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    Roads to Writing. 3 Exposition
    Roads to Writing. 3 Exposition
    Roads to Writing. 3 Exposition
    Ebook52 pages37 minutes

    Roads to Writing. 3 Exposition

    By David McRobbie

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    About this ebook

    The third Roads to Writing essay deals with Exposition, which is an essential part of all storytelling. It is the who, when, why, how and where of what went before. Exposition is background that makes sense of the foreground in your story. In this essay there is discussion on how exposition works followed by exercises and examples. There are scenarios that ask the reader to create their own exposition as well as clumsy passages that the reader is invited to edit and improve.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid McRobbie
    Release dateSep 7, 2016
    ISBN9781370299744
    Roads to Writing. 3 Exposition
    Author

    David McRobbie

    David McRobbie was born in Glasgow in 1934. After an apprenticeship he joined the Merchant Navy as a marine engineer and sailed the world, or some of it. Eventually he worked his passage to Australia, got married and settled down for a bit only to move to Papua New Guinea where he trained as a teacher. Subsequently he found work as a college lecturer, then a researcher for parliament. Back in Australia in 1974 he joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a producer of radio and television programs for young people. In 1990 he gave up this work to become a full time writer for children and young adults. He has written over thirty paperbacks, mainly novels, but some are collections of short stories, plays and 'how-to' books on creative writing. Three of his novels were adapted for television, with David writing all of the sixty-five scripts — the first being The Wayne Manifesto in 1996, followed by Eugénie Sandler, PI then Fergus McPhail. These shows were broadcast throughout the world, including Australia and Britain on BBC and ITV. The BBC adapted another of David's novels for television — See How They Run, which became the first BBC/ABC co-production. At the age of 79, David is still at work. His most recent paperback novels are Vinnie's War, (Allen & Unwin) published in 2011, about childhood evacuation in the second world war. This was followed by To Brave The Seas, in 2013, a story about a 14-year-old boy who sails in Atlantic convoys during WW2. Both books are available online.

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      Book preview

      Roads to Writing. 3 Exposition - David McRobbie

      Roads to Writing

      A Personal View

      3. Exposition

      David McRobbie

      Copyright 2016 David McRobbie

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal use only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this essay, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you share it. If you’re reading this e-book and did not purchase it, then you should buy your own copy.

      Thank you for respecting the author's work.

      Cover image: Alice-Anne Boylan

      Table of Contents

      Chapter One — Exposition: A Definition.

      Chapter Two — The Truthful Narrator

      Chapter Three — Over to You

      Chapter Four — Exposition and Scene

      Chapter Five — Bad Exposition

      Chapter Six — Exposition in Film, Stage and Radio

      About the Writer

      More books and Essays by David McRobbie

      Chapter One

      Exposition — A Definition.

      In any story you write, almost certainly you’ll need to use exposition. This writing device can be defined as the who, how, when, where and why of what went before. It means that to make sense of your unfolding story, you need to bring in details of what happened before the tale even began. More than this, as your story progresses, you will often need to make explanations when a new character is introduced, when a new event occurs or as you shift the action to a different location.

      The way we do this is to use exposition. It means, as the word suggests, to expose, to show, to reveal, uncover and all the variations you can think of with that meaning. As your words create images in the reader’s mind, so exposition makes the pictures more complete. It is background that makes sense of the foreground.

      You will find exposition in all forms of storytelling — short stories, novels, stage plays, radio plays, movies, television dramas and serials and probably in narrative poetry, although I haven’t examined this in detail. I should add that all of these means of story-telling require different skills from the writer, and unique methods of conveying exposition.

      Some stories are told in a single day, sometimes only in a few hours or perhaps the tale unfolds over a number of years. A family saga, for example, might embrace two or three generations, or the story can be of how a group of people fare during the course of a war that lasts six years. Think restrictions on personal freedom, food and clothing shortages, danger from enemy action, relatives duty-bound to join the fighting and so on.

      Here are some headings that have made successful stories — perhaps you can add a few more:

      • A family at war.

      • Living through the depression.

      • Lost in space.

      • When famine strikes.

      • After the Bomb.

      • Father goes to jail. (As in The Railway Children.)

      • A family member becomes a whistle-blower.

      • Sudden and devastating illness of a close relative.

      • Boat people — escape, journey and aftermath.

      • A family in witness protection.

      But as all stories start, sooner or

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