Let's dedicate the first half of the story to mind numbing information and end the second half of the story with mindless action that contradicts the information we've learned in the first half.

"This is Katana. She's got my back. She can cut all of you in half with one sword stroke, just like mowing the lawn. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims."

I'm a big fan of Tolkien's method. Spend about a decade writing down all the exposition, then take it and lock it in a drawer. Have your protagonist be a simple everyman who doesn't know anything of the world outside their small simple town, so they need to have bits and pieces of exposition given to them. Not enough to fully exposite everything, of course, just the right amount that they can take in at a time. This keeps the world mysterious and magical, since you don't reveal everything, but coherent, since you wrote it all down beforehand. 50 years after your smash hit, have your son release all the exposition for the lore nerds to read.

"I'm excused for bad writing, my genre says so!" Ah, romance writers

Nothing can beat the subtlety of Star Wars' title crawl info dump

I'm not going to get a better opportunity to point this out: David Lynch's 1984 film adaptation of scifi classic *Dune* begins with an obtuse exposition dump. The book begins with Paul Atredies' mother contemplating the ethics of genetically and socially engineering her son to be a messianic figure.

Man I feel so nostalgic thinking about the first time I watched a Terrible Writing Advice video. You see, it all started in the Summer of 2020....

Remember, it's okay to exposition dump when you're writing your first draft. That's when you yourself are learning the pace for your story and just putting down as much necessary information out of your head as possible.

It's best to do an anti-infodump: Not telling, and also not showing. Avoid all information altogether and let the reader figure it out. Then claim all the people's theories and the multiple contradictory interpretations as your plan all along.

I'd love to see you do Terrible Writing Advice: Unreliable Narrator

I wonder if Hollywood writers watch JP's videos and don't realize that it's satire

TWA's videos are rare to see, but once they pop up in your notifications you know they're going to be good

One way I've seen it done is for a character to point out something abnormal about a fantastical element of their story. Like in a world with floating cities, the MC comes across such a city and notes that it's only floating about a thousand feet off the ground, much lower than a city of that size should be. Or, in a world with warp drives, a character complaining that it's taken a week to get halfway to the solar system over when most ships would've been there and back by now. It's basically a tactic of increasing information density without slowing down the story. Conveying how the world normally works, conveying how their current situation differs from normal, and the character's perspective.

"This is Katana. She's got my back. I would advise not getting killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims."

"The easy ways of handling exposition are either info dumping, or not bothering to explain anything at all." Somehow, the RWBY prologue managed to do both.

This is part of what makes isekai and hidden world/masquerade stories so popular, I imagine. Good exposition is easy when the protag is a fish out of water, because they will naturally inclined not only to ask questions or need things explained to them, but to have primarily *relevant* information given to them.

"nothing gets my blood pumping in the middle of a fight scene like a long-winded explanation of everyone's powers complete with charts and graphs" as an HxH fan, yes.

"Ask yourself, 'what is my reader most excited to see next?' and then make it absolutely clear that your exposition section will make no progress whatsoever toward that part of the story. This will help the reader focus on your exposition without the distraction of narrative immersion, and let them appreciate the far more important fact that you spent tens of hours crafting a new and exciting elemental magic system!"

Call me crazy, but I think Yu-Gi-Oh did a fairly good job at exposition After all, how else would I know what pot of greed did if no one explained it every 3 episodes?

"The chief engineer could explain exactly why that's bad" -- reminds me of the Mass Effect quote: Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight! Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law? Serviceman Burnside: Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir! Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot! Serviceman Burnside: Sir! Unless acted upon by an outside force, sir! Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction! You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

"The TWA expanded universe sucks" "No, just wait until the Greed arc, that's when the story actually kicks off and it gets _really_ good"

In some series of novels, namely "The Babysitters' Club", the same information about each of the titular girls is dumped at the beginning of each book, which can be a lot to take in all at once.

Can we just appreciate how tight and interesting the exposition was at the start of Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring movie? If you have it, just watch and be impressed by how much important information you get without it overstaying its welcome. I also appreciate how they go back and fill in gaps later when needed instead of the massive info dump courtesy of Gandalf in the book.

When I wrote my first book, at some point early on I felt I needed the characters to be taught how the aliens learned to travel through space. My early drafts just had the usual paragraph exposition, but I revised it and later on realized I just didn't care. So I made a character who also didn't really care explain it. I got to half ass the explanation and develop a side character. I can save the real explanation for a better time.

You know what the Sponsorship section needs? An exposition dump to bring the audience up to speed on the TWA universe so far.

4:22 Ah yes, explaining your powers and abilities to the ENEMY whom you are fighting to the DEATH. A classic antagonist move that will in no way backfire. Is the character in question explaining their abilities in a way that is misleading and vague to confuse their enemies? No. Is the character at least explaining their powers in a way that characterizes them. Also no. Edit: Also, when the protagonist inevitably figures out the weaknesses of the antagonist's abilities and crafts a convoluted plan to exploit it. Be sure to have them ALSO explain it in the most booooooooooooooring and overly wordy way possible. It's not like you're in the middle of a LIFE and DEATH battle.

Another Tip: If there's a Thing you just really are excited to explain in some way, you can *add* a plot reason to do so.

This video came out right in the nick of time. Just cut out a page of exposition dedicated to a character that dies in the first chapter, and then put it right back in after watching this video. As a writer, you think you put in a lot of stuff that needs putting out, but of course, the truth is that you're just being way too critical and doubtful about yourself. You can't make mistakes. Everything you put down on the page is obviously meant to stay for good! Thanks for the amazing writing advice.

5:06 Imagine a conversation your characters are having in the back seat of a car, in a modern setting, that goes like- "The traffic light just turned red. *_As you know,_* that means you're supposed to stop until it turns green." "Isn't it great that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb that gets used so much in our daily lives?" To make it less clunky, try picturing the guy in the back seat sarcastically yelling at the driver, "Hey! You're supposed to STOP when the light's red!" **Insert narration describing how the light changes from red to green** "...There, NOW you can go! Jeez!" The Thomas Edison bit can come up later, if at all. *It doesn't need to be mentioned if it's not relevant to the story.*

Me hearing greeds monolog: OH no he's complex and eloquent! He's nothing like the TWA universe at all!

JP fails to bring up a good point about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's exposition- it's Counterexposition. It's not there to explain anything. It's there to break up the flow of the story so you don't notice the author just pulled a "and that was that. Moving on..." to the plot. "Turns out that mice creating the Earth as an experiment... ha, irony?... to solve the universe isn't as funny as you thought it'd be? Have a flashback within a Guidebook entry so you can get out of the plot and into another plot you can back out of so you can get into another plot so..."

I feel like JP's character would be capable of singing the exposition song very well.

I like when exposition is told through a first person perspective, where the reader learns with the character, or when the plot is told in passing, like a written report by the main character or for the main character, instead of the character or a third person spouting the information into your face.

Do not worry about info dumps: Just write an isekai! Every character in the story apart from the protagonist will be constantly explaining the lore, worldbuilding, and magic systems to the protagonist by necessity, so you will just have an entire page of someone's monologue about how the merchant's guild works or about the war against the demon lord every three or four pages.

Admittedly, I don't have much experience with writing exposition. However, in that limited experience, I've learned that exposition should be limited to what's necessary. Not quite literally every aspect of their subject.

This is usually why I hate prologues. They're fine when they're done right, but so many writers just treat them as info-dumps with a heavy handed "You'll need to know this for later!" slapped on your cheek.

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, someone invented an opening exposition dump that fans would riot over us cutting...

Meanwhile, Death Note rips a hole in the space time continuum for making exposition more interesting then a resurrected Palpatine sending 1 billion Death Stars to conquer the galaxy with no explanation.

I unironically love using your writing advice. I really needed this, thanks!

Ah yes. My monthly dose of sarcasm is back!

One of the most effective ways to deliver exposition is to use it to give answers to questions you're already raised in the audience's mind. They're far more likely to sit around for it if you are giving them information that they wanted to know, rather than you front-loading the information and tacitly telling them that this will be on the test. Consider how Harry Potter doesn't learn what in the world "Hogwarts" is until about the third or fourth chapter. Instead we open with a series of progressively more fantastical events before Hagrid finally shows up to tell Harry (and us) what's been happening.

For me exposition is one of my favorite things in writing. I love the challenge it brings to incorporate information about the world in a both engaging and natural way. I worked on the world for hours not to lecture the audience, it’s to brag to my writer friends about how much I did!

If you really just want to dump out information, fun facts, tidbits and quirky details of your setting, why not write a fictional travel guide? Like honestly, I've done that myself and it was pretty fun. Called it "Places, people and how to enjoy the former despite the latter" or something similarly snarky if I recall correctly. By far not my greatest literary work, but I have a soft spot for that little booklet.

I can understand 'not enough exposition' being a problem, but what's worse than that is TOO MUCH. I can trust a writer to try to give me exposition in small bits until they can be peaced together to something coherent later. That CAN sometimes be annoying, but not as eye-rolling as EVERYTHING being force fed to you all at once and NOTHING in the story making sense unless you have all the back story you weren't even there to see carved into your brain.

The best solution is just to make the "exposition dump" an interesting story in itself - LoTR does this really well, the backstory of Sauron and the One Ring is a classic example of telling instead of showing, but I didn't mind because it's literally Epic. The movie does it as a prologue, which works well because they can put Sauron on screen. From what I remember in the books, by the time Gandalf actually exposits it, there's plenty of buildup and suspense, so it actually feels satisfying to get some answers. YMMV on every use of this, but stories within a story are a classic literary technique for a reason. Honestly, if you do this well the main danger is that the myth or legend will be more interesting that the story around it...

Your video on exposition couldnt have come at a more perfect time, I finally decided to write my own book, and considering its a fantasy novel, exposition will very much be needed. Thanks for inspiring me to create my own book.

Usually I skip the ad segment, but I'm so invested in this narrative that I'm rewatching your backlog

I like how the beginning sounds even more like a seductive villain speech/explanation than usual. Speaking of supposed villains, my that hydra is quite polite and helpful. (Also I chuckled at the bit of code at 11:35.)

I‘ve found that „discovery writing“ (TWA explained the technique in one of his videos, unfortunately, I don’t remember which one) works quite well for this: You make rough outline of the story as well as the setting etc., kind of like a zoomed out map containing only the most essential information, and then, as you‘re writing, lay out the information as you „discover“ it. The more you plan beforehand (i.e. „architect writing“), the harder it might get to distribute the information evenly but still in a way that feels natural. That is, making sure that not every chapter contains the same amount of information, since there is never a continuous stream of knowledge in real live either. It‘s a bit hard for me to explain, since I didn‘t really „learn“ to write, nor spent time „finding my voice“. I just… started, and kept doing it (after some years of rarely writing at all, except for school and uni purposes), until I was writing nearly every day if possible. I sometimes wonder if it would have been more effective to properly learn some of the techniques, though… (Sorry, if that was a bit long and rambling.)

In crime procedurals, the leader of the protagonists, you know the one, the one with no discernable expertise in forensics or criminology, serves as the stand-in for the audience to the technical aspects explained to them by the experts on the team; delivering the exposition AAAAAAND explaining the purpose of the "leader" trope.

I unironically like info dumps. I specifically love watching lore videos on sifi and fantasy series that i'm interested in but aren't fully sure I want to actually invest in specifically because there convenient info dumps. It's the biggest hurtle I need to overcome in my own writing, avoiding the info dumps I love so much.

Brandon Sanderson wonderfully plays with the audience expectation of exposition in one of his Mistborn stories. (MAJOR SPOILERS for that series, don't read further if you're currently reading it.) At the start of one of the sequels, a certain character has to be reminded of several events from earlier books that they were present for and really should remember. Most readers will write it off as just some clumsy dialogue exposition and move on. But in fact, it's because the character in question has been replaced by an imposter, something we only find out much later in the story.

Wow, exposition? I love the entirety of Homestuck!

I think a good way to handle exposition is by having it be part of a situation where you expect a lot of info to be dumped. A news broadcast, a mission briefing and watching an in universe advertisement is a good way to do this. The upside of this is that it both provides information and gives you a shortcut to set the tone almost immediately.

Request: can you do one on making fantasy/sci-fi towns?

I unironically enjoy stories that unceremoniously dump you into the setting with little to no explanation. I find the process of piecing together the world like a puzzle box engaging. I know I'm in a minority when it comes to that, though

Even Speedwagon is Crying

Dude I love your videos, I've been struggling with writing lately because of depression and other stuff, but the content here always makes me wanna dabble in my stories a bit with all the good advice.

Also I love how you wrote a mystery intrigue war political thriller comedy with your sponsorships

Having the story start in an actual school provides a convenient way to tie in exposition while having characters debate about that exposition and, as a result, reveal info about themselves. An officer's academy, for example, can send characters on plot advancing missions and provide a setting where characters can ask questions about basic aspects of the world.

bro your visual jokes and gags get better and better every episode. "why does your dialogue have hyperlinks to a wiki in it?" had be dying.

1:26 I never realized that Tutorials and Exposition dumps had so much in common. It all makes sense now!

If you ever feel like your exposition is a little too much, just add a love triangle to satisfy the viewer.

I unironically love the Sponsorship Wars! I am so excited for new episodes.

I remember an author who literally wrote the entire story as an info dump in the first paragraph and then the last seven paragraphs were just filler with the characters doing nothing until it abruptly stops.

I find expositions been a huge problem for me. I always either write too much or too little so this video is very much appreciated :D

"As you know" is such a weird convention. You're basically lampshading how the characters have no reason to be mentioning that fact except to inform the audience, as if that somehow makes it better.

Ah, but what about the start of SERENITY? An In-Universe Lecture, inside of a nightmare, inside of a flashback, inside of a holographic archive, inside of an in-dialog-info-dump. Chef's kiss.

I actually like reading long and detailed expositions. I also like reading encyclopedias for fun. I want stories with chapter long expositions.

My go to example of good exposition would be Inception, even when it's just infodumping everyone stays in character and the way it actually delivers information still builds on their archs, like in the cafe dream where it actually connects dreambuilding to Ariadne's experience with art and inspiration and Cobb seems to be genuinely fascinated with the power of the mind, or later when Ariadne summons a real-life bit of Paris and gets stabbed by Mal, it highlights her inexperience and idealism while also showing how terrified Cobb is of losing himself to the dream world again.

Always happy to learn how to do things like they did in the bad old days.

Remember if you're too low on time to write important info: "Far too complex for you to understand." "There's a simple explanation for that"

China: “wtf is this? You’re stealing our s***.” Literature: “so?” *The Great Wall of Exposition*

(Opening Crawl) *Somehow* the evil emperor from the previous trilogy has returned without any foreshadowing or explanation

I think a good lesson I got was from the first review on my first book. They liked the characters and plot, but felt the magic system wasn't explained. I wanted to go the show don't tell route to have the action be a way to demonstrate how the magic worked. But feel the reviewer was right that my approach left more questions unanswered for how everything worked. Not to mention that Terrible Writing just underlined that I was listing words relating to my magic system without giving an explanation. This kind of got me back to the drawing board so I could find a way to fix the problem without an exposition dump. A lot of people I queried about the dilemma suggested I include a character unfamiliar with the magic system of the world, but I felt that approach was boring and overdone. Then it dawned on me to have a character that was self-taught in magic, that way the protagonist could explain how magic works through what they were doing right and wrong. I personally think it's some of the stronger moments in book 2.

I think the worst one I ever read was in Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had an entire overly long chapter describing the layout of Paris streets, block by block, building by building, as viewed from the rooftop of Notre Dame. Not even pointing out this was from Quasimodo's point of view, just a dry text version of a map.

3:10 my headcanon for why the non-player is now in a completely different fantasy story is because they checked out so much they didn't realise their D&D game had ended.

7:08, so kind of like in Harry Potter. When Snape ambushes Harry with Chekhov’s Gun questions about potions that he knows Harry won’t be able to answer

Actually caught this on Nebula first, had to come here to get the ad segment, felt incomplete without it

i love this channel. i have just started to make a webcomic too, so i will finally be able to apply everything i learned here!

I think my favorite use of exposition dumps is Nern from LISA, who is introduced as a storyteller like he's going to give you a lore dump about the worldbuilding. But instead all he does is go off about his personal life and the one time he gets close to actually talking about exposition, he's like "oh that's boring" and changes the topic.

A book can do this very well because you can shove all the exposition into the main POV character's own thoughts and it generally won't interrupt your experience. A fish out of water or inexperienced young teen can also serve very well as an exposition device because as a newcomer, he would need that fictional world explained to him. it gets bad when its exposition dumped in and told to characters who should probably already know all of that stuff. this happens sometimes in Harry Potter and Thor. you also should not dedicate entire long speeches to exposition, but rather thread it through slowly. we should learn things about this world at the same time our main hero does. give us bits and pieces over time, then in the climax, it all comes together and we get the full picture. like a murder mystery. you get hints throughout the movie, but at the end you still want your big villain's motive rant.

In my opinion, the laziest way to deliver exposition is by using the phrase "As You Know." It's clearly only done for the audience's benefit, and the character typically knows this information well, and doesn't need to be retold in a clumsy, forced way.

I remember in Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon, there is this part where several pages are devoted to describing how the main character eats Cap'n Crunch, and the weird thing is it's actually good. While normally you would want to limit the information to whatever is relevant to the plot, it would seem what really matters is that the reader enjoys it.

I remember when Star Ocean 3 came with a dictionary in the menu that was full of information designed only to fill you in on aspects of the world that were not important to understand the plot - in other words, explaining offhand references to previous games, explaining real life astronomical terms, filling in events between games for those who were curious, and giving amusing scientific explanations for why dragons slept on piles of treasure. Final Fantasy XIII looked at this and failed to understand any of the above reasons to have a dictionary.

"aS yOu KnOw I cOnDuCtEd A rAiD oN tHe GrEaT lIbRaRy WhIcH mOsT sAiD dIdNt EvEn ExIsT"

You can make a fun character do the exposition, or a smartass bragging about how much they know about history. Or a bard and songs and poetry. In the background. Media? Journals? Hitchikers guide even has the guide do it. Or just talk and yeah have a knowitall or bard annoyingly brag how much they know about xy. Or a shady charactercif its a person new telling them to just them and doing telling their story. Or in dialogue between characters spread over the time. And a know it all still could be the cathalyst to get that. And flashbacks are fine i think, just it should have emotional elements related to characters too

I’ve been a self-proclaimed writer for over a year now (though I only recently got good at it so I’m still basically a novice). How I’m gonna handle exposition is as follows: Main character spent their formative years in a dystopian land. In other words, not knowing anything about the outside world. This means they will ask questions that the reader may also have (but I’m hopefully gonna keep it limited to relevant things, not like “oh when was Rodrick Ballscratcher the Third’s outdoor lavatory built?”). Second book sees a different protagonist exploring different lands, a perfect opportunity for world building with some lore thrown in every so often. It’s gonna be multiple books long, assuming I actually finish any. (Bloody procrastination). So no need to rush through exposition or condense everything into one or two books. Plenty of the lore will tie in to the main focus, depending on what focus there currently is (not every last bit, but on occasion. Maybe “plenty” is an exaggeration). To top it all off, I have a glossary of sorts for jotting down notes and ideas. If released publicly, it would be pretty much ideal for those that want *all* the information. (The damn file got corrupted but thankfully I remember most of the stuff in it). Edit: Nearly forgot to mention that I made a historical timeline, meaning there’s room for prequels and spin-offs. That opens the door to having the exposition being spread out. In other words, the main series has the compulsory exposition while the spin-offs provide extra historical exposition.

I learned a fact about ants! :D. Thanks for the exposition title crawl!

Do note that if you wanna have your expository charatcer be a small marketable creature of some kind, be sure to give them the most annoying speeh pattern you can think of! Combo that with a high pitched voice for maximum efficiency!

Robert A Heinlein's juvenile novels from the 60s were actually pretty smart about this. The main plots were pretty concise with minimal harping on tech and lore, but each chapter started with a short anecdote from the world's history usually related to and expounding on an important technology. They were almost entirely irrelevant, but did a lot for the setting's character and you could easily skip them if you wanted to.

It’s a good day when TWA uploads a video, fill with golden advice that will tell me what I already know and stroke my ever growing ego… I’m kidding of course. Thanks for the new video.

I was seriously just wondering when you were gonna upload next lmao

Info dumping an info dump. I can dig it

YES!!! I was literally waiting for a new video just a couple hours ago, and you delivered! Your videos are so hilarious!

Unironically I actually REALLY LIKE, even LOVE infodumps. I mean lore, and worldbuilding is always the most interesting part to me, so the infodumbs are interesting... kinda by it's very nature really(and that's not an easy task to make them not be). It's what I watch or read things for. The character arc and all the other stuff like that? Not nearly that interesting and they pretty much become interesting BECAUSE of their relevance to the universe - so to the lore and worldbuilding. Actually for a few years already I keep myself more to fandom-based literature (aka fanfictions) and even though they are more likely to have more exposition... I still more often than not find the exposition to be too small, too little or in other ways just lacking. Sprinkling exposition little by little throughout the story not only won't always make sense (as not always there is place for it in given scene) but also hardly ever would be satisfying, because that way it usually won't be much of it. It is also kind the reason why I like multiverses (aka crossovers) as they give so many opportunity to explore the lore and worldbuilding. Or a characters which just enter the wide big world not knowing much about it yet and thus the reader can learn about world with them. And teasing little details... for most of the time is more annoying than fun(and it never would actually tell more than "10 page essay on the subject". Unless the essay is EXTREMELY bad). Though I'm myself kinda guilty of that... and as much as I agree exposition should drive narrative stakes and tension (which I of course try to do), I can't exaclty agree about the immersion part. I mean exposition is main thing that make immersion even possible, it's key factor for that. That how it's delivered (and how well it is made to be part of the story) does matter of course, but it has to be really bad (on the level that I think is VERY HARD to achieve not on purpose) to really harm immersion instead of helping it.

remember than some exposition is better than wasting 10 minutes with a scene that could be explained in 2 lines.

My favorite type of exposition is the kind where crappy fangame writers try to cram entire stories into cutscenes with textboxes designed for a sentence at most!

Thank you for taking my suggestion!! (I’m sure I wasn’t the one person who convinced you to make a video about exposition, but still, I couldn’t believe it when I saw the notification for a video I had requested 😁)

Best method, NO exposition! Not even the exposition that the audience really needs to know, like "What is the magic system like?" "Who wants the protagonist dead?" "What the fuck is a semblance?" Who cares! they can all just get on with it!