Flying Lesson #3 ~ Pt. 1
Exclusive Writing Lab post on exposition. What is it...exactly?
We’ve taken a long hard look at scene—the key to the castle, the mother of all teachings, the core of good story—and I pray you practice this amazing tool and grow into its many possibilities. You will figure it out but you have to keep at it.
Now, let’s talk exposition, also known as telling, also known as summary:
Summary affords us the fictional time to be brought up to speed. It gives us a block of necessary information that influences the scene we are about to see…Summary can take on blocks of time, years, weeks, an hour, or a day…and gives a broad (though pertinent) overview of the history of the characters.
~ On Writing Short Stories, edited by Tom Bailey
It was Eudora Welty who said, “…time must move through a readers mind.” By this, she meant “write scene.”
Summary is how to make a very particular moment in time make more sense. Summary then is always and ever more scene.
“Sometimes, in order to fully understand characters’ actions and emotions or the unfolding of events, we need information that doesn’t arise naturally within a scene…We might not know what attitude to take toward what is happening in a scene if we don’t have the context…[But] Background summary stops the flow of ongoing narrative just as flashbacks slow down scenes. Therefore, you have to have good reasons for including it. It has to be doing heavy lifting for you; all the better if it does more than one thing.”
~ Showing and Telling, by Laurie Alberts
An industrious writer who studied with me for years pulled together these teachings from Albert’s book. Over the years I’ve seen no reason to step outside the offering (or reinvent her hard work). I have a more extensive handout on the topic, which I use in the Scene vs. Exposition class at Blackbird, but for our purposes, the below lists will suffice.
Uses of Summary:
Summary can be skillfully used to…
1. Provide additional information: background, important themes, parallels, contrasts, expectations, suspense, physical and emotional landscape.
2. Handle time
Compressed time
General time
Repeated time
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