I suppose it's about subtlety, about motivating it (*why* are they saying this now, to this person), and about what they're trying to achieve by saying it.

1. Don't handle it through dialogue. Look at the best procedural TV shows (current crop out of the UK) and the best film writing. Analyze how little exposition there is. Read for how much of the information is shown vs told. Pay attention to how little is spoon-fed to the viewers. Consider if your audience needs to know this information at all, if they need to know it on page one, and if one of your characters can discover it through action rather than dialogue. 2. Bury it in conflict. Exposition dumps are boring. But what if a character *doesn't* want to tell something? Now we've got conflict and that scene got more interesting. 3. Bury it in business. Talking heads are boring. What if your characters are in a shoot-out, delivering a pre-term baby, and/or are under siege from a team of aggressive, proselytizing evangelists--that scene got a little more interesting. Hmm. Currently under siege here from a team of aggressive, property-showing real estate agents and my husband is pulling the laptop out of my hands and shooing me out the door. Will resume when we clear the infestation.

Sorry I am a little late in reading this post, but it reminded me of a tip I read on Screenwriting Tips, You Hack by Xander Bennett just the other day: How to write exposition scenes: try to think of them as anything other than “explaining”. Possible alternatives include arguing, convincing, berating, concealing or self-aggrandizing.

I have been reading some great articles about improv today and when I read this article by Tim Hines, Don’t Ask Questions = Don’t Be Surprised it got me thinking about exposition. I realize that exposition and questions both work very differently in screenplays than in improv--but what struck me was how, in the example Hines uses, a "statement" that might feel like exposition if it were in a screenplay works in improv when it goes on to be justified by the rest of the scene members: they accept it and build on it. I think there's something important going on there that's relevant to screenplay exposition and I can't quite put my finger on it. While I ruminate, I wanted to share the link in case it sparks ideas for anyone else. (The whole blog is very good if you're interested in improv or comedy.)

In the David Hare BAFTA guru interview, which has had some discussion here before, Hare makes an interesting point about "telling not showing". (Before the chorus of kneejerk reactions begins, keep in mind that Hare was speaking to a sophisticated and intelligent audience and wasn't making a presentation of paint-by-numbers advice to aspiring writers.) > [Clip from Citizen Kane (1941),in which Mr Bernstein recalls an attractive woman he saw many years ago to Mr Thompson.] > "This was Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, the most visually dazzling debut by a filmmaker ever and yet, what do we remember from that film? What’s the most famous scene in that film? The most famous scene in that film is a speech, and that is the origin of my belief which is ‘Tell, don’t show’. All film students are taught ‘Show, don’t tell’ and they’re taught that film is a visual medium. Neither thing is true and they are the fundamentals on which film schools operate. > "You notice Orson Welles – fond of an image – does not feel it necessary to move off Bernstein while he recounts this story and show us a girl in flashback with a parasol, standing on a jetty and moving in slow motion and turning with a vapid look on her face as if she was in a hair commercial. Somehow, Orson Welles trusts that the speech will do what he wants it to do. If you notice, what’s extraordinary about it is that it’s a ravishing visual image. If you look at the way that image is composed he’s got the fire on one side, the rain coming down on the other, and the thunder above, so it’s not as if it’s visually dead. On the contrary it’s an extraordinary image of an old man who is trying to keep himself warm in the rain and by charging the present picture with that he allows the speech to do its work." (bolding added) In this way it strikes me that in this example exposition is similar to voiceover: compelling, dramatic, thematically-relevant visuals that contrast the dialogue are one way to add conflict and drama in a subtle and sophisticated way. "Charge the present picture" is a good watchword for telling scenes.