Five Positions for Your Exposition

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

"Too much information" is known as such for good reason. There is a point at which communicating the facts jumps the fence beyond relevance and becomes overwhelming. TMI can kill conversation, take down empires, and ruin an otherwise good story. Knowing where to draw the line is one of the marks of a savvy storyteller.

Ideally, the reader should never realize they're getting backstory. Here are five proven ways to deliver details with finesse.

1. Be patient.
You know everything your reader needs to know and may be eager to get it out in the open, but the opening chapter isn't the place to share the hero's life story. Getting accustomed to the characters, the setting, the mood, and a hint at what the story's about, is a lot to take in, so give the audience time to assimilate it. More importantly, give them time to care about any of it. Once they've become invested in what's going on, they will appreciate learning the finer points.

2. Know when to hold 'em.
Kenny Rogers had the right idea in "The Gambler" when he sang of life as a poker game.  A well-told story exhibits the same principles of timing and restraint. If there's a lot of backstory, don't spill everything at once. Play your hands strategically and keep the ace up your sleeve for the right moment, when the audience will be most surprised by the revelation.

3. Pick a fight.
There's no better way to hide exposition than to distract with drama. Conflict is always interesting, and if the audience in tuned into trouble, they will scarcely notice that they are also learning backstory. An argument at a family reunion can reveal someone's drinking problem or the origins of a grievance between siblings. Compare the heightened energy of such a scene to a placid conversation that covers the same information.

Forrest Gump is almost entirely told via flashbacks.

4. Flashbacks can be fun.
This is an especially popular device used for villains and victims. The killer spots a stranger scolding a child, which triggers the memory of his own father beating him. The girl visits a beach and has visions of herself and her now-deceased boyfriend frolicking in the sand.

5. Get the picture.
Gotta pull out the old "show and tell" here. A picture is worth more than a thousand words if the audience can see for themselves that the heroine is a shoplifter or the attorney is slid a bribe from the opposing side. Letting the audience figure out some things on their own encourages them to be a participant in the story.

Remember, a discerning reader readily picks up on bungled backstory, so the fewer words it takes to give a history lesson, the better. When it comes to exposition, there's a lot to be said for not saying a lot.

Choice, Chance, or Grace

By Pam Webber

The symbolism of the floating feather in Tom Hanks’ movie Forrest Gump is rich with meaning. At the beginning of the movie, a feather appears to float serendipitously in on a breeze, landing in an open copy of Forrest’s favorite book, Curious George.

Look a little closer and you'll see that the feather lands on the page where the little monkey is balancing himself on a tightrope. One wrong step left or right and everything changes, and not necessarily for the better.

Winston Groom, the author of the book and screenplay for Forrest Gump, used the tightrope to symbolize destiny. Throughout out the movie, he had Forrest trying to balance his mother’s belief that destiny is like a box of chocolates, and you never know what you’re going to get, against Lieutenant Dan’s adamant belief that nothing occurs by chance, and everyone has a predetermined destiny to fulfill. By the end of the movie, Forrest comes to the conclusion that “maybe it’s both.”  I agree with him, but with a twist.

That twist is chance-by-grace. Forrest was a man of faith, and Lieutenant Dan was struggling to find it. One of the most powerful scenes in the movie is when an angry Lieutenant Dan battles God during a storm and afterward finds peace in the realization that he was living his destiny. The intersection of faith and destiny for Forrest and Lieutenant Dan was the culmination of choice and chance-by-grace.

Most of us dance with choice and chance on a daily basis, but it is not a haphazard dance. We strategically make the best choices we can given our genes, education, experiences, and faith, and if those choices place us in the right place at the right time, grace disguised as chance picks us up and moves us to unexpected, but intentional places.

While completing my first novel, The Wiregrass, I danced with choice and chance-by-grace over and over again, I was just not aware of it. Looking back, it is easy to see how their synergy either moved me forward or pushed me in a different direction altogether. Ultimately, their dance helped produce a novel I’m very proud to call mine.

Choices and chance-by-grace placed incredible people in my path. From my publisher, editor, and publicist, to an incredibly talented community of writers, I have an incredible team, and I am grateful. Any other steps left or right along my tightrope, and The Wiregrass would be different, and probably less.

At the end of Forrest Gump, the feather falls from the pages of Curious George and is once again picked up by a breeze, floating along in the clouds until this chance-by-grace breeze brings the feather right to us. The choice to grab it or not is ours.

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Pam Webber is a nationally certified nurse practitioner and award-winning university-level nursing educator. She has published numerous articles and co-authored four editions of a nursing textbook. Pam resides in Virginia’s Northern Shenandoah Valley with her husband. The Wiregrass is her first novel. Find Pam at Facebook https://www.facebook.com/authorpamwebber orwww.pamwebber.com Twitter  https://twitter.com/pamwebber1Google+ https://plus.google.com/108116819675828568221/posts Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7729206.Pam_Webber Pinterest  https://www.pinterest.com/authorpamwebber/YouTube   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoVd