Okay guys! Welcome to the second post of the Secrets of Plot series. We’re going to start right into the plot by starting with the first section of plot. We’re going to talk about the Exposition. So here we go!
Secrets of Plot: The Exposition Part 1
The Exposition. The Exposition of your story is the Introduction. But what kind of introduction? It’s an introduction to a lot of things. It’s an introduction of your story, of your characters, or your setting and of your writing style. Yep, you read that right. Your writing style. But we’ll talk about that later. But first let me pose a question.
When you, being a reader for a moment and not a writer, open the first page of a book what do you look for? How long do you read before you decide that the story’s not worth your time? Or how long do you read before you decide that you have to finish the story?
The point of the beginning of your novel is to hook your reader. If you haven’t hooked your reader, they aren’t going to keep reading. It doesn’t matter how cool the middle is or how profound the ending. If your book doesn’t start right, then no one is going to read it. So not only do you need to introduce the story, characters, setting and your writing style but you also need to make it sound interesting or no one’s going to read. (Unless you get readers who are like me who have more faith in boring authors and give every book 5 chapters or 80 pages, whichever comes first).
So, for this post we are going to talk about the character and the setting. (The next one or the next couple will address the writing style and the story). Both of these kind-of go together when you introduce the story. When you introduce your character and your setting you need to make it interesting. But do not use character self-introductions. No one wants to read a character self-introduction. There are two reasons you shouldn’t do this. First, (and the second most important) is that you use too many words. I once had an English teacher who gave me some of the best writing advice. (It was about essays but, hey, it works). She always said, “Same meaning, less words, more impact.” When a character introduces themselves, it isn’t always as fun. And they use a lot of unnecessary word count. Second, when a character does a self-introduction the whole story stops. You are narrating outside of the usual story flow and so the story flow has to stop. Here’s a bad example of an introduction using a character self-introduction.
Something hit me in the back of the head. I turned around to see Tom laughing, surrounded by acorns that had fallen off of the nearby tree. I stuck my hands on my hips.
“Rude!” I yelled at him
“Funny!” He yelled back as he ran past me and towards the school building.
I rolled my eyes. Ugh. Tom is so annoying. He’s too tall, he’s too strong and he’s too blonde. I on the other hand was a beautiful mixture of tan skin, dark auburn hair and striking green eyes. When I smiled I had small dimples that I thought were very cute. My clothes were always stylish. I looked down at my skinny jeans, band shirt and converse. Oh yeah. Always stylish. There were parts of me I didn’t like. My too long, too sharp nose. The freckles on the top of my nose and along the top of my cheek bones. My eyes drooped too much in the corners and my eyebrows never cooperated with my makeup. I shook my head, lifting myself out of my reverie.
That wasn’t super interesting now was it? She used a lot of unnecessary words and a long paragraph and the story kind of stopped when she did a character self-introduction. We were learning that she was going to school. We learned that she didn’t like Tom. We learned what Tom’s personality was like and what he looked like. But we didn’t need all the detail that she gave us about herself. We didn’t really need to know all of that at once. It could have been learned throughout the beginning of the story. Here’s a better example of character introduction in the exposition.
I looked up at the azure sky with the wispy white clouds floating across it. Autumn was my favorite time of the year. The leaves matched my auburn hair and my skin that had become a little darker than I liked over the summer started to mellow back out into a nice tan. I was so busy looking up at the sky that I missed the acorns scattered across the ground. I stumbled, catching a glimpse of my black converse as I fell, my body meeting the ground with a small thump. I didn’t have enough weight with my 4 feet 9-inch frame to make much more of a noise with my landing. I pushed myself up grumbling. I glanced down at my green skinny jeans and purple band shirt and groaned. A small berry had been squished onto my shirt. Great. My stylish outfit had been ruined.
Something hit me in the back of the head. I turned around to see Tom laughing, surrounded by the acorns I had tripped on.
“Rude!” I yelled at him.
He ran past me still laughing, his slightly longer blonde hair whipping in the air as he ran past. I would have grabbed a length of hair and yanked on it for revenge, but he was too tall. I couldn’t even reach his shoulder, much less his hair. Quarterbacks are so annoying.
“Funny!” He yelled over his shoulder as he reached the parking lot and jogged his way up the front steps. I sighed, my autumn day already not going how I wanted it to, and followed him into my fourth week of senior year.
Better right? We know almost the same things about both of the characters as the first one, but we didn’t have a character self-introduction. The story continued to move along, and you even got a few more details about the setting of the story. When your character is introduced properly it is hard not to introduce the setting. If your character isn’t talking about themselves what else do they have to talk about except their five senses? Their five senses reveal the setting to the reader because they weren’t doing the self-introduction. A reader should understand the setting if they’re going to read any further. Is the second passage you learn that the setting is fall and the senior year of high school. Of course, your setting might change throughout the story but it’s still important to establish a setting in the first part so that when you change the setting it’s not as confusing for your reader. For example, if you were writing a fantasy novel and your setting is a certain calendar date or holiday or is in a specific city then those are things that you should describe in your exposition. Setting is just as important as character in the exposition of a novel.
But that’s all I have for this week’s post. Next week I will be introducing how to write introduce the story and your writing style in the exposition. (Or it might be split into two posts. We’ll see.) But that’s all I’ve got. So, stick around for next week guys!
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!