suffocation because there is often so much world building involved and the more fantastical the world, the more exposition is needed in order to really paint a picture for the reader. So we have to find the best way to balance explanation and story to make sure we are showing, rather than telling our readers. This is especially important in the first few chapters of your story where a big portion of exposition will typically be. Much of the time, finding the balance can be as simple as reading your explanations or thinking about what you have to convey to the reader and brainstorming ways that you can show it as an integrated part of a character's actions or thoughts. The more we can see the world through the characters' eyes, the less we'll generally feel like we're reading a guide book and the more attached we'll become to character and story.

For the scene that I'm writing, I'm having to make notes of things that I want to show readers earlier on so that the behavior of the character in this chapter doesn't have to be explained in detail. By spreading out the exposition over the course of several chapters or scenes, I'm unburdening this one. Where it would feel clunky and wordy if I crammed all that explanation into this moment, detracting from the impact and importance of the scene itself, I'm now more free to write the scene as I picture it in my mind. And believe me, doing that honestly makes the writing itself easier to do