How to Write Exposition without Boring Your Readers

Details are imperative when telling a story. This includes backstory and plot points. But how do you drive home these details without dragging down the pace of the novel with a boring narrative? In this blog, we’ll explore how to deliver exposition in a way that elevates rather than sinks a story.

Have you ever started reading a novel only to get hit by a brick wall of backstory? It kills the momentum and can cause readers to skip pages, losing necessary information, or worse abandon the book altogether.

This happened to me recently as I sat down to read a popular novel, only to be met with eight whole chapters of backstory! It landed in my DNF pile. But on the contrary, I read another popular author, A.G. Riddle, and was immediately hooked. Riddle’s writing style was succinct, to the point, and delivered highly technical information that was intriguing, not a slog of detail.

Exposition is used to communicate to the reader the key parts of the novel, including a character or plot backstory. There are ways of weaving in exposition that are seamless to the flow of the plot while still delivering the all-important details. One of my favorite examples is in The Terminator. Our hero, Kyle Reese, is trying to explain to our main protagonist, Sarah Conor, exactly what peril she’s found herself in. All the while, they are trying to evade T800 as he chases them in a stolen police cruiser. Reese explains the major plot points to Sarah (and thus the audience) during the chase. As his dialogue is woven into the action sequence, it makes the audience focus more on what he’s saying, and they retain the information better. If this scene was done with the two of them chatting quietly in the car with no sense of urgency it wouldn’t have the same impact.

Dialogue can be a great driver of exposition. Game of Thrones has long passages of dialogue between characters that reveal important information to the overall plot. But these conversations are often verbal sparring matches that keep the stakes high. If you’re going to use dialogue as a tool for delivering information, and you don’t have talented actors to help you, then your writing needs to be exemplary.

with Mr. Dean Koontz

Quentin Tarantino is a master at dialogue. The conversations in his films sound real rather than forced. Dean Koontz is an author who can reveal character background and motives throughout the story, even when it’s a flashback, without taking readers out of the moment. Throughout his novel Intensity, he often refers to his protagonist Chyna Shepard’s childhood as a driver for why she’s trying to play hero to a kidnapped little girl. Rather than a distracting info dump written across multiple chapters, Koontz spreads out the backstory. He chooses the right moments to sprinkle in something jarring that happened in Chyna’s past.

Exposition can be handled in a way that moves the story and adds to it with layers. It all comes down to finding that sweet spot in the story and weaving in the words.  

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