Exposition in screenwriting…

MaryAn over at has motivated me to discuss or what I like to call, “plot dumping.” It’s a huge problem with inexperienced writers, yet a problem not dealt with so much by the gurus (except to say, DON’T DO IT) or the screenwriting books.

One of the things your screenplay MUST ABSOLUTELY DO is create EMPATHY and within your reader and hopefully, your eventual audience. If you fail to accomplish this feat, your screenplay also fails, no matter how outstanding the concept.

Exposition, if not handled perfectly… Or more precisely… if not handled with the ILLUSION OF PERFECTION, will definitely be one of the downfalls of your screenplay.

In fact, one of the most sure-fire ways to LOSE your reader and for the reader to lose whatever empathy he or she has built up for your main character(s) thus far, is making one or more of your characters dump the plot in another character’s lap. Forget getting a Producer or director to read past the exposition… Ain’t gonna happen.

PASS.

The good news? You can get the majority of your plot dumping out of the way within the first ten to twelve pages of your screenplay since this is really where you really gotta set up your main characters anyway.

Having said that however, another exposition problem I see quite regularly is toward the end of the screenplay i.e., the Antagonist spills the beans about what he or she’s been trying to accomplish for the last 85 pages… LOL.

PASS.

Let’s face it… Good dialogue should CREATE good memories. Keep that in mind when you write it. On the other hand, bad dialogue… Or dumping the plot through dialogue tends to create bad memories… First in the reader and then, in the audience if the screenplay makes it that far and God only knows that quite a few seem to be making it that far these days.

That fact alone might actually make you ask the question… “Who gives a fuck?”

Good question. The answer?

EVERYONE.

That’s right, if you are lucky enough to get your screenplay through the Hollywood maze of greenlight and development, it would be nice if your movie actually delivers. Sure, you “might” get another shot but do you really want your movie to fail? Your screenplay?

Of course not.

Good dialogue should consist of pace and rhythm… Good dialogue moves the story forward. Exposition KILLS pace and rhythm dead in its tracks. The story STOPS moving forward. Think of it like a road trip… You keep driving and enjoy yourself… You see the sights… You listen to the radio. You sing songs… Whatever.

Eventually however, you’re gonna run out of gas… Exposition is like refilling your gas tank… You need it to get back on the road so you can get back to enjoying yourself.

So exposition isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The bad part of exposition is in how you, the screenwriter, chooses to feed it to the reader and the audience.

My rules about exposition…

Yeah, I actually have some rules… LOL.

So many writers seem to think the audience needs to know every friggin’ thing about the story and your characters… Guess what? They don’t. They do however, want you to reveal exposition through your character’s decisions and actions.

I often find when I read a screenplay that spells out every fucking detail for the reader, I also find a screenplay lacking in research.

Is there a correlation? Unfortunately, I don’t know for sure by my gut tells me “Yeah stupid, there’s a correlation!” Meaning when a writer doesn’t KNOW ENOUGH about the world and the characters within their own story, very often they end up writing MORE than they need to… They leave the reader absolutely no room to draw conclusions or fill in the blanks…

NOT GOOD.

This kind of writing very often comes through as stiff and non-authentic.

If character A shuffles into a room already occupied by character B and beats the shit out of him, don’t we want to know why?

If a character keeps asking your Protagonist about something in his or her past and your Protagonist always changes the subject, don’t we want to know the STORY?

If your Protagonist enters a room and everybody rolls their eyes at this character, haven’t you peaked our interest as to why they rolled their eyes?

See where I’m going? Make us WANT to know the exposition you so desperately want to give us… Giving it to us when we don’t want it makes us lose interest in your story…

It’s all about the manipulation… LOL.

We’re already investing our emotion into your characters so why not capitalize on that? We don’t want your Protagonist to turn toward the screen and start telling us his or her history, RIGHT?

So create another character that needs that information… Now we can “peek” in on this much anticipated spoon feeding of exposition to another character. Notice I said “spoon feeding” again… That doesn’t mean DUMP THE PLOT in another character’s lap… The character that wants that information needs to WORK for it. He or she can’t simply ASK and RECEIVE. Make getting that information somewhat difficult to get and we’ll enjoy your story MORE.

When any character is withholding information, it’s normal for us, the audience, to want to know more.

Let’s break it down to common, every day occurrences… When one of your friends says they have a secret, don’t you REALLY want to know that secret even if you act like you don’t? Sure you do. We all want to know the secrets and so does the audience. Let’s take it a little further… When one of your friends has that secret, you don’t just ask and they don’t just tell it to you, right? Don’t they make you work for it even if it’s just a little work? Hell yeah, they do… They tease you about it don’t they? What’s that mean? Means that they’re really just DYING to tell you is all…

That’s another reason why “gossip scenes” often work as a way of divulging exposition… We get to be part of the gossip!

THINK ABOUT IT.

Remember DIE HARD? Remember how McClane and Al kept talking to each other on the walkie-talkies? Sure, many of those scenes were expository but when we found out that many years earlier, Al shot a kid that had a toy gun in his hand, didn’t that create a great setup for when he shoots Karl at the very end of the film?

Let’s go back to … Remember how McClane eavesdrops on Hans through the ceiling vents and writes down the names of Hans’ crew on his arm? Good stuff.

In , Will Graham steps into the Leeds’ home and attempts to channel himself into the mind of the Killer. In this scene, he tells us everything we need to know about HOW the killer accomplished the murders but we don’t care because of the action of him walking from room to room and slowly bringing back the talent he clearly has for getting into the killer’s mind is fascinating to us.

Which brings me back to reading screenplays and watching movies… You can’t afford NOT to especially when it comes to screenwriting elements that the books and the gurus don’t much talk about… LOL.

As you watch a DVD or read a screenplay that’s revealing backstory in such a way that keeps pulling you into the story, it’s your JOB to figure out how the screenwriter pulled it off… You have to attack that scene in as many ways as you can so that you can boil it down to its “mechanics.”

If you remember NOTHING ELSE, just remember this…

TALKING HEADS ARE BORING!

On a side note but still related to this post…

Several of you have noticed that there’s a link to a here on the site… Let me first explain that I’m not trying to drive traffic to the site… I get enough of that from Google. What I hope to accomplish here is to build a community of “like minded” individuals that truly want to learn the craft of screenwriting.

I have nothing to sell… I won’t share any email addresses but I do ask one thing of you…

SHARE your thoughts… Even if it’s simply a matter of asking a question, go ahead and ask. I’m not trying to build a board of hundreds of members… In fact, I would rather keep it down as low as possible so that we can get into some “in-depth” discussions about things like exposition.

I’m still tweaking it here and there, getting to know the ins and outs while still trying to work on my rewrite but I find that getting involved with discussions always serves to improve my own understanding of whatever concept I’m talking about with others. So as you peruse the inside, please do not hesitate let me know about a topic of discussion you’d like to make available within the forum if it requires another board added to the system… If not, go ahead and make a post.

OR…

Get back to your screenplay… LOL.

Unk

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October 5, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized

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The Light It, Hurts ONE PAGE…

Okay, somehow I missed this ONE PAGE from Lee over at till now… Found it in Google Blog Search for:

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October 4, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized

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More gams — I mean ONE PAGES…

Todd from and throw their ONE PAGES into the mix.

35 ONE PAGES. Will there be more?

Unk

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October 4, 2006 | Filed Under Uncategorized

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