Daily Dialogue theme next week: Great exposition

Consider it a yin / yang thing. Teddy Pasternak had this idea:

Last week it was non-verbal ‘dialogue’, this week it was terrible exposition. How about we continue the theme and do Good Exposition next week? Personally, I’ve learned a lot these two weeks so I would happily see more on the same topic.

Great idea. I teach a course on Handling Exposition and in it, we talk about exposition as Fascination, Mystery, Revelation, and ways to convey it through Conflict, Action, and Humor. Yes, there are things you can do to create good exposition and not just dump facts:

This week, let’s put the spotlight on great examples of exposition in movies and see what we can learn. You know the drill:

* Copy/paste dialogue from IMDB Quotes.

* Include a URL for an accompanying video clip [if you can find it] from MovieClips or YouTube.

Exposition is a necessary evil as it’s impossible to tell a story without providing setting, information, and data, but it’s always a challenge how to do that in a way that doesn’t kill the drama or better yet contributes to the entertainment of our stories.

Your suggestions for great exposition. See you in comments!

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