Screenwriting Lessons: “The Social Network” — Part 5: Handling Exposition
[Originally posted February 18, 2011]
As I watched The King’s Speech recently, I was struck by how many screenwriting lessons could be gleaned from the movie. So I decided to analyze The King’s Speech and The Social Network, the most likely winners of this year’s Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (Speech for original, Network for adapted) to see what takeaway we could derive from both movies and their excellent screenplays.
Today: The Social Network — Handling exposition.
A fellow scribe once told me, “Exposition equals death,” his way of saying there is nothing less entertaining than a character or characters engaged in expository dialogue. “Talking heads” is another way writers refer to the phenomenon.
Why does exposition have such a bad rap with screenwriters? Consider the definition it definition:
Writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation; explanatory treatise
Information, explanation, treatise. How boring can you be, right? But then there’s this:
INT. FIRST DEPOSITION ROOM — DAY
EDUARDO
I told him I thought it sounded great.
I mean it did, it was a great idea.
There was no reason to hack, people
were going to put their own pictures
up. What they were interested in, what
they were looking for, what classes
they were taking…and people had the
ability to invite their friends to join.
Or put a different way, not invite their
friends to join. In a world where social
structure is very important, that was sexy.
(beat)
It was a big project and he was going to
have to write tens of thousands of lines
of code so I wondered why he was
coming to me and not his roommates.
Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes
were programmers.
CUT TO:
EXT. QUAD — NIGHT
MARK
We’re gonna need a little start-up cash
to rent the server and get it online.
CUT TO:
INT. FIRST DEPOSITION ROOM — DAY
EDUARDO
That was why.
GRETCHEN
Did he offer business terms?
CUT TO:
EXT. QUAD — NIGHT
MARK
We’ll split to 70–30. 70 for me and 30
for you for putting up a thousand dollars
and handling everything on the business
end. You’ll be CFO.
CUT TO:
INT. FIRST DEPOSITION ROOM — DAY
GRETCHEN
And you said?
EDUARDO
I said “Let’s do it.”
GRETCHEN
Okay. Did he add anything else?
EDUARDO
Yes. He said —
CUT TO:
EXT. QUAD — NIGHT
MARK
It probably was a diversity thing but so
what?
CUT TO:
INT. FIRST DEPOSITION ROOM — DAY
GRETCHEN
Why do you think he said that?
SY
Gretchen, what’s the relevancy?
GRETCHEN
This is discovery, I’m trying to discover.
MARK
They’re suggesting that I was jealous of
Eduardo and began a plan to screw him
out of the company.
GRETCHEN
Were you?
SY
Gretchen —
MARK
Jealous of Eduardo?
SY
Stop typing, we’re off the record.
MARK
Ma’am, I know you’ve done your homework
and so you know that money isn’t a big part
of my life, but at the moment I could buy
Harvard University, take the Phoenix Club
and turn it into my ping pong room.
This scene from The Social Network is largely exposition, the dissemination of facts. I mean it’s a legal deposition, for crying out loud. And yet it doesn’t equal death. In fact, it’s riveting. How can that be? Because it follows the first principle of how to handle exposition:
Make it interesting.
Make the facts themselves interesting.
Make the people who reveal the facts interesting.
Make the way in which the facts are revealed interesting.
Make the circumstances surrounding the revelation of the facts interesting.
Exposition = Death only if a writer shows no imagination in making it interesting.
That concludes this week’s series of Screenwriting Lessons from the movie The Social Network. What did you learn from it?
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