Let's dedicate the first half of the story to mind numbing information and end the second half of the story with mindless action that contradicts the information we've learned in the first half.
Nothing better than a massive infodump followed by the story ignoring whatever info there was because the world needs to conform to show all the cool stuff MC does.
I'm not going to get a better opportunity to point this out: David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation of scifi classic *Dune* begins with an obtuse exposition dump. The book begins with Paul Atredies' mother contemplating the ethics of genetically and socially engineering her son to be a messianic figure.
Cough* (Deap elderly voice) Prolog: It all started in the summer of 2020 but the true beginning was a year before when to covid started, a few thousend people died, so the united goverments of the world decided to prevent the freedom of the people and made them prisoners in their own house. In the summer of 2020, this situation has not changed and many people were busy on the internet and such, so was our protagonist. One day at 1am, the protagonist was lying on the bed, they were bored and had no clue of what to, so they opened the 'You Tube'. A site that uses the internet to deliver videos and ads to the people. The protafonist whatched many videos until they reached an interesting channel, it was a channel ran by a cinical writer who animated simple and short video explaining how not to write. The channel's name is Terrible Writting Advice. Chapter 1: 20 years during the fourth invasion of the north, the protagonist was trapped in a dark room, remenicing the last time something like this has happened...
Ah yes. 1 DC (during covid). I remember that young, naive time where we thought the whole world would come together to stop the spread of a deadly pandemic... just as soon as we all agreed it actually existed...
@@Barwasser I honestly liked that line. Yeah it's kinda cheesy but I feel like that's the point of the Star Wars text crawls, it's to make you feel like you're jumping into a pulpy adventure serial.
"What !? You don't know Generic Rich Straight White Man !? Generic Rich Straight White Man is simply the most successful business man in the city ! You see, in 1973-"
@@spicingdeed8931 I'm not SUPER well versed in the genre, but there is some damn good cyberpunk out there if you look. I highly recommend Battle Angel Alita it's a great cyberpunk story
It's best to do an anti-infodump: Not telling, and also not showing. Avoid all information altogether and let the reader figure it out. Then claim all the people's theories and the multiple contradictory interpretations as your plan all along.
This is a hot take, but mind, not all hot takes are good takes. This sort of storytelling is what Dark Souls does: it's slightly lazy and more fitting of a game which can be explored manually rather than a story that goes on unstoppingly without anyone explaining to the reader on what on earth the context behind whatever's happening is supposed to be.
"The easy ways of handling exposition are either info dumping, or not bothering to explain anything at all." Somehow, the RWBY prologue managed to do both.
@@reverie02 In the prologue the writers info dump telling you about the resources in the world instead of the fact that's it's on the brink of war (something you don't find out until season 3.) The writers actually do a lot of the things that are in this video like info dump on the characters (and the audience) in a classroom setting. It's messy.
There were some genuinely really good episodes in season 3, but the show has this habit of being good in short stints making people hope that it might get better, and season 3 is no exception. There’s a video by Hbomberguy on the show’s disappointing run, it’s really good and quite funny.
In some series of novels, namely "The Babysitters' Club", the same information about each of the titular girls is dumped at the beginning of each book, which can be a lot to take in all at once.
Animorphs I think did expositions really well. Every book is someone's first, so there's gotta be an info dump at the beginning every single time, but it's always done so shrewdly and with so much character that it doesn't get tiring even 50+ books in.
I think that's because the series isn't really meant to be chronological like it's not fold in a set the books are just kind of everywhere and there's a thousand of them so it's there so that no matter what book you start with you get all the same background information plus for people like my sister who can't pay attention for their life getting all the same information at the beginning of every single book make sure she might actually remember some of it I personally think it's kind of cool a little annoying but also you know it's a system you can count on you can count on the book to explain everything you've missed since the last one almost you can trust them and it's really cool
@@Dudebox64 The best part about it is when it finally gets subverted in the final two books. I still get chills whenever I re-read them just because of how significant it is.
"Gintama gets better after 300 episodes" "Boruto gets better when we reach the flash forward" "Dragon Ball Super will get better when its back" "If you don't like it, why are you watching it?" "If you didn't watch it, you can't judge it." Smurt People :]
@@M3rtyville Okay that Gintama one is just flat out wrong. Its fantastic from episode one. It just gets better. Boruto on the other hand doesn’t… or maybe I’m being bias because it should have never existed.
@@M3rtyville Anime fans are for some reason unable to grasp the idea that there are flaws in their favorite shows. Excessive fanservice? Important to the plot! Unneeded exposition? Absolutely necessary! Pointless and boring filler? It's fun to watch!
"The chief engineer could explain exactly why that's bad" -- reminds me of the Mass Effect quote: Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law? Serviceman Burnside: Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir! Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot! Serviceman Burnside: Sir! Unless acted upon by an outside force, sir! Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction! You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
Videogames as a medium have a lot of room for exposition as atmosphere. It's one of the advantages of the format that even other visual mediums (movies, TV, comics) don't get as much mileage out of. (Since a world you can suspend your disbelief in the artificial nature of is a major goal in video games.)
When I wrote my first book, at some point early on I felt I needed the characters to be taught how the aliens learned to travel through space. My early drafts just had the usual paragraph exposition, but I revised it and later on realized I just didn't care. So I made a character who also didn't really care explain it. I got to half ass the explanation and develop a side character. I can save the real explanation for a better time.
"Bruh, now every single person of that species has to know how every single technology they have work? Is my first thought when i see humans asking them how rocket science work?" "... Specieist" -a very tired alien who has been asked how their space travel works one too many times
Can we just appreciate how tight and interesting the exposition was at the start of Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring movie? If you have it, just watch and be impressed by how much important information you get without it overstaying its welcome. I also appreciate how they go back and fill in gaps later when needed instead of the massive info dump courtesy of Gandalf in the book.
Also, shifting the explanation of the Nazghul to Aragorn from Gandalf makes better thematic sense, as Aragorn shares the Ringwraiths' status as a "fallen king".
In the book Gandalf was imparting information to Frodo that was vital to his quest, items that weren't common knowledge in the world and that Frodo was ignorant of. It made sense in the context.
My go to example of good exposition would be Inception, even when it's just infodumping everyone stays in character and the way it actually delivers information still builds on their archs, like in the cafe dream where it actually connects dreambuilding to Ariadne's experience with art and inspiration and Cobb seems to be genuinely fascinated with the power of the mind, or later when Ariadne summons a real-life bit of Paris and gets stabbed by Mal, it highlights her inexperience and idealism while also showing how terrified Cobb is of losing himself to the dream world again.
I don't mind the "info-dumps" in the books that much, since they're always told by a character in a context that makes sense. At the end of it they're just another story, told in the same way Tolkien tells any present events. It's actually a clever way to do non-linear storytelling, and at least for me it's a refreshing contrast against a lot of modern novels which feel like they're trying too hard to be movie scripts.
Helped that it felt more like a short story than an info dump. You got to see this stuff happen instead of just have a character talk about it. It was entertaining, and you got enough background information for the main story.
Call me crazy, but I think Yu-Gi-Oh did a fairly good job at exposition After all, how else would I know what pot of greed did if no one explained it every 3 episodes?
This video came out right in the nick of time. Just cut out a page of exposition dedicated to a character that dies in the first chapter, and then put it right back in after watching this video. As a writer, you think you put in a lot of stuff that needs putting out, but of course, the truth is that you're just being way too critical and doubtful about yourself. You can't make mistakes. Everything you put down on the page is obviously meant to stay for good! Thanks for the amazing writing advice.
@@Gabriel87100 At some point you just need to bite the damn bullet. Put the story away somewhere and don't touch it. Then write a second one. Then once you have written the second one, come back to the first one.
@@Gabriel87100 In all seriousness, I recommend simply finishing a draft. It feels good to finish, and it's a positive achievement in the long run. I've been in the same loop as you. When you're writing, erasing, rewriting, erasing, that's usually a sign your story won't ever be made unless you just forget about committing any mistakes, and simply write the story. There's a reason there's a first draft. It's not there to stay. You'll edit it after you've finished writing it, so instead of worrying about what to edit in the now, just get creative and write down everything in your head, no matter what happens to it later down the line in the next three or so drafts.
@@Gabriel87100 Finish it then edit it. Don’t forget that you don’t need avoid everything that he says, so long as you are writing a fun and interesting story
@@Gabriel87100 Think of these videos more as tools for critical analysis then mine fields to avoid. Sometimes you need to write that information dump in the first draft for yourself. To understand your story. Then you go back and refine. Or get a trusted 2nd or 3rd party to help you find the bits that just aren’t necessary. We all grew up with tropes, we will all write a few. And something isn’t bad just because it’s a trope, it’s really a matter of wielding the right weapons for the right story.
5:06 Imagine a conversation your characters are having in the back seat of a car, in a modern setting, that goes like- "The traffic light just turned red. *_As you know,_* that means you're supposed to stop until it turns green." "Isn't it great that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb that gets used so much in our daily lives?" To make it less clunky, try picturing the guy in the back seat sarcastically yelling at the driver, "Hey! You're supposed to STOP when the light's red!" **Insert narration describing how the light changes from red to green** "...There, NOW you can go! Jeez!" The Thomas Edison bit can come up later, if at all. *It doesn't need to be mentioned if it's not relevant to the story.*
But would that include flashbacks and nightmares of a tragic life period in a character who can't seem to move on from her past? The line is really thin for newbies. At what point it stops being the discovery process of a character's personality and experiences, and becomes an unnecessary flashback holding the plot back?
@@Gabriel87100 Similar to what Ren said, if it's important enough to show onscreen, find a way to show it--if the entire scene isn't important, give us the important parts. For example, if the backstory that's relevant is "the character has trauma from the war" you could have someone push them for war stories only to have them change the subject, or give them scars/a prosthetic limb and just mention it's from the war & they don't want to talk about it, or say "She woke from another nightmare. She'd been back on the battlefield again--but that was a long time ago" and move on with the story. If it's something like one character's relationship to another, you could have a different character mention "how's your mom?" and the other struggle to say she's dead, or have two characters who're working together secretly make eye contact as they pass by but not say anything, or something like that. Readers aren't stupid, if the outline of the information is there they'll trust you. One of the best traumatic backstories I've read basically had the reader see all these people that had escaped from this institution and see that they all acted very traumatized--being obsessed with their own strange beliefs, going from calm to violently angry over little things, etc--and when the other characters tried talking about it, they just said they'd rather die than go back. We, the readers, don't really need a clear picture--anything we imagine is harsh enough, and if the author _did_ try to spell it out it'd risk sounding like an overreaction or else sounding too ~edgy~.
i’ve seen a couple fantasy writers handle explaining their world building to the audience by putting in important information between each chapter. it’s usually about a page or two of in-universe documents that tie in nicely with a previous chapter or explain certain parts of the fantasy world’s history. I think it’s really creative and clever, especially if the documents are presented as diary entries or pages from a fake history textbook.
@@wren_. One of the advantages of in-world documents is that they can be unreliable narrators... and that can be played with. The Commissar Ciaphas Cain books play with this, with little blurbs from in-universe documents at the beginning of every chapter... but the authors are usually characters you meet in the larger text, and consequently you sometimes can compare 'reality' with what they wrote, and sometimes you can learn something new about the character because of how what they wrote down. Mind, the Cain books have 'unreliable narrator' as one of their central hooks. So it's not surprising when the author plays with it.
I like when exposition is told through a first person perspective, where the reader learns with the character, or when the plot is told in passing, like a written report by the main character or for the main character, instead of the character or a third person spouting the information into your face.
I prefer either narration or a character explaining stuff to other characters. Narration I like when it's establishing stuff that "everybody knows," you know, stuff that the characters don't perceive to be interesting or exciting. It doesn't have to be literally known by all of the characters; as long as the character(s) who do know it don't regard it as anything more than background detailing, it counts. I feel that 3rd person narration is the best format for conveying the "this is well known and unexciting" tone. I mean, if the information is so unexciting, there is no motivation for the character that knows to share it in any way, shape, or format. And if a situation comes up where the reader can learn the information firsthand, the scene is going to be hard to understand because the character already knows something the reader does not. So I think narration is best for helping the reader to understand this sort of information without confusing them or making them ask why the character is talking about it in the first place. On the other hand, if the information is not considered ordinary or boring, then I like to have characters explain it to other characters. A character that just found out stunning news can be acting out of character, prompting the others to ask if they're ill before they manage to explain. Or a character that is normally reserved and distant is discovered to have one particular passionate interest that they nerd out over before realizing they've broken their cover and hastily retreating back into their shell, possibly while grumbling, "Forget the second half of that, it wasn't important anyway." Information that the characters consider to be worth sharing is a goldmine of tools for shaping character dynamics! Ah, I love this kind.
JP fails to bring up a good point about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's exposition- it's Counterexposition. It's not there to explain anything. It's there to break up the flow of the story so you don't notice the author just pulled a "and that was that. Moving on..." to the plot. "Turns out that mice creating the Earth as an experiment... ha, irony?... to solve the universe isn't as funny as you thought it'd be? Have a flashback within a Guidebook entry so you can get out of the plot and into another plot you can back out of so you can get into another plot so..."
This is usually why I hate prologues. They're fine when they're done right, but so many writers just treat them as info-dumps with a heavy handed "You'll need to know this for later!" slapped on your cheek.
@@surprisedchar2458 Exactly. Or just integrate said information through the story as needed. Author: Hey, remember that one thing I told you 300 pages ago? It's finally important!
A prologue can still be done really well if it shows something important to the narrative that CANNOT be communicated earlier on. One example (of many) Is the prologue to a Game of Thrones. (minor spoilers, nothing too big.) It follows a patrol of nights watch as they encounter a group of slaughtered wildlings and then die when the bodies become ice zombies. This works for 2 reasons: 1: it accurately conveys the dark, murder-happy, tone of GoT by having all these characters die. and 2: it sets up the dangers Jon Snow faces as when he arrives at the wall, as it would be impossible to convey that other than really awkward exposition. Moral of the story: it's not bad in conception.
Didn't game of thrones have a prologue with the winter zombies? Think a UA-camr said it was a justified prologue because the zombies wouldn't be known until late in the story by the characters but couldn't just be addressed then without coming out of left field. Not 100% on this since I've absorbed the info through UA-cam reviewers and not bothered to actually watch it myself.
Honestly if you're going to info dump, that's really the way to do it- * Brief summary with minimal proper nouns * Awesome music to get the audience excited followed by mysterious, peaceful music to let it all sink in * Gradually display the text in a manner that the audience isn't overwhelmed but feels enough of a sense of urgency to actually read it
Admittedly, I don't have much experience with writing exposition. However, in that limited experience, I've learned that exposition should be limited to what's necessary. Not quite literally every aspect of their subject.
I heard it once explained that exposition belongs in three categories: necessary, flavor text, and director notes. The necessary is what the reader needs to know about the story. The flavor text are details that flesh the world out, but aren’t necessary. Director’s notes are for the writer only: ie gravity exists or the specific political ins and outs.
Isn't... one of the traits of the SCiP Foundation telling a story via what would typically be understood as exposition dumbs? By adding a trait of horror via removing the humanity from a story, to make it more frightening--with part of it from it a ?subversion? of using exposition I mean... IIRC, the parts of the site written by Dr. Bright, the author (different from Dr. Bright, the character... which itself is a bit of existential horror), are largely the Tales... but the Tales always struck me as an add on "extra feature"... a sort of bells and whistles... but like, I understand I am suppose to be staunchly against Bells and Whistles... and entirely about being purely Meat and Potatoes and no fun allowed--Fundamentalist Charter Accountancy and all that
Then SCP is the extreme necessary, remember and nowadays, people ignore it but… _context and framing matters,_ and in the SCP documents context, we’re reading confidential that has several details of it inked out and edited out for either _safety reasons or it being only available for high officials_
Well… I’m actually not talking to you @@purplehaze2358, specifically talking to Katrina… though why is the author a terrible person? I don’t know much about SCP authors, all and their activities
If you really just want to dump out information, fun facts, tidbits and quirky details of your setting, why not write a fictional travel guide? Like honestly, I've done that myself and it was pretty fun. Called it "Places, people and how to enjoy the former despite the latter" or something similarly snarky if I recall correctly. By far not my greatest literary work, but I have a soft spot for that little booklet.
The best solution is just to make the "exposition dump" an interesting story in itself - LoTR does this really well, the backstory of Sauron and the One Ring is a classic example of telling instead of showing, but I didn't mind because it's literally Epic. The movie does it as a prologue, which works well because they can put Sauron on screen. From what I remember in the books, by the time Gandalf actually exposits it, there's plenty of buildup and suspense, so it actually feels satisfying to get some answers. YMMV on every use of this, but stories within a story are a classic literary technique for a reason. Honestly, if you do this well the main danger is that the myth or legend will be more interesting that the story around it...
I‘ve found that „discovery writing“ (TWA explained the technique in one of his videos, unfortunately, I don’t remember which one) works quite well for this: You make rough outline of the story as well as the setting etc., kind of like a zoomed out map containing only the most essential information, and then, as you‘re writing, lay out the information as you „discover“ it. The more you plan beforehand (i.e. „architect writing“), the harder it might get to distribute the information evenly but still in a way that feels natural. That is, making sure that not every chapter contains the same amount of information, since there is never a continuous stream of knowledge in real live either. It‘s a bit hard for me to explain, since I didn‘t really „learn“ to write, nor spent time „finding my voice“. I just… started, and kept doing it (after some years of rarely writing at all, except for school and uni purposes), until I was writing nearly every day if possible. I sometimes wonder if it would have been more effective to properly learn some of the techniques, though… (Sorry, if that was a bit long and rambling.)
I think a good way to handle exposition is by having it be part of a situation where you expect a lot of info to be dumped. A news broadcast, a mission briefing and watching an in universe advertisement is a good way to do this. The upside of this is that it both provides information and gives you a shortcut to set the tone almost immediately.
I like how the beginning sounds even more like a seductive villain speech/explanation than usual. Speaking of supposed villains, my that hydra is quite polite and helpful. (Also I chuckled at the bit of code at 11:35.)
In crime procedurals, the leader of the protagonists, you know the one, the one with no discernable expertise in forensics or criminology, serves as the stand-in for the audience to the technical aspects explained to them by the experts on the team; delivering the exposition AAAAAAND explaining the purpose of the "leader" trope.
I unironically like info dumps. I specifically love watching lore videos on sifi and fantasy series that i'm interested in but aren't fully sure I want to actually invest in specifically because there convenient info dumps. It's the biggest hurtle I need to overcome in my own writing, avoiding the info dumps I love so much.
@@takebacktheholyland9306 I think it's because 40K has great stories, they just aren't great at telling those stories. Like the war of the beast, the cluster f^ckes that where the siege of varax and the fall of kadia, the entirety of the ultra marines ... even though I hate the ultra marines because of mat ward they've made a descent comeback but I still hate them and think their a perfect example of all of my gripes about 40K.
This is part of what makes isekai and hidden world/masquerade stories so popular, I imagine. Good exposition is easy when the protag is a fish out of water, because they will naturally inclined not only to ask questions or need things explained to them, but to have primarily *relevant* information given to them.
Isekai stories are popular because exposition doesn't need to exist, every world functions in the exact same way and thus you can get to the boobs and wish fulfillment instantly
@@PengyDraws Also, most of the time exposition is still dumped on you, when ever there is a chance. The protaganist beeing unfamiliar with the setting is just an excuse to go on an info dump.
@@wulle8509 This is the kind of part I hate about most isekai. The protagonist is lost in an unfamiliar and alien world where everything is different. It's the perfect opportunity to have them explore it and gather exposition in their own way without having it dumped onto them. But the info is still just dumped onto them in the same way with no personality.
@@solus1247 I agree completely, between that and most of them being nothing but a naked power fantasy with nothing else to them, I have kind of had a falling out with the genre.
Having the story start in an actual school provides a convenient way to tie in exposition while having characters debate about that exposition and, as a result, reveal info about themselves. An officer's academy, for example, can send characters on plot advancing missions and provide a setting where characters can ask questions about basic aspects of the world.
I can understand 'not enough exposition' being a problem, but what's worse than that is TOO MUCH. I can trust a writer to try to give me exposition in small bits until they can be peaced together to something coherent later. That CAN sometimes be annoying, but not as eye-rolling as EVERYTHING being force fed to you all at once and NOTHING in the story making sense unless you have all the back story you weren't even there to see carved into your brain.
It was exactly the problem with the Star Wars Sequal Trilogy. The Original Trilogy struck a balance between worldbuilding and character-development, the Prequal Trilogy focused a little too much on worldbuilding (which I personally enjoyed, nevertheless), but the Sequal Trilogy DIDN'T have any kind of worldbuilding at all, let alone decent character-development.
Too much is a common complaint, but the process you're describing is actually better than nothing being explained at all, which is usually too little exposition.
@@pendragon0905 Yeah, this is all an excellent observation of what happened with Star Wars. All of the background information for the sequel trilogy had to be found by using secondary sources (novelization, visual dictionary, etc). The PT had a bit too much, but at least we knew something about the world and whatnot. When VII came out, people thought the Republic planet blown up was Coruscant (though I'm pretty sure the system name was dropped. The incredibly stupid way of them somehow seeing the destruction from across the galaxy didn't help, though. Almost as if new reports didn't exist in the Star Wars galaxy. Plus, acting as if the entire Republic was blown up, even though it was just its capital). It was almost as if they were afraid of saying anything.
Bit speedwagon is a fun character, which helps a lot to make exposition more fun, by simply have an entertaining character do it. I mean speedwagon is not bad with it.
I remember an author who literally wrote the entire story as an info dump in the first paragraph and then the last seven paragraphs were just filler with the characters doing nothing until it abruptly stops.
Ah, but what about the start of SERENITY? An In-Universe Lecture, inside of a nightmare, inside of a flashback, inside of a holographic archive, inside of an in-dialog-info-dump. Chef's kiss.
I think the worst one I ever read was in Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had an entire overly long chapter describing the layout of Paris streets, block by block, building by building, as viewed from the rooftop of Notre Dame. Not even pointing out this was from Quasimodo's point of view, just a dry text version of a map.
My go to example of good exposition would be Inception, even when it's just infodumping everyone stays in character and the way it actually delivers information still builds on their archs, like in the cafe dream where it actually connects dreambuilding to Ariadne's experience with art and inspiration and Cobb seems to be genuinely fascinated with the power of the mind, or later when Ariadne summons a real-life bit of Paris and gets stabbed by Mal, it highlights her inexperience and idealism while also showing how terrified Cobb is of losing himself to the dream world again.
7:08, so kind of like in Harry Potter. When Snape ambushes Harry with Chekhov’s Gun questions about potions that he knows Harry won’t be able to answer
I remember in Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon, there is this part where several pages are devoted to describing how the main character eats Cap'n Crunch, and the weird thing is it's actually good. While normally you would want to limit the information to whatever is relevant to the plot, it would seem what really matters is that the reader enjoys it.
3:10 my headcanon for why the non-player is now in a completely different fantasy story is because they checked out so much they didn't realise their D&D game had ended.
Also how the intro ties into the climax and the arguably most emotional moment in the game. Plus I love the exposition dump in Asgore's home. You still have freedom of movement and can explore the house- a near-exact replica of the home you were taken into at the start of the game- while all the enemies you encountered thus far tell you the story (that undyne was going to tell before she says "SCREW IT", which is also a really great subversion of the sudden info-dump trope) to a really amazing song, giving it a sort of "how far you've come" feel to it while also giving the exposition. The genocide version also does this with a completely different tone and mood, and... -god i just love that game-
I think a good lesson I got was from the first review on my first book. They liked the characters and plot, but felt the magic system wasn't explained. I wanted to go the show don't tell route to have the action be a way to demonstrate how the magic worked. But feel the reviewer was right that my approach left more questions unanswered for how everything worked. Not to mention that Terrible Writing just underlined that I was listing words relating to my magic system without giving an explanation. This kind of got me back to the drawing board so I could find a way to fix the problem without an exposition dump. A lot of people I queried about the dilemma suggested I include a character unfamiliar with the magic system of the world, but I felt that approach was boring and overdone. Then it dawned on me to have a character that was self-taught in magic, that way the protagonist could explain how magic works through what they were doing right and wrong. I personally think it's some of the stronger moments in book 2.
I think its a good idea you came up with. Its hard to find the right balance sometimes, and balance is needed. Sometimes things need to be explained. If magic isn't properly explained AND is used and controlled by the main character(s) it could in worst case feel like there is no real stake because they could just fix everything with magic probably. But in case they aren't as much in control of it, then keeping it much more mysterious and unpredictable may work
Robert A Heinlein's juvenile novels from the 60s were actually pretty smart about this. The main plots were pretty concise with minimal harping on tech and lore, but each chapter started with a short anecdote from the world's history usually related to and expounding on an important technology. They were almost entirely irrelevant, but did a lot for the setting's character and you could easily skip them if you wanted to.
I also like how Victor Milan did exposition in his Dinosaur Lords trilogy. Each chapter started with an entry from an in-universe encyclopedia of all known things, and which entry was chosen had to do with the content of the chapter. If a specific dinosaur was going to be appearing, there would usually be an entry describing that dinosaur. If the powers that be appeared, the entry would describe what and who these powerful beings are. If nothing particularly new was happening...time to break out the entries that hint at an overarching history that the readers will find very interesting, though the characters do not and it's not plot-relevant (spoilers! You learn about 2/3 of the way through the first book, from one of these entries, that the human race originally came from Earth but was transported to another planet in the distant past along with 5 selected creatures, which explains why those are the only normal animals to have appeared all story and why the character's ages are given in numbers that are unrealistic from our perspective. 19 being described as a young child, a young adult protagonist being 31 years old...turns out that's because the planet they're on has shorter years.) This is all information that's so well known to the characters that it would never come up in the story itself, so having the information be separate from the story makes perfect sense and may even be called required.
"As you know" is such a weird convention. You're basically lampshading how the characters have no reason to be mentioning that fact except to inform the audience, as if that somehow makes it better.
I think one way you could solve it is by having the protagonist explain whatever the "as you know" part is. That way it would demonstrate their keen knowledge and intelligence about X subject
I’ve been a self-proclaimed writer for over a year now (though I only recently got good at it so I’m still basically a novice). How I’m gonna handle exposition is as follows: Main character spent their formative years in a dystopian land. In other words, not knowing anything about the outside world. This means they will ask questions that the reader may also have (but I’m hopefully gonna keep it limited to relevant things, not like “oh when was Rodrick Ballscratcher the Third’s outdoor lavatory built?”). Second book sees a different protagonist exploring different lands, a perfect opportunity for world building with some lore thrown in every so often. It’s gonna be multiple books long, assuming I actually finish any. (Bloody procrastination). So no need to rush through exposition or condense everything into one or two books. Plenty of the lore will tie in to the main focus, depending on what focus there currently is (not every last bit, but on occasion. Maybe “plenty” is an exaggeration). To top it all off, I have a glossary of sorts for jotting down notes and ideas. If released publicly, it would be pretty much ideal for those that want *all* the information. (The damn file got corrupted but thankfully I remember most of the stuff in it). Edit: Nearly forgot to mention that I made a historical timeline, meaning there’s room for prequels and spin-offs. That opens the door to having the exposition being spread out. In other words, the main series has the compulsory exposition while the spin-offs provide extra historical exposition.
It’s a good day when TWA uploads a video, fill with golden advice that will tell me what I already know and stroke my ever growing ego… I’m kidding of course. Thanks for the new video.
My favorite type of exposition is the kind where crappy fangame writers try to cram entire stories into cutscenes with textboxes designed for a sentence at most!
I would love if in a scifi setting someone has to skim an owners manual to see how the FTL engines work for repairs, gives hints to how all this tech works while presenting an obstacle to the character to work with. It can be hard to introduce information or lore organically besides a lecture, or even have fun with the lecture, but that does take effort. "As you know Bob," is a nice way to spot lazy writing sometimes but you do need to walk your characters and audience through a plan or situation somehow, it's just better if they're both discussing the issue rather than one lecturing down with some new info added. Animated series dumping info is either a product of comics, where huge lines of text and thought explaining what's going on take seconds to read but minutes to play out and maybe half a week to animate. Or it's just a trope that your unique bad guy needs to have their power explained before it's beaten, heck Bond villains won't shut up about their plans and how their evil machine works and how their laser piranhas will eat you in such a way to maximize suffering, only to leave minutes before the hero breaks free. I'm personally working on a book that will never be finished and I have a chapter dedicated to a dream of background info, it removes the character from the current story but I suppose it moves them to new information to the audience.
I’m probably in the minority here, but I genuinely love it when the technology/magic/etc. is never fully spelled out. I love piecing together how the spaceships work or what is and isn’t possible with magic. It makes me feel smart (as long as the author doesn’t break their own rules later on).
Honestly I hope the anime exposition trope never goes away, because there’s something about it that just genuinely excites me when characters analyze seconds-long actions in battle with minutes of dialogue. By all common sense that should make it boring, but somehow it’s interesting and hype for me instead.
@@cara-seyun also good, don't just give the full run down at once but give hints or relevant info slowly. part of why a dump is so bad is it's as much info as possible in a big chunk without the characters really involved in their thoughts with it
Unironically I actually REALLY LIKE, even LOVE infodumps. I mean lore, and worldbuilding is always the most interesting part to me, so the infodumbs are interesting... kinda by it's very nature really(and that's not an easy task to make them not be). It's what I watch or read things for. The character arc and all the other stuff like that? Not nearly that interesting and they pretty much become interesting BECAUSE of their relevance to the universe - so to the lore and worldbuilding. Actually for a few years already I keep myself more to fandom-based literature (aka fanfictions) and even though they are more likely to have more exposition... I still more often than not find the exposition to be too small, too little or in other ways just lacking. Sprinkling exposition little by little throughout the story not only won't always make sense (as not always there is place for it in given scene) but also hardly ever would be satisfying, because that way it usually won't be much of it. It is also kind the reason why I like multiverses (aka crossovers) as they give so many opportunity to explore the lore and worldbuilding. Or a characters which just enter the wide big world not knowing much about it yet and thus the reader can learn about world with them. And teasing little details... for most of the time is more annoying than fun(and it never would actually tell more than "10 page essay on the subject". Unless the essay is EXTREMELY bad). Though I'm myself kinda guilty of that... and as much as I agree exposition should drive narrative stakes and tension (which I of course try to do), I can't exaclty agree about the immersion part. I mean exposition is main thing that make immersion even possible, it's key factor for that. That how it's delivered (and how well it is made to be part of the story) does matter of course, but it has to be really bad (on the level that I think is VERY HARD to achieve not on purpose) to really harm immersion instead of helping it.
My favorite exposition dumps are definitely when anime geniuses explain their plan like in Death Note, Code Geass or something like The Matrix which does exposition in action
You can make a fun character do the exposition, or a smartass bragging about how much they know about history. Or a bard and songs and poetry. In the background. Media? Journals? Hitchikers guide even has the guide do it. Or just talk and yeah have a knowitall or bard annoyingly brag how much they know about xy. Or a shady charactercif its a person new telling them to just them and doing telling their story. Or in dialogue between characters spread over the time. And a know it all still could be the cathalyst to get that. And flashbacks are fine i think, just it should have emotional elements related to characters too
I was thinking of writing a novel based on Monster Hunter, and have the protagonist be a hardcore fan of the franchise from our world who gets transported to the Monster Hunter world and becomes a hunter.
If I ever manage to write my story, there won't be any exposition at the beginning - straight into action, as if it's a pretty normal thing in that world. However, because the premise is that the protagonist is a new recruit and has to be taught the ways of the organization, the exposition will be done in form of teaching by his mentor and maybe (when the time comes) through some research in the archives.
In my opinion, the laziest way to deliver exposition is by using the phrase "As You Know." It's clearly only done for the audience's benefit, and the character typically knows this information well, and doesn't need to be retold in a clumsy, forced way.
Could work if it's done in a situation where the character DOESN'T know and it's assumed that they do. This was done pretty good in the original Injustice game when Aquaman was impersonating his alternate universe self.
@@legrandliseurtri7495 I think the Avatar The Last Airbender movie did it every ten minutes, iirc. Other than that, I don't think I've seen it in anything competent.
Best method, NO exposition! Not even the exposition that the audience really needs to know, like "What is the magic system like?" "Who wants the protagonist dead?" "What the fuck is a semblance?" Who cares! they can all just get on with it!
@@cara-seyun I haven't read 5 kingdoms, but I was referencing the web sieres/anime RWBY, which suffers from some of the worst exposition delivery I have ever seen. (I was trying to explain my reference to what a semblance is when I realized that is didn't know because the show did such a terrible job explaining it to me. Basically, what if the word bending was never said in Avatar: the Last Airbender until episode 14, but everybody was using it in-between episodes 1-14. That bad. They also use the TWA recommended strategy of putting the audience through a school lecture with the characters to explain it to them in the worst way possible.)
@@ineednochannelyoutube2651 ah, 5 kingdoms also has semblances, and they are similarly poorly explained (especially since the book was made for 10-13 year olds)
I love world building that runs in the background, and then an interesting character pops up because of the background noise. That's why I'm still into the World Keeper series.
My favorite example of "as you know bob" exposition came in DBS Broly when Brolys dad was explaining his transformation to Freza, except it was more of an, "I don't know Bob, but" then proceeded to explain exactly what the transformation was while also listing its strengths and drawbacks despite it being literally the first time he witnessed it
The one series i know that made deliberatly dry exposition awesome was log horizon as learning was kinda the main characters whole stick. He is a strategist, someone who is weak and who found his only real strength is to support others. Even the "as you know" trope was turned on its head as one character thought shiroe knew the basics alreadywhile the guy actually was absolutely clueless and had to actually get the other to monologue. The presentation, atmosphere and music helped
As an anime fan, I've seen the action-pausing info dump too many times. Want to know who's good at visual exposition? Robert Zemeckis. Particularly with Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Rising of the Shield Hero is the most recent anime (that I watched) where this happens. It may be a battle between powerful characters or some giant monster trying to eat everyone, but the infodump through DIALOGUE completely haults the enemies, it's amazing
I think part of that comes from the awkwardness of adapting a manga into an anime. You never really appreciate how a line said mid-attack should take ten seconds until it actually does.
I just wrote a terribly long scene of info dumping that was stupendously long and more boring than ever.....dialogue spanning near seven comic pages with near entire paragraphs for word balloons. Thanks to this video, I have come up with a replacement that weaves that information into a more tense scene instead, and shortens it to keep the pacing. Thank you for this video!
How about a video on transitions? I’ve seen some writers swiftly transition past simple, mundane scenes that don’t add to the story, and I’ve seen others play out every detail of a scene that doesn’t get us anywhere except to flow directly into another scene that doesn’t get us anywhere. *How am I supposed to know which is better?!*
I was thinking recently of a variation of this issue: info-dumping all meaningful characters in the first chapter (some of which don't show up again until dozens of pages later). You meet like 15 characters in 5-10 pages, who all have various often complex interrelations and get so little space devoted to them (mostly just a short description and no actual story action) that they don't make an impression at all. When you try to read on, you just can't remember them or what little characterization they did get, so you have to reread the first chapter again to find out who they actually are. Or you literally need to create a social relations web or genealogy to clear it up.
Don’t forget the last minute infodump. Your heroes about to reach their goal and there are still unresolved plot threads? Well, just dump a whole 3 course meal of info on them at the last moment
Man the beginning of this was a a massive call out! I had a big problem with giving too much unimportant information. I’m still working on getting rid of it all.
Tired of exposition dumps completely messing up the flow of the story? Just remove all the exposition and put it in a big book of info dump completey separate from the source material! It's the best of both extremes!
@@reverie02 ok, ok, but that enables a story that newcomers would not understand due to complete lack of exposition, and they only way they can know is trhough this "big book of infodump" that is ALL exposition and nothing else, like a history textbook
@@reverie02 Not necessarily, take Drakengard 3, for example. Takes place in an unfamiliar setting with barely any knowledge of the protagonist's past, she's just on a quest to kill her sisters, why? The game ends, and ESSENTIAL information about the protagonist's past that could make the ending even more emotional and memorable is locked away in a series of novels no one reads and are ridiculously hard to come by like so many Japanese works. And don't even get me started on Nier's timeline, which is fundamentally connected to Drakengard's, yet you can only know about through online fan-wikis rather than in the games. Same happens with Ace Combat, specially the PlayStation 2-era ones.
One of my best friends loves Dragon Ball. I kinda get it. But yeah I hear you! Every fight they have to cut away to explain why this Kamakamaha is 3 levels more powerful than the last one. As an addendum. You gotta give respect to Final Fantasy X and X-2 for Maechen! I tried looking it up but was too lazy to push it, but I feel like he's easily got 2 hours of WORTHLESS exposition between the two games.
Love Maechen. it's good that he's completely optional for repeat playthroughs but I find myself saying yes anyway just to listen to that soothing voice, and he's the only one who's been around long enough to have an idea of what really created Sin.
I think that exposition dumping can work if front loaded sometimes. I mean using anime as an example, to explain the world of my hero academia at the beginning of the series help set the stage. But doesn't disclose every single thing so there's still a mystery and expectation for further growth. I will admit it is annoying when any anime stops in the middle of a fight scene to explain things, such as dragon Ball, or any anime where the main character has to have a flashback to get a power boost, my hero academia also does this. Or even something as fantastic as fireforce, it does kind of ruin the pacing when it is introduced during an intense scene as opposed to outside of it
Am just astounded that this man made sponsorships not only watchable,,, but enjoyable??? WITH PLOT??? I knowww this isn't a new thing but the writing seems to improve and I'm just here to appreciate it.
LEGIT QUESTION: Why stop here? Even if we ignore 'Hello Future Me' being famous for being another Version of JP, theres at least that 1 video that is the perfect Spiritual-Sibling to this one here: Hbomberguys Video about RWBY. It mentions many of the same Problems but explains them with different Jokes and other Humor and thats not even all to say. Natural Exposition is a whole Segment in said video. And you know who else criticized with Humor? Jay Exci and Krimson Rogue.
Pretty sure all the comment of professor exposition comes from the first few Harry Potter books Too bad the later books forgot that pay off comes from set up
Do you know the REAL irony about this entire UA-cam channel? Is that almost all of its videos have really clever jokes, with incredible writing and pacing while promoting and teaching us about terrible writing advices. Great work CJ. *Task failed successfully*
@@lordanubis1458 Dude, I mean, UGH. J.P. shills for all this terrible writing advice, making videos for laughs, but he doesn’t use a single piece of the advice he gives. Well you know what? If the hypocrite doesn’t take the advice in the videos, then neither will I.
I think it’s funny because potentially the peak of English literature, Lord of The Rings, has so much fucking exposition, especially in the beginning, and it’s still great.
You make good points. But my favourite thing as a reader is when there's a time jump in the beginning of a chapter to 5 years in the future, where the main character ponders the event 4 years and 12 months ago and *suprise flashback...*
I'm a constant culprit of the exposition dump in my writing and dnd homebrews, and this video actually helped me out. I feel inspired to actually make something again!
Let's dedicate the first half of the story to mind numbing information and end the second half of the story with mindless action that contradicts the information we've learned in the first half.
So...Batman V Superman?
The modern Disney school of writing
Genius
Like Mahouka or any harem light novel
Nothing better than a massive infodump followed by the story ignoring whatever info there was because the world needs to conform to show all the cool stuff MC does.
I'm not going to get a better opportunity to point this out: David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation of scifi classic *Dune* begins with an obtuse exposition dump.
The book begins with Paul Atredies' mother contemplating the ethics of genetically and socially engineering her son to be a messianic figure.
Perfect.
The latter half of the 1984 Dune movie was just torture
Apparently some theaters just handed out a pamphlet with the names of planets, a few concepts, and a pronunciation guide
*cough* "David Webber Honorverse *cough*
Not many space adventure stories start in Sunday School and discuss why having a computer is a Mortal Sin. Gotta give ol' Herb that one...
Man I feel so nostalgic thinking about the first time I watched a Terrible Writing Advice video.
You see, it all started in the Summer of 2020....
I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3,000 years ago.
It sure as hell felt like it
I know that this is a joke, but this was actually the time when I first found TWA myself (my first video was the Killing Characters)
Cough*
(Deap elderly voice)
Prolog:
It all started in the summer of 2020 but the true beginning was a year before when to covid started, a few thousend people died, so the united goverments of the world decided to prevent the freedom of the people and made them prisoners in their own house.
In the summer of 2020, this situation has not changed and many people were busy on the internet and such, so was our protagonist.
One day at 1am, the protagonist was lying on the bed, they were bored and had no clue of what to, so they opened the 'You Tube'.
A site that uses the internet to deliver videos and ads to the people.
The protafonist whatched many videos until they reached an interesting channel, it was a channel ran by a cinical writer who animated simple and short video explaining how not to write.
The channel's name is Terrible Writting Advice.
Chapter 1:
20 years during the fourth invasion of the north, the protagonist was trapped in a dark room, remenicing the last time something like this has happened...
Ah yes. 1 DC (during covid). I remember that young, naive time where we thought the whole world would come together to stop the spread of a deadly pandemic... just as soon as we all agreed it actually existed...
Nothing can beat the subtlety of Star Wars' title crawl info dump
Star Wars RoS: "The dead speak!"
Me: "oh shit. They still haven't found a decent writer..."
“Somehow, Palpatine has returned!”
Me: ??????
@@ineednochannelyoutube2651 You could see Oscar Isaac dying inside.
You deserved better, Oscar. We all did.
@@Barwasser I honestly liked that line. Yeah it's kinda cheesy but I feel like that's the point of the Star Wars text crawls, it's to make you feel like you're jumping into a pulpy adventure serial.
@@Barwasser I liked Oscar in MoonKnight
I'd love to see you do Terrible Writing Advice: Unreliable Narrator
But then how can we trust what he says? Wait a minute, we hardly trust anything he says normally anyway. Could be difficult to do...
I'm pretty sure EVERY TWA episode already has that covered
@@jennyevef My thoughts exactly 😂
Warhammer 40k moment
The ultimate TWA video. A capstone of his career. We shall never see it.
"I'm excused for bad writing, my genre says so!"
Ah, romance writers
Lmao 😭
"What !? You don't know Generic Rich Straight White Man !? Generic Rich Straight White Man is simply the most successful business man in the city ! You see, in 1973-"
@@APootisBirb Daniel Steele is frothing at the mouth rn
*cough* cyberpunk *cough*
@@spicingdeed8931 I'm not SUPER well versed in the genre, but there is some damn good cyberpunk out there if you look.
I highly recommend Battle Angel Alita it's a great cyberpunk story
It's best to do an anti-infodump: Not telling, and also not showing.
Avoid all information altogether and let the reader figure it out. Then claim all the people's theories and the multiple contradictory interpretations as your plan all along.
So like, FNAF, Elden Ring, and all these other games that basically treat their lore as a community-wide ARG?
@@JoshTigerheart So, like Miraculous Ladybug does?
Ah, the JJ Abrams approach.
@@azurai3934 The mystery box that has nothing in it, you mean?
This is a hot take, but mind, not all hot takes are good takes. This sort of storytelling is what Dark Souls does: it's slightly lazy and more fitting of a game which can be explored manually rather than a story that goes on unstoppingly without anyone explaining to the reader on what on earth the context behind whatever's happening is supposed to be.
"The easy ways of handling exposition are either info dumping, or not bothering to explain anything at all."
Somehow, the RWBY prologue managed to do both.
@@reverie02
In the prologue the writers info dump telling you about the resources in the world instead of the fact that's it's on the brink of war (something you don't find out until season 3.)
The writers actually do a lot of the things that are in this video like info dump on the characters (and the audience) in a classroom setting. It's messy.
@@reverie02
Yep.
@@reverie02 probably not. There's no payoff to anything that's set up.
Which is a shame because the trailers for the show were so dang good.
There were some genuinely really good episodes in season 3, but the show has this habit of being good in short stints making people hope that it might get better, and season 3 is no exception.
There’s a video by Hbomberguy on the show’s disappointing run, it’s really good and quite funny.
Thanks for reminding me to watch "So this is basically RWBY" again.
In some series of novels, namely "The Babysitters' Club", the same information about each of the titular girls is dumped at the beginning of each book, which can be a lot to take in all at once.
Animorphs I think did expositions really well. Every book is someone's first, so there's gotta be an info dump at the beginning every single time, but it's always done so shrewdly and with so much character that it doesn't get tiring even 50+ books in.
I think that's because the series isn't really meant to be chronological like it's not fold in a set the books are just kind of everywhere and there's a thousand of them so it's there so that no matter what book you start with you get all the same background information plus for people like my sister who can't pay attention for their life getting all the same information at the beginning of every single book make sure she might actually remember some of it I personally think it's kind of cool a little annoying but also you know it's a system you can count on you can count on the book to explain everything you've missed since the last one almost you can trust them and it's really cool
Not to mention really irritating for fans of the series - yes, I _know_ who this character is, just let me get to the book.
@@Dudebox64 the clever part is that they do it differently each time. It’s not just the same wall of text, each character puts their own spin on it.
@@Dudebox64 The best part about it is when it finally gets subverted in the final two books. I still get chills whenever I re-read them just because of how significant it is.
"The TWA expanded universe sucks"
"No, just wait until the Greed arc, that's when the story actually kicks off and it gets _really_ good"
It was already pretty funny, but greed made it even better somehow.
The PRIDE arc is the best. then it when down hill from there.
"Gintama gets better after 300 episodes"
"Boruto gets better when we reach the flash forward"
"Dragon Ball Super will get better when its back"
"If you don't like it, why are you watching it?"
"If you didn't watch it, you can't judge it."
Smurt People :]
@@M3rtyville Okay that Gintama one is just flat out wrong. Its fantastic from episode one. It just gets better.
Boruto on the other hand doesn’t… or maybe I’m being bias because it should have never existed.
@@M3rtyville Anime fans are for some reason unable to grasp the idea that there are flaws in their favorite shows. Excessive fanservice? Important to the plot! Unneeded exposition? Absolutely necessary! Pointless and boring filler? It's fun to watch!
"The chief engineer could explain exactly why that's bad" -- reminds me of the Mass Effect quote:
Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?
Serviceman Burnside: Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!
Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!
Serviceman Burnside: Sir! Unless acted upon by an outside force, sir!
Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction! You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
I love this. This is great exposition.
Imagine being killed by a bullet from 10.000 years ago
@@valletas
With an impact energy of a nuclear bomb, i wouldn't even have time to be mad, i would just be impressed
Me2 the 1st time you go to the citadel.
Videogames as a medium have a lot of room for exposition as atmosphere. It's one of the advantages of the format that even other visual mediums (movies, TV, comics) don't get as much mileage out of. (Since a world you can suspend your disbelief in the artificial nature of is a major goal in video games.)
When I wrote my first book, at some point early on I felt I needed the characters to be taught how the aliens learned to travel through space. My early drafts just had the usual paragraph exposition, but I revised it and later on realized I just didn't care. So I made a character who also didn't really care explain it. I got to half ass the explanation and develop a side character. I can save the real explanation for a better time.
"Golly gee, how did the aliens learn to travel through space?"
"Magic. Anyway--"
'Your puny human brain would not comprehend it.'
@@WhiteFangofWar I read that in Brain's voice.
"Bruh, now every single person of that species has to know how every single technology they have work? Is my first thought when i see humans asking them how rocket science work?"
"... Specieist"
-a very tired alien who has been asked how their space travel works one too many times
Can we just appreciate how tight and interesting the exposition was at the start of Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring movie? If you have it, just watch and be impressed by how much important information you get without it overstaying its welcome. I also appreciate how they go back and fill in gaps later when needed instead of the massive info dump courtesy of Gandalf in the book.
Also, shifting the explanation of the Nazghul to Aragorn from Gandalf makes better thematic sense, as Aragorn shares the Ringwraiths' status as a "fallen king".
In the book Gandalf was imparting information to Frodo that was vital to his quest, items that weren't common knowledge in the world and that Frodo was ignorant of. It made sense in the context.
My go to example of good exposition would be Inception, even when it's just infodumping everyone stays in character and the way it actually delivers information still builds on their archs, like in the cafe dream where it actually connects dreambuilding to Ariadne's experience with art and inspiration and Cobb seems to be genuinely fascinated with the power of the mind, or later when Ariadne summons a real-life bit of Paris and gets stabbed by Mal, it highlights her inexperience and idealism while also showing how terrified Cobb is of losing himself to the dream world again.
I don't mind the "info-dumps" in the books that much, since they're always told by a character in a context that makes sense. At the end of it they're just another story, told in the same way Tolkien tells any present events. It's actually a clever way to do non-linear storytelling, and at least for me it's a refreshing contrast against a lot of modern novels which feel like they're trying too hard to be movie scripts.
Helped that it felt more like a short story than an info dump. You got to see this stuff happen instead of just have a character talk about it. It was entertaining, and you got enough background information for the main story.
Call me crazy, but I think Yu-Gi-Oh did a fairly good job at exposition
After all, how else would I know what pot of greed did if no one explained it every 3 episodes?
What's Pot of Greed? I've never heard of that card
What does it do?
@@adamnagar7386 I wish I knew mate.
@@VainerCactus0 It gets you automatically banned from a tournament if you use it in your deck
Somebody refresh my memory, what does it do?
You know what the Sponsorship section needs? An exposition dump to bring the audience up to speed on the TWA universe so far.
I literally binge watched through the sponsorship wars episodes to get up to date xD
This video came out right in the nick of time. Just cut out a page of exposition dedicated to a character that dies in the first chapter, and then put it right back in after watching this video. As a writer, you think you put in a lot of stuff that needs putting out, but of course, the truth is that you're just being way too critical and doubtful about yourself. You can't make mistakes. Everything you put down on the page is obviously meant to stay for good! Thanks for the amazing writing advice.
I've been writing, erasing and rewriting the same novel for years now out of fear of always committing the same mistakes in TWA.
@@Gabriel87100 At some point you just need to bite the damn bullet. Put the story away somewhere and don't touch it. Then write a second one. Then once you have written the second one, come back to the first one.
@@Gabriel87100 In all seriousness, I recommend simply finishing a draft. It feels good to finish, and it's a positive achievement in the long run.
I've been in the same loop as you. When you're writing, erasing, rewriting, erasing, that's usually a sign your story won't ever be made unless you just forget about committing any mistakes, and simply write the story.
There's a reason there's a first draft. It's not there to stay. You'll edit it after you've finished writing it, so instead of worrying about what to edit in the now, just get creative and write down everything in your head, no matter what happens to it later down the line in the next three or so drafts.
@@Gabriel87100 Finish it then edit it. Don’t forget that you don’t need avoid everything that he says, so long as you are writing a fun and interesting story
@@Gabriel87100 Think of these videos more as tools for critical analysis then mine fields to avoid. Sometimes you need to write that information dump in the first draft for yourself. To understand your story. Then you go back and refine. Or get a trusted 2nd or 3rd party to help you find the bits that just aren’t necessary. We all grew up with tropes, we will all write a few. And something isn’t bad just because it’s a trope, it’s really a matter of wielding the right weapons for the right story.
5:06 Imagine a conversation your characters are having in the back seat of a car, in a modern setting, that goes like-
"The traffic light just turned red. *_As you know,_* that means you're supposed to stop until it turns green."
"Isn't it great that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb that gets used so much in our daily lives?"
To make it less clunky, try picturing the guy in the back seat sarcastically yelling at the driver, "Hey! You're supposed to STOP when the light's red!"
**Insert narration describing how the light changes from red to green**
"...There, NOW you can go! Jeez!"
The Thomas Edison bit can come up later, if at all. *It doesn't need to be mentioned if it's not relevant to the story.*
And then they get into an argument about whether or not Edison stole the light bulb from Tesla.
Another Tip: If there's a Thing you just really are excited to explain in some way, you can *add* a plot reason to do so.
But would that include flashbacks and nightmares of a tragic life period in a character who can't seem to move on from her past? The line is really thin for newbies.
At what point it stops being the discovery process of a character's personality and experiences, and becomes an unnecessary flashback holding the plot back?
@@Gabriel87100 If the tragic life period is so interesting, then it's best to write a chapter about it instead of making it a flashback.
@@Gabriel87100 Similar to what Ren said, if it's important enough to show onscreen, find a way to show it--if the entire scene isn't important, give us the important parts. For example, if the backstory that's relevant is "the character has trauma from the war" you could have someone push them for war stories only to have them change the subject, or give them scars/a prosthetic limb and just mention it's from the war & they don't want to talk about it, or say "She woke from another nightmare. She'd been back on the battlefield again--but that was a long time ago" and move on with the story. If it's something like one character's relationship to another, you could have a different character mention "how's your mom?" and the other struggle to say she's dead, or have two characters who're working together secretly make eye contact as they pass by but not say anything, or something like that. Readers aren't stupid, if the outline of the information is there they'll trust you.
One of the best traumatic backstories I've read basically had the reader see all these people that had escaped from this institution and see that they all acted very traumatized--being obsessed with their own strange beliefs, going from calm to violently angry over little things, etc--and when the other characters tried talking about it, they just said they'd rather die than go back. We, the readers, don't really need a clear picture--anything we imagine is harsh enough, and if the author _did_ try to spell it out it'd risk sounding like an overreaction or else sounding too ~edgy~.
i’ve seen a couple fantasy writers handle explaining their world building to the audience by putting in important information between each chapter. it’s usually about a page or two of in-universe documents that tie in nicely with a previous chapter or explain certain parts of the fantasy world’s history. I think it’s really creative and clever, especially if the documents are presented as diary entries or pages from a fake history textbook.
@@wren_. One of the advantages of in-world documents is that they can be unreliable narrators... and that can be played with. The Commissar Ciaphas Cain books play with this, with little blurbs from in-universe documents at the beginning of every chapter... but the authors are usually characters you meet in the larger text, and consequently you sometimes can compare 'reality' with what they wrote, and sometimes you can learn something new about the character because of how what they wrote down.
Mind, the Cain books have 'unreliable narrator' as one of their central hooks. So it's not surprising when the author plays with it.
I like when exposition is told through a first person perspective, where the reader learns with the character, or when the plot is told in passing, like a written report by the main character or for the main character, instead of the character or a third person spouting the information into your face.
I prefer either narration or a character explaining stuff to other characters. Narration I like when it's establishing stuff that "everybody knows," you know, stuff that the characters don't perceive to be interesting or exciting. It doesn't have to be literally known by all of the characters; as long as the character(s) who do know it don't regard it as anything more than background detailing, it counts. I feel that 3rd person narration is the best format for conveying the "this is well known and unexciting" tone. I mean, if the information is so unexciting, there is no motivation for the character that knows to share it in any way, shape, or format. And if a situation comes up where the reader can learn the information firsthand, the scene is going to be hard to understand because the character already knows something the reader does not. So I think narration is best for helping the reader to understand this sort of information without confusing them or making them ask why the character is talking about it in the first place.
On the other hand, if the information is not considered ordinary or boring, then I like to have characters explain it to other characters. A character that just found out stunning news can be acting out of character, prompting the others to ask if they're ill before they manage to explain. Or a character that is normally reserved and distant is discovered to have one particular passionate interest that they nerd out over before realizing they've broken their cover and hastily retreating back into their shell, possibly while grumbling, "Forget the second half of that, it wasn't important anyway." Information that the characters consider to be worth sharing is a goldmine of tools for shaping character dynamics! Ah, I love this kind.
JP fails to bring up a good point about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's exposition- it's Counterexposition. It's not there to explain anything.
It's there to break up the flow of the story so you don't notice the author just pulled a "and that was that. Moving on..." to the plot.
"Turns out that mice creating the Earth as an experiment... ha, irony?... to solve the universe isn't as funny as you thought it'd be? Have a flashback within a Guidebook entry so you can get out of the plot and into another plot you can back out of so you can get into another plot so..."
Me hearing greeds monolog: OH no he's complex and eloquent! He's nothing like the TWA universe at all!
This is usually why I hate prologues.
They're fine when they're done right, but so many writers just treat them as info-dumps with a heavy handed "You'll need to know this for later!" slapped on your cheek.
I have never read a prologue. If it’s important, it should be chapter 1.
@@surprisedchar2458 Exactly. Or just integrate said information through the story as needed.
Author: Hey, remember that one thing I told you 300 pages ago? It's finally important!
A prologue can still be done really well if it shows something important to the narrative that CANNOT be communicated earlier on.
One example (of many) Is the prologue to a Game of Thrones. (minor spoilers, nothing too big.) It follows a patrol of nights watch as they encounter a group of slaughtered wildlings and then die when the bodies become ice zombies. This works for 2 reasons: 1: it accurately conveys the dark, murder-happy, tone of GoT by having all these characters die. and 2: it sets up the dangers Jon Snow faces as when he arrives at the wall, as it would be impossible to convey that other than really awkward exposition.
Moral of the story: it's not bad in conception.
Didn't game of thrones have a prologue with the winter zombies? Think a UA-camr said it was a justified prologue because the zombies wouldn't be known until late in the story by the characters but couldn't just be addressed then without coming out of left field.
Not 100% on this since I've absorbed the info through UA-cam reviewers and not bothered to actually watch it myself.
@@ineednochannelyoutube2651 Oh yeah, they CAN be done well and when they are, epic. The problem is, they often aren't and they end up as info dumps.
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, someone invented an opening exposition dump that fans would riot over us cutting...
Honestly if you're going to info dump, that's really the way to do it-
* Brief summary with minimal proper nouns
* Awesome music to get the audience excited followed by mysterious, peaceful music to let it all sink in
* Gradually display the text in a manner that the audience isn't overwhelmed but feels enough of a sense of urgency to actually read it
I feel like JP's character would be capable of singing the exposition song very well.
Erm… could you tell me more? (I‘ve never heard of this song)
@@ericpraline ua-cam.com/video/5ffLIJrYEJ8/v-deo.html
This is the song about exposition dumping
@@malicekerendu3574 thanks
Hey, that's me, but you already know...
Sorry, but several international treaties prohibit him from singing.
Admittedly, I don't have much experience with writing exposition. However, in that limited experience, I've learned that exposition should be limited to what's necessary. Not quite literally every aspect of their subject.
I heard it once explained that exposition belongs in three categories: necessary, flavor text, and director notes. The necessary is what the reader needs to know about the story. The flavor text are details that flesh the world out, but aren’t necessary. Director’s notes are for the writer only: ie gravity exists or the specific political ins and outs.
Isn't... one of the traits of the SCiP Foundation telling a story via what would typically be understood as exposition dumbs? By adding a trait of horror via removing the humanity from a story, to make it more frightening--with part of it from it a ?subversion? of using exposition
I mean... IIRC, the parts of the site written by Dr. Bright, the author (different from Dr. Bright, the character... which itself is a bit of existential horror), are largely the Tales... but the Tales always struck me as an add on "extra feature"... a sort of bells and whistles... but like, I understand I am suppose to be staunchly against Bells and Whistles... and entirely about being purely Meat and Potatoes and no fun allowed--Fundamentalist Charter Accountancy and all that
Then SCP is the extreme necessary, remember and nowadays, people ignore it but… _context and framing matters,_ and in the SCP documents context, we’re reading confidential that has several details of it inked out and edited out for either _safety reasons or it being only available for high officials_
@@James-oj6ru I’m not the SCP author Bright. Frankly I wouldn’t want to be because he’s a terrible person.
Well… I’m actually not talking to you @@purplehaze2358, specifically talking to Katrina… though why is the author a terrible person? I don’t know much about SCP authors, all and their activities
If you really just want to dump out information, fun facts, tidbits and quirky details of your setting, why not write a fictional travel guide? Like honestly, I've done that myself and it was pretty fun. Called it "Places, people and how to enjoy the former despite the latter" or something similarly snarky if I recall correctly. By far not my greatest literary work, but I have a soft spot for that little booklet.
The best solution is just to make the "exposition dump" an interesting story in itself - LoTR does this really well, the backstory of Sauron and the One Ring is a classic example of telling instead of showing, but I didn't mind because it's literally Epic.
The movie does it as a prologue, which works well because they can put Sauron on screen. From what I remember in the books, by the time Gandalf actually exposits it, there's plenty of buildup and suspense, so it actually feels satisfying to get some answers.
YMMV on every use of this, but stories within a story are a classic literary technique for a reason.
Honestly, if you do this well the main danger is that the myth or legend will be more interesting that the story around it...
I‘ve found that „discovery writing“ (TWA explained the technique in one of his videos, unfortunately, I don’t remember which one) works quite well for this: You make rough outline of the story as well as the setting etc., kind of like a zoomed out map containing only the most essential information, and then, as you‘re writing, lay out the information as you „discover“ it. The more you plan beforehand (i.e. „architect writing“), the harder it might get to distribute the information evenly but still in a way that feels natural. That is, making sure that not every chapter contains the same amount of information, since there is never a continuous stream of knowledge in real live either.
It‘s a bit hard for me to explain, since I didn‘t really „learn“ to write, nor spent time „finding my voice“. I just… started, and kept doing it (after some years of rarely writing at all, except for school and uni purposes), until I was writing nearly every day if possible. I sometimes wonder if it would have been more effective to properly learn some of the techniques, though…
(Sorry, if that was a bit long and rambling.)
Usually I skip the ad segment, but I'm so invested in this narrative that I'm rewatching your backlog
I think a good way to handle exposition is by having it be part of a situation where you expect a lot of info to be dumped. A news broadcast, a mission briefing and watching an in universe advertisement is a good way to do this.
The upside of this is that it both provides information and gives you a shortcut to set the tone almost immediately.
(Opening Crawl)
*Somehow* the evil emperor from the previous trilogy has returned without any foreshadowing or explanation
I like how the beginning sounds even more like a seductive villain speech/explanation than usual. Speaking of supposed villains, my that hydra is quite polite and helpful.
(Also I chuckled at the bit of code at 11:35.)
In crime procedurals, the leader of the protagonists, you know the one, the one with no discernable expertise in forensics or criminology, serves as the stand-in for the audience to the technical aspects explained to them by the experts on the team; delivering the exposition AAAAAAND explaining the purpose of the "leader" trope.
I unironically like info dumps. I specifically love watching lore videos on sifi and fantasy series that i'm interested in but aren't fully sure I want to actually invest in specifically because there convenient info dumps. It's the biggest hurtle I need to overcome in my own writing, avoiding the info dumps I love so much.
Lore videos huh, are you a wh 40k fan by chance?
@@takebacktheholyland9306 Is it that really obvious?
@@ianyoder2537 I mean, when it comes to lore it's the undisputed king by an insane margin.
and because I also enjoy luetin09
@@takebacktheholyland9306 I think it's because 40K has great stories, they just aren't great at telling those stories. Like the war of the beast, the cluster f^ckes that where the siege of varax and the fall of kadia, the entirety of the ultra marines ... even though I hate the ultra marines because of mat ward they've made a descent comeback but I still hate them and think their a perfect example of all of my gripes about 40K.
Well, if you love info dumps, than some others must surely feel the same. If you can do them well, I guess you could just keep them.
Wow, exposition? I love the entirety of Homestuck!
This is part of what makes isekai and hidden world/masquerade stories so popular, I imagine. Good exposition is easy when the protag is a fish out of water, because they will naturally inclined not only to ask questions or need things explained to them, but to have primarily *relevant* information given to them.
Isekai stories are popular because exposition doesn't need to exist, every world functions in the exact same way and thus you can get to the boobs and wish fulfillment instantly
@@PengyDraws Also, most of the time exposition is still dumped on you, when ever there is a chance.
The protaganist beeing unfamiliar with the setting is just an excuse to go on an info dump.
@@PengyDraws writers best tool: Bewbs
@@wulle8509 This is the kind of part I hate about most isekai. The protagonist is lost in an unfamiliar and alien world where everything is different. It's the perfect opportunity to have them explore it and gather exposition in their own way without having it dumped onto them. But the info is still just dumped onto them in the same way with no personality.
@@solus1247 I agree completely, between that and most of them being nothing but a naked power fantasy with nothing else to them, I have kind of had a falling out with the genre.
Having the story start in an actual school provides a convenient way to tie in exposition while having characters debate about that exposition and, as a result, reveal info about themselves. An officer's academy, for example, can send characters on plot advancing missions and provide a setting where characters can ask questions about basic aspects of the world.
I can understand 'not enough exposition' being a problem, but what's worse than that is TOO MUCH.
I can trust a writer to try to give me exposition in small bits until they can be peaced together to something coherent later. That CAN sometimes be annoying, but not as eye-rolling as EVERYTHING being force fed to you all at once and NOTHING in the story making sense unless you have all the back story you weren't even there to see carved into your brain.
It was exactly the problem with the Star Wars Sequal Trilogy.
The Original Trilogy struck a balance between worldbuilding and character-development, the Prequal Trilogy focused a little too much on worldbuilding (which I personally enjoyed, nevertheless), but the Sequal Trilogy DIDN'T have any kind of worldbuilding at all, let alone decent character-development.
Too much is a common complaint, but the process you're describing is actually better than nothing being explained at all, which is usually too little exposition.
If you explain too little it seems like you're just making things up and a helping of deus ex machina. They are both equally bad.
@@pendragon0905 Yeah, this is all an excellent observation of what happened with Star Wars. All of the background information for the sequel trilogy had to be found by using secondary sources (novelization, visual dictionary, etc). The PT had a bit too much, but at least we knew something about the world and whatnot. When VII came out, people thought the Republic planet blown up was Coruscant (though I'm pretty sure the system name was dropped. The incredibly stupid way of them somehow seeing the destruction from across the galaxy didn't help, though. Almost as if new reports didn't exist in the Star Wars galaxy. Plus, acting as if the entire Republic was blown up, even though it was just its capital). It was almost as if they were afraid of saying anything.
Even Speedwagon is Crying
Bit speedwagon is a fun character, which helps a lot to make exposition more fun, by simply have an entertaining character do it. I mean speedwagon is not bad with it.
Also I love how you wrote a mystery intrigue war political thriller comedy with your sponsorships
I remember an author who literally wrote the entire story as an info dump in the first paragraph and then the last seven paragraphs were just filler with the characters doing nothing until it abruptly stops.
Ah, but what about the start of SERENITY? An In-Universe Lecture, inside of a nightmare, inside of a flashback, inside of a holographic archive, inside of an in-dialog-info-dump. Chef's kiss.
I think the worst one I ever read was in Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had an entire overly long chapter describing the layout of Paris streets, block by block, building by building, as viewed from the rooftop of Notre Dame. Not even pointing out this was from Quasimodo's point of view, just a dry text version of a map.
Actually caught this on Nebula first, had to come here to get the ad segment, felt incomplete without it
Remember if you're too low on time to write important info:
"Far too complex for you to understand."
"There's a simple explanation for that"
"A good question for another time"
I actually like reading long and detailed expositions. I also like reading encyclopedias for fun. I want stories with chapter long expositions.
My go to example of good exposition would be Inception, even when it's just infodumping everyone stays in character and the way it actually delivers information still builds on their archs, like in the cafe dream where it actually connects dreambuilding to Ariadne's experience with art and inspiration and Cobb seems to be genuinely fascinated with the power of the mind, or later when Ariadne summons a real-life bit of Paris and gets stabbed by Mal, it highlights her inexperience and idealism while also showing how terrified Cobb is of losing himself to the dream world again.
7:08, so kind of like in Harry Potter. When Snape ambushes Harry with Chekhov’s Gun questions about potions that he knows Harry won’t be able to answer
I unironically love the Sponsorship Wars! I am so excited for new episodes.
China: “wtf is this? You’re stealing our s***.”
Literature: “so?”
*The Great Wall of Exposition*
I remember in Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon, there is this part where several pages are devoted to describing how the main character eats Cap'n Crunch, and the weird thing is it's actually good. While normally you would want to limit the information to whatever is relevant to the plot, it would seem what really matters is that the reader enjoys it.
3:10 my headcanon for why the non-player is now in a completely different fantasy story is because they checked out so much they didn't realise their D&D game had ended.
Always happy to learn how to do things like they did in the bad old days.
I personally like the exposition dump provided in Undertale's intro
Also how the intro ties into the climax and the arguably most emotional moment in the game.
Plus I love the exposition dump in Asgore's home. You still have freedom of movement and can explore the house- a near-exact replica of the home you were taken into at the start of the game- while all the enemies you encountered thus far tell you the story (that undyne was going to tell before she says "SCREW IT", which is also a really great subversion of the sudden info-dump trope) to a really amazing song, giving it a sort of "how far you've come" feel to it while also giving the exposition. The genocide version also does this with a completely different tone and mood, and... -god i just love that game-
I think a good lesson I got was from the first review on my first book. They liked the characters and plot, but felt the magic system wasn't explained. I wanted to go the show don't tell route to have the action be a way to demonstrate how the magic worked. But feel the reviewer was right that my approach left more questions unanswered for how everything worked. Not to mention that Terrible Writing just underlined that I was listing words relating to my magic system without giving an explanation. This kind of got me back to the drawing board so I could find a way to fix the problem without an exposition dump. A lot of people I queried about the dilemma suggested I include a character unfamiliar with the magic system of the world, but I felt that approach was boring and overdone. Then it dawned on me to have a character that was self-taught in magic, that way the protagonist could explain how magic works through what they were doing right and wrong. I personally think it's some of the stronger moments in book 2.
I think its a good idea you came up with. Its hard to find the right balance sometimes, and balance is needed. Sometimes things need to be explained. If magic isn't properly explained AND is used and controlled by the main character(s) it could in worst case feel like there is no real stake because they could just fix everything with magic probably. But in case they aren't as much in control of it, then keeping it much more mysterious and unpredictable may work
"aS yOu KnOw I cOnDuCtEd A rAiD oN tHe GrEaT lIbRaRy WhIcH mOsT sAiD dIdNt EvEn ExIsT"
Robert A Heinlein's juvenile novels from the 60s were actually pretty smart about this. The main plots were pretty concise with minimal harping on tech and lore, but each chapter started with a short anecdote from the world's history usually related to and expounding on an important technology. They were almost entirely irrelevant, but did a lot for the setting's character and you could easily skip them if you wanted to.
I also like how Victor Milan did exposition in his Dinosaur Lords trilogy. Each chapter started with an entry from an in-universe encyclopedia of all known things, and which entry was chosen had to do with the content of the chapter. If a specific dinosaur was going to be appearing, there would usually be an entry describing that dinosaur. If the powers that be appeared, the entry would describe what and who these powerful beings are. If nothing particularly new was happening...time to break out the entries that hint at an overarching history that the readers will find very interesting, though the characters do not and it's not plot-relevant (spoilers! You learn about 2/3 of the way through the first book, from one of these entries, that the human race originally came from Earth but was transported to another planet in the distant past along with 5 selected creatures, which explains why those are the only normal animals to have appeared all story and why the character's ages are given in numbers that are unrealistic from our perspective. 19 being described as a young child, a young adult protagonist being 31 years old...turns out that's because the planet they're on has shorter years.) This is all information that's so well known to the characters that it would never come up in the story itself, so having the information be separate from the story makes perfect sense and may even be called required.
@@sarahvunkannon7336 Interesting
If you ever feel like your exposition is a little too much, just add a love triangle to satisfy the viewer.
A transsexual love triangle. Involving preteen children. For Pride Month.
"As you know" is such a weird convention. You're basically lampshading how the characters have no reason to be mentioning that fact except to inform the audience, as if that somehow makes it better.
I think one way you could solve it is by having the protagonist explain whatever the "as you know" part is. That way it would demonstrate their keen knowledge and intelligence about X subject
I’ve been a self-proclaimed writer for over a year now (though I only recently got good at it so I’m still basically a novice). How I’m gonna handle exposition is as follows:
Main character spent their formative years in a dystopian land. In other words, not knowing anything about the outside world. This means they will ask questions that the reader may also have (but I’m hopefully gonna keep it limited to relevant things, not like “oh when was Rodrick Ballscratcher the Third’s outdoor lavatory built?”).
Second book sees a different protagonist exploring different lands, a perfect opportunity for world building with some lore thrown in every so often.
It’s gonna be multiple books long, assuming I actually finish any. (Bloody procrastination). So no need to rush through exposition or condense everything into one or two books.
Plenty of the lore will tie in to the main focus, depending on what focus there currently is (not every last bit, but on occasion. Maybe “plenty” is an exaggeration).
To top it all off, I have a glossary of sorts for jotting down notes and ideas. If released publicly, it would be pretty much ideal for those that want *all* the information. (The damn file got corrupted but thankfully I remember most of the stuff in it).
Edit: Nearly forgot to mention that I made a historical timeline, meaning there’s room for prequels and spin-offs. That opens the door to having the exposition being spread out. In other words, the main series has the compulsory exposition while the spin-offs provide extra historical exposition.
It’s a good day when TWA uploads a video, fill with golden advice that will tell me what I already know and stroke my ever growing ego… I’m kidding of course.
Thanks for the new video.
My favorite type of exposition is the kind where crappy fangame writers try to cram entire stories into cutscenes with textboxes designed for a sentence at most!
i love this channel.
i have just started to make a webcomic too, so i will finally be able to apply everything i learned here!
Tell me when you get the first chapter posted
@@cara-seyun sure!
@@cara-seyun Second that idea.
I would love if in a scifi setting someone has to skim an owners manual to see how the FTL engines work for repairs, gives hints to how all this tech works while presenting an obstacle to the character to work with. It can be hard to introduce information or lore organically besides a lecture, or even have fun with the lecture, but that does take effort. "As you know Bob," is a nice way to spot lazy writing sometimes but you do need to walk your characters and audience through a plan or situation somehow, it's just better if they're both discussing the issue rather than one lecturing down with some new info added.
Animated series dumping info is either a product of comics, where huge lines of text and thought explaining what's going on take seconds to read but minutes to play out and maybe half a week to animate. Or it's just a trope that your unique bad guy needs to have their power explained before it's beaten, heck Bond villains won't shut up about their plans and how their evil machine works and how their laser piranhas will eat you in such a way to maximize suffering, only to leave minutes before the hero breaks free.
I'm personally working on a book that will never be finished and I have a chapter dedicated to a dream of background info, it removes the character from the current story but I suppose it moves them to new information to the audience.
I’m probably in the minority here, but I genuinely love it when the technology/magic/etc. is never fully spelled out. I love piecing together how the spaceships work or what is and isn’t possible with magic. It makes me feel smart (as long as the author doesn’t break their own rules later on).
Honestly I hope the anime exposition trope never goes away, because there’s something about it that just genuinely excites me when characters analyze seconds-long actions in battle with minutes of dialogue. By all common sense that should make it boring, but somehow it’s interesting and hype for me instead.
@@cara-seyun also good, don't just give the full run down at once but give hints or relevant info slowly. part of why a dump is so bad is it's as much info as possible in a big chunk without the characters really involved in their thoughts with it
Unironically I actually REALLY LIKE, even LOVE infodumps. I mean lore, and worldbuilding is always the most interesting part to me, so the infodumbs are interesting... kinda by it's very nature really(and that's not an easy task to make them not be). It's what I watch or read things for. The character arc and all the other stuff like that? Not nearly that interesting and they pretty much become interesting BECAUSE of their relevance to the universe - so to the lore and worldbuilding.
Actually for a few years already I keep myself more to fandom-based literature (aka fanfictions) and even though they are more likely to have more exposition... I still more often than not find the exposition to be too small, too little or in other ways just lacking. Sprinkling exposition little by little throughout the story not only won't always make sense (as not always there is place for it in given scene) but also hardly ever would be satisfying, because that way it usually won't be much of it. It is also kind the reason why I like multiverses (aka crossovers) as they give so many opportunity to explore the lore and worldbuilding. Or a characters which just enter the wide big world not knowing much about it yet and thus the reader can learn about world with them.
And teasing little details... for most of the time is more annoying than fun(and it never would actually tell more than "10 page essay on the subject". Unless the essay is EXTREMELY bad). Though I'm myself kinda guilty of that... and as much as I agree exposition should drive narrative stakes and tension (which I of course try to do), I can't exaclty agree about the immersion part. I mean exposition is main thing that make immersion even possible, it's key factor for that. That how it's delivered (and how well it is made to be part of the story) does matter of course, but it has to be really bad (on the level that I think is VERY HARD to achieve not on purpose) to really harm immersion instead of helping it.
My favorite exposition dumps are definitely when anime geniuses explain their plan like in Death Note, Code Geass or something like The Matrix which does exposition in action
You can make a fun character do the exposition, or a smartass bragging about how much they know about history.
Or a bard and songs and poetry. In the background.
Media? Journals? Hitchikers guide even has the guide do it.
Or just talk and yeah have a knowitall or bard annoyingly brag how much they know about xy. Or a shady charactercif its a person new telling them to just them and doing telling their story.
Or in dialogue between characters spread over the time. And a know it all still could be the cathalyst to get that.
And flashbacks are fine i think, just it should have emotional elements related to characters too
I was thinking of writing a novel based on Monster Hunter, and have the protagonist be a hardcore fan of the franchise from our world who gets transported to the Monster Hunter world and becomes a hunter.
If I ever manage to write my story, there won't be any exposition at the beginning - straight into action, as if it's a pretty normal thing in that world. However, because the premise is that the protagonist is a new recruit and has to be taught the ways of the organization, the exposition will be done in form of teaching by his mentor and maybe (when the time comes) through some research in the archives.
In my opinion, the laziest way to deliver exposition is by using the phrase "As You Know." It's clearly only done for the audience's benefit, and the character typically knows this information well, and doesn't need to be retold in a clumsy, forced way.
Could work if it's done in a situation where the character DOESN'T know and it's assumed that they do. This was done pretty good in the original Injustice game when Aquaman was impersonating his alternate universe self.
I've never seen ''as you know'' being used to start exposition, but that indeed sounds very annoying.
"As you know" is the cardinal sin of writing exposition.
Never seen it but somehow I feel it's really shit 90% of the times
@@legrandliseurtri7495 I think the Avatar The Last Airbender movie did it every ten minutes, iirc. Other than that, I don't think I've seen it in anything competent.
Best method, NO exposition! Not even the exposition that the audience really needs to know, like "What is the magic system like?" "Who wants the protagonist dead?" "What the fuck is a semblance?" Who cares! they can all just get on with it!
5 kingdoms?
@@cara-seyun I haven't read 5 kingdoms, but I was referencing the web sieres/anime RWBY, which suffers from some of the worst exposition delivery I have ever seen. (I was trying to explain my reference to what a semblance is when I realized that is didn't know because the show did such a terrible job explaining it to me. Basically, what if the word bending was never said in Avatar: the Last Airbender until episode 14, but everybody was using it in-between episodes 1-14. That bad. They also use the TWA recommended strategy of putting the audience through a school lecture with the characters to explain it to them in the worst way possible.)
@@ineednochannelyoutube2651 ah, 5 kingdoms also has semblances, and they are similarly poorly explained (especially since the book was made for 10-13 year olds)
I love world building that runs in the background, and then an interesting character pops up because of the background noise. That's why I'm still into the World Keeper series.
I learned a fact about ants! :D. Thanks for the exposition title crawl!
My favorite example of "as you know bob" exposition came in DBS Broly when Brolys dad was explaining his transformation to Freza, except it was more of an, "I don't know Bob, but" then proceeded to explain exactly what the transformation was while also listing its strengths and drawbacks despite it being literally the first time he witnessed it
11 minutes and 7 seconds of an irrelevant infodump for a story to finally begin, what a pro.
The one series i know that made deliberatly dry exposition awesome was log horizon as learning was kinda the main characters whole stick. He is a strategist, someone who is weak and who found his only real strength is to support others. Even the "as you know" trope was turned on its head as one character thought shiroe knew the basics alreadywhile the guy actually was absolutely clueless and had to actually get the other to monologue. The presentation, atmosphere and music helped
"Stay a while and listen"
You got me right there 😅🤦♂️
As an anime fan, I've seen the action-pausing info dump too many times.
Want to know who's good at visual exposition? Robert Zemeckis. Particularly with Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Rising of the Shield Hero is the most recent anime (that I watched) where this happens. It may be a battle between powerful characters or some giant monster trying to eat everyone, but the infodump through DIALOGUE completely haults the enemies, it's amazing
Info dumps, harem shit, and chosen one tropes make me nope out of so many anime series halfway through the first episode.
I think part of that comes from the awkwardness of adapting a manga into an anime. You never really appreciate how a line said mid-attack should take ten seconds until it actually does.
@@battlesheep2552
Ah, yes. The Talking is a Free Action trope.
If there wasn't any it would just be mindless violence and you wouldn't get any backstory.
As a dungeon master i gave up on heavy lore alterations because it does in fact have to be exposited and no the players will not read a primer
I've been looking forward to this subject. Bad use of exposition is one of the number one complaints in my writer's group.
I just wrote a terribly long scene of info dumping that was stupendously long and more boring than ever.....dialogue spanning near seven comic pages with near entire paragraphs for word balloons.
Thanks to this video, I have come up with a replacement that weaves that information into a more tense scene instead, and shortens it to keep the pacing.
Thank you for this video!
Info dumping an info dump. I can dig it
How about a video on transitions? I’ve seen some writers swiftly transition past simple, mundane scenes that don’t add to the story, and I’ve seen others play out every detail of a scene that doesn’t get us anywhere except to flow directly into another scene that doesn’t get us anywhere. *How am I supposed to know which is better?!*
I choose to believe the fact that this video came out just a month after the re-release of Chrono Cross is merely a coincidence. Surely.
I was thinking recently of a variation of this issue: info-dumping all meaningful characters in the first chapter (some of which don't show up again until dozens of pages later). You meet like 15 characters in 5-10 pages, who all have various often complex interrelations and get so little space devoted to them (mostly just a short description and no actual story action) that they don't make an impression at all. When you try to read on, you just can't remember them or what little characterization they did get, so you have to reread the first chapter again to find out who they actually are. Or you literally need to create a social relations web or genealogy to clear it up.
Don’t forget the last minute infodump. Your heroes about to reach their goal and there are still unresolved plot threads? Well, just dump a whole 3 course meal of info on them at the last moment
Please do one about editing first drafts or graphic novel writing
You can also do it the Nolan way and have Michael Caine serve as the charming exposition dumper in all of your movies.
Thanks to Filmento all I hear during exposition is Sans talking
Man the beginning of this was a a massive call out! I had a big problem with giving too much unimportant information. I’m still working on getting rid of it all.
Tired of exposition dumps completely messing up the flow of the story? Just remove all the exposition and put it in a big book of info dump completey separate from the source material! It's the best of both extremes!
@@reverie02 ok, ok, but that enables a story that newcomers would not understand due to complete lack of exposition, and they only way they can know is trhough this "big book of infodump" that is ALL exposition and nothing else, like a history textbook
@@reverie02 Not necessarily, take Drakengard 3, for example. Takes place in an unfamiliar setting with barely any knowledge of the protagonist's past, she's just on a quest to kill her sisters, why? The game ends, and ESSENTIAL information about the protagonist's past that could make the ending even more emotional and memorable is locked away in a series of novels no one reads and are ridiculously hard to come by like so many Japanese works.
And don't even get me started on Nier's timeline, which is fundamentally connected to Drakengard's, yet you can only know about through online fan-wikis rather than in the games.
Same happens with Ace Combat, specially the PlayStation 2-era ones.
One of my best friends loves Dragon Ball. I kinda get it. But yeah I hear you! Every fight they have to cut away to explain why this Kamakamaha is 3 levels more powerful than the last one.
As an addendum. You gotta give respect to Final Fantasy X and X-2 for Maechen! I tried looking it up but was too lazy to push it, but I feel like he's easily got 2 hours of WORTHLESS exposition between the two games.
Love Maechen. it's good that he's completely optional for repeat playthroughs but I find myself saying yes anyway just to listen to that soothing voice, and he's the only one who's been around long enough to have an idea of what really created Sin.
I think that exposition dumping can work if front loaded sometimes. I mean using anime as an example, to explain the world of my hero academia at the beginning of the series help set the stage. But doesn't disclose every single thing so there's still a mystery and expectation for further growth. I will admit it is annoying when any anime stops in the middle of a fight scene to explain things, such as dragon Ball, or any anime where the main character has to have a flashback to get a power boost, my hero academia also does this. Or even something as fantastic as fireforce, it does kind of ruin the pacing when it is introduced during an intense scene as opposed to outside of it
Yours are some of the videos on this platfrom!
Am just astounded that this man made sponsorships not only watchable,,, but enjoyable??? WITH PLOT???
I knowww this isn't a new thing but the writing seems to improve and I'm just here to appreciate it.
LEGIT QUESTION: Why stop here?
Even if we ignore 'Hello Future Me' being famous for being another Version of JP,
theres at least that 1 video that is the perfect Spiritual-Sibling to this one here:
Hbomberguys Video about RWBY.
It mentions many of the same Problems but explains them with different Jokes and other Humor
and thats not even all to say. Natural Exposition is a whole Segment in said video.
And you know who else criticized with Humor? Jay Exci and Krimson Rogue.
Pretty sure all the comment of professor exposition comes from the first few Harry Potter books
Too bad the later books forgot that pay off comes from set up
It occurs to me that this might be the only UA-cam channel where people might actually SKIP THE VIDEO to WATCH THE ADS!
Do you know the REAL irony about this entire UA-cam channel? Is that almost all of its videos have really clever jokes, with incredible writing and pacing while promoting and teaching us about terrible writing advices.
Great work CJ. *Task failed successfully*
Fucking hypocrite. J.P. should practice what he preaches. How am I supposed to take his advice seriously?
That's literally the joke bruh...
@@lordanubis1458 Dude, I mean, UGH. J.P. shills for all this terrible writing advice, making videos for laughs, but he doesn’t use a single piece of the advice he gives. Well you know what? If the hypocrite doesn’t take the advice in the videos, then neither will I.
I think it’s funny because potentially the peak of English literature, Lord of The Rings, has so much fucking exposition, especially in the beginning, and it’s still great.
You make good points. But my favourite thing as a reader is when there's a time jump in the beginning of a chapter to 5 years in the future, where the main character ponders the event 4 years and 12 months ago and *suprise flashback...*
I'm a constant culprit of the exposition dump in my writing and dnd homebrews, and this video actually helped me out. I feel inspired to actually make something again!