Dialogue Versus Exposition

Death Match...?

Good morning and welcome to Thanksgiving week. I got here before you, on account of I had to write some Shelf Lifes ahead to get ready for holiday travel. I warmed the holiday week up for you. Don’t say I never gave you anything.

Today, a short Shelf Life on dialogue and exposition. This is a subject I know I touched on recently but I cannot remember when. I know so because part of today’s article was already written, clipped out of some other Shelf Life that had gotten too long. I just don’t know which one. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m off work Thanksgiving week and I have already switched my brain off in preparation.

A premise: Big blocks of exposition are, generally speaking, bad. Unless you want your story to read like The Bible, which you probably don’t, although maybe you do? It has an awful lot of readers. Who doesn’t want to be a bestseller? But anyway, you probably don’t want your story to be boring. Nobody wants that. Too much exposition coming at the reader too fast, in large chunks, is a turnoff for most.

But you have to give information to the reader somehow, right? I mean the whole mechanism of storytelling is giving information to the reader. It’s like you have the Statue of Liberty in your head, in this analogy your head is France, and you need to get the Statue of Liberty to the USA, the USA being your reader’s head, so you take it apart piece by piece inside your head, move the pieces into your reader’s head, and let the reader reassemble the pieces into the Statue of Liberty in there. In this analogy all your words are the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

So the obvious solution is give the reader information in the form of character dialogue instead of narrative exposition. But this method, too, has its pitfalls. If you just use a character, or a couple of characters, as mouthpieces for the backstory, that’s going to make your story just as unpalatable as if you did a big narrative infodump. Plus, you don’t want most of your story made up of people just talking to each other in an unbroken dialogue, unless your are Samuel Beckett and your story is Waiting for Godot, which, if it is, then congratulations and you should be writing Shelf Life. If you’re not writing Waiting for Godot, then good, and let’s carry on.

I actually love Waiting for Godot, don’t get me wrong.

Consider this exposition:

Finder, I learned, was a mobile app to reunite users with missing belongings. It was simple: If you saw a photo of something you’d lost, you swiped right. If the app agreed it was yours, it was a match. How did it know what to show you? Where did the photos come from? The algorithm was a closely guarded secret.

Now consider the same information imparted another way:

"If you think something's yours, swipe right to see if it matches. Just don't swipe right on everything, the notifications are bananas."
"How does it know what stuff to show me?" I asked.
"Algorithm," he said.
"Where do the photos come from?"
"People’s phone cameras? I don’t know. I didn’t make the Finder app, I just downloaded it for you.”

In the first example, the narrator tells you outright what Finder is. In the second example, the narrator is still handing over all the same information but it’s not dumping it on the reader in the form of exposition. In the second example, the reader observes a dialogue between two people discussing the Finder, in which all the same information is shared. The dialogue has some additional benefits. For instance, the dialogue demonstrates that one of the participants in the conversation—the one who is going to be using the Finder app—does not know anything about this app. As the reader also doesn’t know anything about the Finder app at this point, on account of it’s something I made up with my brain and there’s no earlier opportunity to find out about it, this gives the reader an opportunity to identify with that character. Ideally, as they read this passage, the reader is also nodding along (perhaps metaphorically) and thinking, “okay, I get it. A phone app like Tinder, but for things and not people.” I don’t need to hit readers over the head with “Tinder but for stuff.”

The second example still isn’t a perfect way to impart information. For one thing, in that excerpt we have no idea who the two speakers are, which is kind of important. One of them has downloaded Finder for the other, but there’s no sense of why. There is no window into where these characters are or what they’re doing with their bodies while they’re talking—because there aren’t any action beats. This dialogue conveys the same information as the exposition in the first example, but even though it’s in dialogue form it doesn’t do a better job.

"If you think something's yours, swipe right to see if it matches,” said Arthur, leaning close to my ear so I could hear him over the din of the bar. “Just don't swipe right on everything, the notifications are bananas."

In the above example, it’s conveying the same information about Finder but it’s also conveying information about setting. Here’s another variation:

"If you think something's yours, swipe right to see if it matches. There, all set up.” Arthur tossed my phone back to me in a high arc over the coffee table. “Just don't swipe right on everything, the notifications are bananas."

Again, conveying the same information about Finder but also some information—different information—about setting. Let’s try one more time and convey all the same information but also include information about relationship.

"If you think something's yours, swipe right to see if it matches. There, all set up.” My brother tossed my phone back to me in a high arc over the coffee table. “Just don't swipe right on everything, the notifications are bananas."

What I’m getting at is this:

• Exposition to provide background is not the answer.

• Dialogue to provide background is not the answer.

• Dialogue and exposition working together is the answer.

While nobody wants big blocks of expository background all in a row, nobody wants pages of dialoguing heads with no context, either. (The Fritz Freiheit wiki calls this “Brenda Starr dialogue.”)

Doing anything gracefully means employing balance. When you construct a sentence you create rhythm and balance by choosing a mix of long/complex and short/simple words. You may do this intentionally or you may do it subconsciously; most likely a mix of both (another balance). Paragraphs are forged from sentences of varying lengths. If your paragraphs are all full of long, complicated sentences, your prose will drag and be hard to read. If you use only short, simple sentences, your writing will feel like a rapid-fire staccato beat. You do not want your text to feel like the beginning of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.” At least—not all the time.

Likewise, you can’t make a story out of only exposition, or only dialogue. Exposition should be broken up by action and dialogue. Dialogue, itself, should be broken up by action beats, physical cues, and information about the setting.

A simple rule of thumb I follow when I’m revising or editing—when drafting I just dump everything out of my brain onto the page—is that every sentence (or most every sentence) should be doing at least two things. It’s not good enough for a sentence to do only one thing, the overt and main thing that is its purpose. It should also be doing something else. For instance, if I am writing a sentence and the primary responsibility of that sentence is to convey an action:

Janet kicked the soccer ball.

I want to make sure, during revision, that this sentence is communicating more than just one thing. Okay so Janet is kicking a soccer ball, that’s the action that’s happening and the person who’s doing it. Other things I could convey with this sentence might be:

• Where is Janet? “Janet kicked the soccer ball a bit too hard and sent it across the street and into Mrs Jenkins’ front yard.”

• Why is she kicking around a soccer ball? “Janet kicked the soccer ball halfheartedly, gazing at her phone while her nephew sprinted after it, squealing.”

• What’s the occasion? “Janet kicked the soccer ball past the other team’s goalie and won the game.”

• What’s the weather like? “Janet kicked the soccer ball and watched it roll to a stop in the frosty grass downfield.”

Look, none of these are magnificent sentences but the point is you can ask a bit more of most sentences without overburdening them. They’re pretty strong. Ask them to shoulder a bit more weight. They can take it.

• If your sentence is primarily conveying an action, pair it with some dialogue or exposition.

• If your sentence is dialogue, pair it with some action or exposition.

• If your sentence is exposition, pair it with some action or dialogue.

Teamwork makes the dream work, guys.

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