As I get closer to finishing my current WIP's first draft, I'm having trouble dealing with the large amount of exposition I need to do before the end. Have you ever run into this problem? How did you deal with it? What's the best way to handle exposition, in your opinion?
Congratulations on being close to finishing your first draft! Good on you! I hope you have done so since it has taken me too long to answer this and I'm so sorry, just everything has kind of hit these last few months.
Not gonna lie, been writing for over 10 years and had to look up exposition just so I was right in what it is. I was mostly right.
Just for anyone who may not know what it is: exposition is a writing technique that shares and/or explains information of an event or backstory that took place prior (character's past or a war for two easy examples). It does not need to be only used in the beginning, but it will be present to build the settings and characters.
I'll be honest, since I work on first drafts, I try not to focus on the negatives until a later draft, since I've had a bad habit of deleting my whole WIP and starting over (my fantasy one especially). I will say that I do worry that my bits of worldbuilding in my fantasy WIP may come across as info dumping or too much unnecessary exposition.
I find that I try to weave it in the story naturally, such as in dialogue or the setting rather than straight up telling, and mainly focus on the purpose of the exposition.
Does it add anything to the story if it's in there and if I remove it would it change anything? Can I add this piece of information somewhere else in the story? Is the information natural to the story's flow?
I have attached two posts in the hopes that it might help anyone who might be struggling with exposition.
I was taught as a young writer to never ever ‘info dump’. An info dump is a paragraph (or several) that just runs the readers through info t
People often mention exposition as a bad thing. Can it ever work in a story? Here are a few things you need to know about writing exposition
Thank you so much for the ask! <3
