exposition: the art of it

[intim8]

I'm not a screenwriter, but I play one on TV.

You always have to personify it, and not even very accurately or perceptively.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

nowadays it's common for a novel to start in the middle of a shooting scene.

it gets me frustrated. who are these characters? why do I have to care for them? I have to follow them for thirty, fifty pages, and I don't know the first thing about them. who are they? what are their goals? why are they shooting at each other? what are the stakes? why the fuck am I reading this shit?

when I was in school, they were teaching us that a story has five parts, the first of which was called "exposition."

later, I've learned on the internet that exposition is evil. worse than the nazis.

now granted, there's good exposition and bad exposition.

but there's also the epoch. back then, when you picked a book, you kept at it, even if the first few pages were kinda boring. what else where you going to do? nowadays, you start reading a story online, if it does not "hook" you in the first paragraph, you move on. you close the page, look for something else. try a different story.

the question is: how do you do exposition? what is the good way to do it?

I agree with others that the most effective use of exposition is typically to intersperse it throughout the story where appropriate. I've done this frequently with entirely positive feedback from editors, publishers, and most importantly, readers.

A prologue on the other hand is different than exposition. It should not be a part of the core story itself, but an introduction that provides a glimpse of the character(s) and what is to come. For example, here is the prologue from "Searching":

She noticed him immediately. She had been taught.

His appearance made her pause in her stroll back to the mall. She remained approximately three feet inside the hallway that led to the restrooms near the food court at Shoreline Mall. She could watch him, but he would have a difficult time seeing her. She had been taught.

Other patrons of the mall lingered at tables in the food court or stood in lines at one of the food vendors’ counters. If anyone else had noticed the man wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying the duffel bag they hadn’t reacted as she had. She had been taught.

She continued watching from the hallway as the man stopped just inside the doors leading to the west parking lot of the mall. He wasn’t leaving as she had hoped. He was positioning himself between the people in the food court and their quickest exit. This could all be staged. Some sort of drill or test of security response to an active shooter, but her instincts told her otherwise. Her right hand reached inside her purse as the man slowly lowered the duffel bag to the tile floor, squatted with his back to the food court, and began to unzip it. She kept the man in her peripheral vision as she glanced over to the food court and looked up, taking in the whole environment. She had been taught.

Through the glass half-wall that provided a barrier for the Mezzanine level of the mall, she could see more than a dozen shoppers strolling across her field of vision, most distracted by their cell phones or focused on their next purchasing objective. She returned her attention to the man and saw him just rising after retrieving several items from the bag. While she had hoped that the intentions of the man were not as she had suspected, she saw that he had donned a balaclava over his face before standing. This, coupled with the sight of the automatic rifle with a thirty-round magazine and the pump-action shotgun dispelled any doubts. She used her left hand to lower her sunglasses from the top of her head and put them on. She then removed her right hand from her purse and held it at her side. Patience. She had been taught.

This was real. It took only seconds, but her instincts were verified as the half-wall barrier to the Mezzanine level exploded into thousands of pea-sized particles of tempered glass when the gunshot round struck it. As glass particles rained down on startled customers in the food court, several people on the Mezzanine level screamed in pain and fell to the floor, struck either by shotgun pellets or flying glass. When the man lowered the shotgun, leaving it dangling from the strap over his shoulder, and prepared to fire the automatic rifle into the stunned crowd in the food court, she reacted. She had been taught.

Bracing her left shoulder against the wall at the opening of the hallway to the food court, she took aim from twenty feet away and fired three perfectly grouped shots below his body armor, into the man’s groin area. She heard the bullet casings clinking on the tile floor after each shot but ignored them as she watched the shooter fall immediately to his knees, dropping the assault rifle to the floor. As he bent over in agonizing pain, the strap of the shotgun slid down his arm, but he ignored it. She strolled quickly over to the man and kicked the automatic rifle out of his reach. She had been taught.

Keeping her back to the food court and the security camera that she knew was there, she pulled on the strap of the shotgun until the man’s arm moved enough for her to extract it completely. She slid it out of his reach as well before finally gazing into the man’s eyes. She knew that all he would be able to see in the reflection of her sunglasses would be his own eyes and the pool of blood that was spreading out beneath him. While the bullets from a P380 automatic were not as large as those from a nine-millimeter, three hollow points in the area where she had aimed would almost certainly hit the Femoral artery. Her aim had been true, and the results were evident. She had been taught.

His eyes were losing focus as the life drained out of his body. She stepped away from the spreading pool of blood, placed her pistol back into her purse, and walked quickly through the glass exit doors to the parking lot. Without hesitating at the sound of rapidly approaching sirens, she located her car, slid into the driver’s seat, backed out of her spot, and headed for the mall exit. She would be clear of the scene before anyone could get a description of her. She had been taught.