A Brief Time of History

Exposition lays out all the groundwork in a novel that the reader cannot experience directly. Description provides those images and sensations that can be sense or felt, completing a mental picture of the setting and the characters. Dialog helps shape character through verbal interaction, and informs the reader at the same time that it moves action forward. Exposition fills in the gaps left by relying on purely observable description and involves the reader more intimately with the source material. Properly employed exposition addresses history, functionality, or purpose with information the reader needs but cannot witness or easily deduce. It may be presented in dialog, descriptively, or in narrative passages. read more

Scene It

Action in a novel happens through dialog, description, and exposition. Dialog is the beating emotional heart of your characters, but it cannot stand alone; dialog needs setting and motion in order to give it meaning. Setting the scene needs to be high on a writer’s priority list in order to give his characters a place to act and emote. Description treats the current setting of the story, detailing those persons, places, and things around which the action is currently taking place and often are performing those actions themselve. Exposition provides the reader with information that cannot be observed, or explicitly lays out information that must be deduced. Description and exposition provide the foundation for dialog, and we will treat all three this week. read more