Photo by Jackie , via Flickr In last month’s post on expository technique , I identified reportage as the most utilitarian, least evocative mode of exposition. By way of supporting evidence, I provided parallel passages demonstrating alternative strategies for relaying expository information to the reader. By force of habit on my part, these passages were all written in third person. But what holds true in third person doesn’t necessarily apply in other modes of narration. On the contrary, there’s a case to be made for arguing that reportage is the very essence of first person narration. This is owing to the narrow restrictions in first person vision and perspective. Information pertaining to setting, atmosphere, backstory and plot can only be layered into the narrative through the medium of the narrator’s self-expression. First person reportage is thus both highly selective and highly subjective. The challenge for the writer is to establish the first person narrator as an au...

Photo by Reck via Flickr Even experienced authors struggle with exposition from time to time. To begin with, there are issues having to do with ratio and proportion. Provide too little expository information, and your story will lack texture. Provide too much (or provide the wrong kind), and you risk weighing down the narrative with excess baggage. 1 Writers get migraines trying to decide which facts are vital to story development, and which facts can be left on the cutting room floor. Next there’s the issue of expository technique. The most straightforward tactic is reportage. With this method, the writer uses authorial overvoice to provide the reader with compact parcels, as needed to move the narrative along A typical example of reportage-in-action would read something like this: Meg and Walter Clancy had three children. Laurel and Lucy were normal healthy kids, but Jeb, the youngest, was diabetic. He had to have a special diet and needed two insulin injections a...

When you hear the old adage, “ show, don’t tell ,” how would you break down the “showing” versus the “telling”? Many would break “showing” down into elements that create the sense that a reader is living out a scene moment by moment—namely dialogue, evocative setting, action, and suspense. “Telling,” one might conclude, is the point of exposition, those sections where the narrator communicates directly to the reader by summarizing events and character traits. If you accept these generalized definitions you will miss out on opportunities to “show” through exposition. Dennis Lehane does just that in his literary mystery, Mystic River . This passage is excerpted from a spontaneous block party that erupts after the return of 11-year-old Jimmy Marcus’s kidnapped friend, Dave Boyle. Jimmy doesn’t yet know what happened to Dave, but sees that he is surrounded by police and well wishers that include their fifth grade teacher, Miss Powell. When Miss Powell kisses Dave twice on the cheek Jimmy ...