Day 369: Exposition Dumps

I'm sure everyone has read at least a few books that decide you need to know every little detail about the world right off the bat, no excuses. What does the land look like? How does the culture feel? What kind of economy do the characters live in? Who holds the most power in the land and where can you go to start a career? What kind of rival nations or factions have drawn lines on the map? For most people, this is incredibly annoying. It can be done the right way, in a story that is actually all about the world rather than a plot, but usually it just ends up putting people off. The problem is that all those questions feel much more pressing to the author than to the readers themselves. Personally, I know I not only don't care, but I won't even be able to remember those details later on unless they're important enough to come up over and over again. And if they're going to come up over and over again, why is there any need to tell me all about who is who and what is what at the very beginning of the story anyway? It's frankly a little patronizing to hear all these questions answered immediately, as if I, as a reader, can't venture into a world with a little bit of mystery for more than five minutes. I think it's one of the worst possible things a book can do. So if that's the case, why do I find myself doing it every time I write a story?

It's a conundrum. Like I said, all those details are a lot more important to the author than the reader. If the author doesn't keep it all in mind, things will start to break down. Holes will inevitably appear in the story if everything is just made up on the fly. Since what's on the mind tends to come out on the page, everything that's interesting about the world the author has created comes flooding through, even at the expense of the story itself. This is the anatomy of an exposition dump, and it's much harder to avoid doing than you might think.

I've only found a couple of ways around it. One is to just edit them out, but I find that inefficient, and I'd like to stop wasting so many words on something I know I'll end up deleting. I already keep a bunch of notes anyway, and that's where the exposition dumping should really happen. Where nobody can see it.

The only thing that works for me is to accept the fact that much of what I've come up with simply won't make it into the story. Sorry. It just has to be that way. If it comes up naturally, great. If it doesn't, well that's less for me to write. The root cause of exposition dumping lies somewhere between ego and insecurity. Authors simultaneously worry that nothing will make sense if they don't explain everything while also harboring the secret desire to make their super interesting creations known in exact detail to everyone. These feelings usually only stand in the way of a good story. By focusing on the immediacy of the scenes at hand, rather than getting swept backward by flashbacks or long spiels of narration, things can keep a move on and keep readers interested. Everyone knows this of course, but actually putting it into practice requires a lot of self control. I'm certainly still working on it.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley