Dispatch from The Quest: Brandon Cohen
Last week as we did here on GITS, the Quest writers focused on the subject of Dialogue. Today’s dispatch: Brandon Cohen reflects on the dreaded necessity of writing exposition:
Exposition might be the hardest part of writing for me. Ya see, I grew up in NYC, and have a twin sister and a younger brother, and my one true love alludes me. SEE — that was me trying to write exposition, and it was horrible! It had nothing to do with what I was talking about, and completely took you out of what I was trying to say. Anyway, exposition is like if you’re about to tell your friend the most amazing anecdote ever, but before you can get into the story that’s going to blow them away, you have to bore them with the backgrounds of all the pertinent people so that it’ll make sense. The set up isn’t fun; let’s get to the story (or go into the story as Scott would say) !
The biggest eye roll moments I have when watching TV or movies is lazy exposition. Especially in television, it seems like all too often it’s something that is shoehorned in at the last moment. “Oh shit, people won’t understand that he’s sullenly eating dinner with his aunt and uncle because his parents were killed five years ago in the big factory accident!” Couple quick key strokes in Final Draft and then the scene opens with the uncle saying — “Dammit, Billy. You won’t be able to bring them back by moping over your meatloaf. The factory accident was over five years ago! They’re both dead — your parents that is, both mom and dad in the same factory accident…well, you know how it happened, not sure why I’m reminding you — what I’m saying is, you gotta move on!” The viewer then leans in and sarcastically whispers to his girlfriend, “I think his parents are dead!” They’re mocking your writing!
Most of the time it’s not that blatant, but for a lot of shows (especially crime shows for some reason) that’s not too far off. People watch a movie or a TV show to escape, and I feel like as a writer, when you include dialogue like this in your story, it immediately just snaps people out of it and reminds them that they’re watching actors.
I always find myself impressed when writers are able to throw in a lot of exposition without it being blatantly obvious. The best way to do that, as we learned last week in the Quest, is through clever dialogue. It’s possible to get Billy’s backstory across without dialogue, but I think that an even cheesier method than shlocky dialogue is just a shot of Billy in his room with a newspaper clipping dated five years ago with the headline “Billy’s Parents Dead in Horrible Factory Accident” as Billy sheds a single tear Native-American-seeing-trash-style.
I understand the desire to just pack the exposition in as quickly as possible to get it over with so you can get to the real meat of your story, but the audience will thank you if you make them work for it a little bit. Not only will it keep them in your story world, but it just sounds more realistic. Realism was another main focal point of our dialogue discussion last week. The audience will suspend disbelief that aliens have come down to Earth to conquer us and use our blood for fuel, but as soon as the main character starts expounding about how this fight means so much to them because their youngest son died because of a blood disorder, the audience is going to be like “whoa whoa whoa, what kinda bullshit is this?”
Real people don’t speak in an expositional manner, but if you can present it in a way that doesn’t feel expositional, it will keep the audience engaged in the real story you’re trying to tell. How you actually do that is something I’m still trying to figure out myself.
I heard a saying many years ago in Hollywood: “Exposition equals death.” How often have we read or seen scenes that slow everything down to a standstill because it is two heads talking, conveying information to each other. Boring. And yet our stories require a certain amount of data, facts, backstory, etc. This is such a vexing issue, I created a 1-week Craft course called Handling Exposition. It’s a subject I will be working on with the Questers throughout the duration of our time together.
Tomorrow: Another dispatch from The Quest.
About Brandon: NYC native, fan of all things comedy. I cry every time I watch Big Fish, Forrest Gump and Marley & Me. Don’t judge me. Twitter: @brandandco.
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