Instead, the voiceover guides us through the action on screen but it is contextualized as Mark writing entries into his blog. In particular, this scene that details the first emergence of Facebook:įirstly, if there were no voiceover delivering exposition in this section of the movie we’d have no idea what is going on (unless you can comprehend full pages of code in moments). Let’s take two 2010 films to show how exposition can be done well through action, starting with Aaron Sorkin’s script for The Social Network. Let’s use two particular case studies as an example. This is why screenwriters try as hard as they can to deliver their exposition through character’s actions through the world. Having someone deliver heaps of exposition may work better in a stageplay or novel (it’s still not great there either though), it can stick out like a sore thumb in movies or TV. Using the outline tool provided in Arc Studio Pro, scan through your story and try to make every event tied to the visual nature of film. That means the more visual you can make your storytelling, the better. You always need to remember that a screenplay, despite being a literary document, is intended to be produced as a visual story. While exposition being delivered like a lecture works, it is far from ideal. The first piece of dialogue is a textbook excerpt, the second suggests a visual image. The same information is conveyed, but now we know a little about the teacher, a little about their place in the world, and a visceral example of what kinds of things Phanagrams are capable of. In the dry boring version of this scene, the teacher may say something like this: Going back to the example of the science-fiction classroom, let’s compare two different methods of delivering exposition about a crucial alien species, the Phanagrams. While being lectured to in the cinema is far from ideal, it’s better to make it funny than dry.Ĭonversely, you can forgo comedy in a chunk of exposition and instead layer it with character. Think about the difference between a dry teacher who simply reads out of the textbook versus the teacher that riffs on what they’re talking about, engages with it, and cracks wise every so often. If an audience is laughing then they’ll be more inclined to listen. The teacher still delivers the crucial information, but our eyes are drawn to the more interesting element in the scene.Īnother method is to absolutely litter an expositional scene with jokes upon jokes. Let’s take the same hypothetical science-fiction world, but this time as the teacher talks our attention is drawn to a mysterious figure lurking in the hallway just behind him. Instead, seek to entertain your audience with the exposition by distracting them with something more interesting. This is why this particular method of exposition is increasingly unpopular. If we’re able to engage with the teacher and ask questions it can be a little better, but as an audience member we’re forced to sit in our seats and be lectured at. However, the major problem is that being lectured at is boring. Teaching, in a way, is a kind of natural exposition that we find in the real world and so it works naturally in stories. It reappears time and again for a reason. Faced with a vast amount of knowledge to relay to the reader some screenwriters think it’s best to have the characters be literally taught the mechanics of the world so that the audience learns alongside them. You (the writer) may very well know how all of these factors interact, but the reader doesn’t. Imagine that you are writing a story set in a far-flung science-fiction world with a multitude of alien creatures, worlds, and concepts. Readers know that this is an area that many emerging screenwriters struggle with and seeing exposition delivered poorly is a tell-tale sign of a writer still in development. Sub-par exposition can can be the death knell of an otherwise great script. More often than not, you’ll need to nail it. It’s not just enough to understand exposition. Remember when Ben Kenobi told Luke Skywalker about the force? That’s exposition. Exposition is an integral part of every screenplay, there’s no way to avoid it so it’s key to understand how to be great at writing it. Put succinctly, exposition is the relaying of crucial information about the world, characters, or plot in a screenplay so that the audience has enough information to fully understand what is happening on screen. So what is this strangely integral part of screenwriting? Every writer, whether they be a beginner or an expert, struggles with how to write exposition.
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