[…] I just started teaching my Handling Exposition class and we’re already into some fascinating discussions. For example in Lecture 1, I excerpted content from an infamous memo David Mamet sent to writers on the TV series “The Unit” back in 2005. You can read the entire memo from my post dated March 24, 2010 and a second post here taking on the question “Is any exposition scene a ‘crock of sh*t’”? This resulted in a forum chat in my class about the very nature of exposition. Here is a post I uploaded to the …read more […]

Pixar's "Up" comes to my mind, where a lot of exposition is handled in a wonderful but short montage. We get to know Carl and Ellie's life in less than five minutes! It's done visually and. Videogame influence: not so sure about it. It depends on the genre. I agree that most action games (e.g. Halo, Half-Life) have very thin narratives that are an excuse so you can get into action. Other games like Metal Gear have more complex narrative. But there are games like RPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy series) that are heavy on plot, subplots and characters. Yes, there are quests but the narrative alone accounts for 3 or 4 hours. I would think of other influences: most reality TV spends seconds on character exposition and goes directly to the episode's conflict, we get to know the exposition through the episode and even the season or series. I think they want to make it easy for newcomers catching the show in later episodes. And I think it has also influenced some TV series that want to use a similar approach (Modern Family, The Shield)

While working on an outline this morning, I was thinking: it's almost impossible to delay the Call To Action until near the end of the first act now. Audiences want to see the character in action within the first ten minutes - and that inevitably leads to the compression of the exposition that used to sit comfortably in the first act...

Very interesting about the audience not minding, and in fact craving the ambiguity of less exposition. True Detective is an excellent example - although its also an exceptional example due to the 180-page first act! P.S. Nic Pizzolatto: what an interview that would be!

There are plenty of TV shows, particularly procedurals, where exposition scenes are an inherent part of the show & story telling. For instance: the CSI shows, Burn Notice, Grey's Anatomy, Suits, White Collar... imho, you have to strike a balance, but audiences *love* to be taught cool stuff.

One of the things I'm pressed about when having my scripts critiqued by peers these days is my lack of (added) information. They say, "I want to know more about this character, where she came from, maybe some flashbacks --" And that's when I go, "Why?" You know what you need to know to orient you in the present. Do you just want to know about this character's whole backstory out of sheer curiosity? Would knowing whether or not Anton Chigurgh had a mother or a girlfriend make you enjoy his character any more? What makes Hannibal Lecter a great character is what we *don't* know about him. We know what we need to: 1) He's highly intelligent, cunning, manipulative 2) He used to be a psychiatrist and still feels the need to probe and provoke other humans 3) He's insane and 4) He wants to escape. As the screen legend of Lecter grew, more details about his life were trotted out that, for me, only diminished his power. I have to argue that for every person who says, "I don't need to know how the Joker got to the be the Joker; I just want to see what this crazy SOB's going to do next," there are several others who say, "I really wish Nolan had gone into the Joker's backstory a lot more -- would've made the movie better for me." There are viewers *and* writers who believe in the latter, which is why Mamet had to write that memo in the first place.

[…] Just in general, I think modern audiences need less exposition than they used to. We see this with… […]

Hi. It just hit me... maybe the audiences taste for less exposition wasn't shaped by videogames or reality TV. What if we consider advertising? Compare ads from the 80's, 90's to the ones we watch on TV right now. They have become faster in rhythm, both in cutting and storytelling. And they are much more complex than twenty years ago. I would say that we are able to accept less exposition because we are getting used to small 15 or 30 second narrative pieces: ads. What do you think about it?