![]() “All good exposition is disguised by making it dramatic– by injecting conflict… Exposition works when it’s a tool a character uses to achieve their desire. Here’s John Yorke explaining this in his book, Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story: In the best scenes, exposition is invisible because you’re caught up in the drama of the characters. And that’s exactly what you want! The more conflict you can generate in a scene, the less visible the exposition. The exposition, meanwhile, disappears off the page. The conflict in the scene comes from Jeremy accusing John that he’s “underwhelmed” when he should be jazzed, while John doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. He reminisces about their shared history to energize John in preparation for what comes next in the screenplay. But Jeremy doesn’t just come out and say it - he uses the information to get John into the celebratory spirit. The exposition in this scene is that Jeremy and John have been best friends since high school and every year Jeremy goes out of his way to celebrate the anniversary of the day they met. At the top of this scene, Jeremy pulls out a bottle of single malt whisky with a ribbon around it and hands it to John: ![]() Here’s an example from an early draft of Wedding Crashers (Written by Steve Faber & Bob Fisher). Let them use what they know as ammunition in their struggle to get what they want.” Your characters know their world, their history, each other, and themselves. Its secondary purpose is to convey information… To dramatize exposition apply this mnemonic principle: Convert exposition to ammunition. As the story progresses, the audience absorbs all it needs to know effortlessly, even unconsciously… Dramatized exposition serves two ends: Its primary purpose is to further the immediate conflict. “Skill in exposition means making it invisible. You should dramatize the exposition by making it ammo, not just info. It comes from Robert McKee’s book, Story, and it means that your characters should use exposition (information they have) to get what they want in a scene. I have this written on a post-it note on my desk. So here’s how to write exposition that works: Turn Your Exposition Into Ammunition. As Snyder says, that will be dead boring. You can’t just have your character tell us or other characters the exposition. It’s the worst part of any complicated plot.” But who wants to waste time on this? It’s boring. “Exposition is backstory or details of the plot that must be told to the audience in order for them to understand what happens next. Here’s Blake Snyder’s definition of exposition from his book, Save The Cat: In Bridesmaids (written by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig), we need to know Annie’s business went bankrupt, her love life is a disaster, and her best friend is dating someone great. For example, in Superbad (written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), we need to know that Seth and Evan are in the last year of high school, they’re going to different colleges, and they’re both virgins. Exposition is information the audience needs to know to understand the story.
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