Exposition

 [Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.] 

 Let me expose another weakness in my writing: interesting exposition.

That is why I wanted to give attention to Andrew Martin on How to Manage Exposition: Don’t Fear the Info Dump (Lterary Hub). If you read enough science fiction, you know about info dumps. My eyes glaze over and skim automatically. Even worse is when one reads a series to find earlier info dumps squeezed into the later volumes. 

Some points I gleaned from Mr. Martin's essay:

What fear of the dump translates to in practice is a broader resistance to the work of exposition in a story or novel. I’m not talking about a philosophical objection to backstory, the way Joy or Diane Williams reasonably might in work that is disorienting by design. Rather, it seems to be about something more fundamental—an anxiety that providing too much concentrated information about a character or situation is, on its face, artless, or worse, boring.

Like a lot of workshop-based neuroses, this is rooted in the experience of seeing something done badly, or doing it badly oneself, and hearing a teacher explain wearily why it should be otherwise. We all have our familiar writing hobbyhorses—me, I’m a stakes guy, sorry. There is of course a thing as too much backstory, and when a writer frontloads information before giving the reader a sense of why it has some kind of emotional or psychological value, it’s hard to expect them to keep reading. Historical fiction, fantasy, and science-fiction are particularly vulnerable to this problem, as the process of explaining a time period or world different from ours can stretch to nearly infinite dimensions if not checked. There’s also the dreaded shadow of “show don’t tell” hanging over all of this—boy do I wish I could talk to the guy who came up with that. You don’t show someone a story, dammit, you tell it.

And this:

As with finding a title for a novel or story, if no great option presents itself, the goal with exposition should be to do as little damage as possible. Tell us what we need to know, don’t go on for too long, get out of there. The better course of action, if at all possible, is to be stylish and elegant with your exposition, as one strives to be in all things. Mary Gaitskill is particularly good at this ideal combination of straightforwardness and pithiness. She’s not afraid to tell the reader things, but she maintains her poise while doing so. Her very recent New Yorker story “Something Familiar” contains a good example. The protagonist is recalling the very Gaitskillian jobs of her youth:

“Nude art model (poorly paid), waitress (she got fired), hostess (she wasn’t charming enough), whore (bingo.) That was another threshold she’d crossed with Carly; they had both started at the same place, a “house,” rather than outcall, which they’d agreed was too dangerous. They did it on an emergency basis, off and on for maybe five years. Neither took it seriously; it seemed of a piece with the pleasing artifice of clubs and magazines, an almost comical piece, more real and more absurd than dating. And safer, actually, on an emotional level; none of the men she met there could really hurt her.”

There’s a jaunty Nabokovian compression to the first sentence that draws us in, and the comparison of sex work to the “pleasing artifice” of clubs and magazines is a surprising turn that holds our interest. But the rest is simply informative, neither coy nor overly blunt. We’re learning important things about this character, filtered mildly through her consciousness. Gaitskill has the confidence to know that backstory is action, is story, if it’s done right.

And finally this:

...It was important to remember the principle that exposition shouldn’t feel any more rote than action or dialogue. Every sentence in a novel carries weight, provides an opportunity for the writer to display their sensibility.

Now, if I can find the time and the talent to do this with my own work!

sch 3/12