Over Exposure

Of all the exposition no-no's, advice, and complaints I've come across this week, this one seems to be the most frequently addressed so I've decided that it merits its own post -- OVER EXPOSURE -- which (I can't help it) reminds me of Peter Venkman. Ghostbusters 2, for all its shortcomings, has some great lines.

Ray: Don't talk to me; talk to my attorney.
Louis Tully: And that's me! My guys are still under a judicial mistrangement order... that blue thing I got from her! They could be exposing themselves!
Peter Venkman: And you don't want us exposing ourselves!

That line could almost be the screenwriter's motto -- "you don't want us exposing ourselves!" Except -- it wouldn't be true. Exposition is a necessary evil. We want the viewer to see us exposing ourselves. We just don't want them to KNOW that's what we're doing.

It's kind of a reverse "Emperor's New Clothes" form of screenwriting. The emperor thought he was in magnificent robes so light and fine that they were invisible to anyone too stupid to appreciate them. If you don't see them, you're an idiot. If you do see them, you're normal. We want the same thing in reverse -- exposition so well weaved that it is invisible to anyone not purposely looking for it. If you don't see it, you're an average viewer. If you do see it, you're in film school.

But OVER exposure plays a major role in thousands of specs that implode on reader desks all over Hollywood. Most of the books, articles, & web logs that discuss exposition warn against giving the reader too much information. This seems to be the number one way for a screenplay to self destruct -- inundate your reader with busy exposition, flashbacks, and talking heads.

My top three list of the most annoying over exposure methods:

(1) YOU SEE, TIMMY - Not to be confused with "as you know, Bob"s, the "you see, Timmy" (as defined in the movie Speechless) is the lesson, theme, or moral of a story summed up the way Timmy's mother might close an episode of Lassie with something like, "You see, Timmy, birds have to be free. They don't want your affection. But Lassie always comes home because she'd die without your love."

Cue giant dog hug.

Yes, the lines are lame and cheesy (I made them deliberately lame and cheesy to illustrate a point), but they serve a purpose in summing up what Timmy learned and what the episode was trying to say. Used at the beginning of a story, it would give away the whole episode too early and rob the audience of experiencing the story from Timmy's perspective.

No fun for the viewer.

But surprising to me, half or more of the screenplays I've read by aspiring writers give all the details in the first act. Instead of dropping clues, they spoon feed the answers.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to tell me that if you show a little flesh, a man will hang around to see what else you've got. Show it all and there are no more secrets - no reason for him to stick around. We need readers to stick around.

(2) PRESS CONFERENCES - Oh, it pains my public relations soul to criticize the single most effective way for a government to confront a time sensitive, easily misconstrued, or volatile event. But I must. I once read a screenplay with an eighteen page press conference with one purpose - to detail how a man was logistically able to keep his sperm alive long enough to sell it on eBay. All the reader needs is a plausible explanation, not a detailed one. Press conferences are getting harder and harder to write because (1) they are BORING (2) they are PREDICTABLE and (3) they are BORING.

If you must, must, must write a press conference because it's a fundamental requirement of your story OR because it actually WILL move the story along, give your confrontation with reporters a twist, spin, or unexpected dialogue to lighten it up and separate it from every other press conference we've ever seen. Make it memorable.

In The Fugitive, when Lieutenant Gerard interrupts the sheriff in charge of the train wreck as he's showboating his investigation for the television cameras, we find out who Gerard is, the authority of the U.S. Marshals' Office, checkpoint locations, fugitive information, the search perimeter, and we get an unforgettable peek into the mind of Gerard as he announces that he wants a hard target search of every "gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, hen house, outhouse and dog house". Cameras still flashing.

(2) NEWS PROGRAMS - So yeah, a twelve car pile up, bomb threat, or freakish weather event is news, but a news broadcast as the primary means of exposition is painful and seriously, while some stations do frequent human interest stories, how many of them really care that a fireman rescued a cat out of a tree? Like the press conference, news programs should be used to move the story along, not just reveal exposition.

Two favorites come to mind:

Bruce Almighty is about a beat reporter who does human interest stories but wants a seat at the desk. Still, each on-camera news scene is not just original and amusing, but it tells us something about the characters in the scene. Bruce is jealous, Evan is insecure, etc.

In the 1989 Batman, news reporters are shown on aira succumbing to the poisonous effects of cosmetics and grooming products. Others are later seen with no makeup and suffering from baggy eyes, bad skin and graying lifeless hair

So there ya have it -- the three abuses of exposition that annoy me the most -- too much information too soon, press conferences and news programs. What are yours?

Exposition ABC's

In case you're looking, there's not a lot on the internet about exposition as it applies to screenwriting.

"As You Know, Bob" is apparently an expression which means "exposition that sucks" but until Karl Iglesias used the phrase as the title for his Creative Screenwriting article, I had never heard it.

EXPOSITION DO'S

Karl has five tips for writing good (invisible) exposition:

1. Surround Exposition With Conflict - Create fights, arguments, complications and life-or-death situations.
2. Present Exposition When the Reader is Eager to Know it - Set up the desire to know it.
3. Make Exposition Active and Purposeful - Make a character need to say it because it contributes to the character's objective.
4. Twist a Character's Emotions to Get Exposition - Make the character need the information and have to fight to get it.
5. Add Dramatic Irony - Create tension by letting your character in on a secret.

John August also has five suggestions for writing better exposition:

1. Show the information, rather than having a character say it.
2. Try to follow a natural line of thought: A to B to C.
3. Simplify. The reader may not need to know everything.
4. Keep your hero active in learning the information, rather than passively listening.
5. Balance natural speech patterns with efficiency. People rarely say things as concisely as they could.

All noteworthy.

Okay, now here comes my arrogance. As much as I know I'm not qualified to dispute professionals, session four of the American Film Institute's "Basics of Screenwriting" uses the phrase "exposition" and "backstory" synonymously. Backstory is not always exposition and exposition is not always backstory. Somebody who knows more than me, please set me straight on this.

OVER EXPOSURE

Karl Iglesias quotes Humphrey Bogart as saying that if he ever had to spout exposition, there'd better be two camels humping in the background to distract the audience. But Dave Trottier warns us in "The Screenwriter's Bible" against making the exposition too exciting and uses the second Indiana Jones movie as an example. Funny -- I've seen the first and third Indy films more times than I can count, but with Temple of Doom, once was enough. Dave says that primary exposition is presented over a meal so revolting, that the attention of the audience is diverted from the dialogue. I wouldn't know. It diverted my attention from the entire remainder of the film -- I guess I'm just not entertained by humping camels.

Another crutch in introducing exposition is the flashback. Dave says that ninety-five percent of flashbacks in unsold scripts do not work for two reasons (1) it doesn't move the story forward and (2) we don't care about the characters or story BEFORE we get flung into the past.

Linda Seger's "Making a Good Script Great" says that expository speeches and flashbacks are most frequently to blame for the common mistake amateurs make in explaining motivation instead of showing it, which over-emphasizes backstory and the influences of other characters on the situation at hand. She says flashbacks don't work when (1) they are informational instead of dramatic, (2) they stop the action, and (3) the motivation is not here, now, or imminent.

PERFECT EXPOSURE

Bill Martell's "The Secrets of Action Screenwriting" sums up dialogue this way:

"Make sure every line of dialogue:

1. Exposes Character
2. Moves the Story Forward
3. Is Entertaining"

If every line of dialogue exposes character, then there's not much need to explain character motivation and the writer has more freedom to craft a story that doesn't need crutches.

One of my all time favorite lines comes from the John Lennon song, Beautiful Boy, used in Mr. Holland's Opus. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Life is happening. You just don't see it. This somehow reminded me that good exposition is always happening. You just don't see it.

ADDENDUM: Make sure that when you skeedaddle, you follow up this post with one from Unknown Screenwriter who also has a list of five exposition rules. What is it with the fives?

1. Set limits on what your reader or audience needs to know.
2. Spoon feed the reader and the audience just enough exposition and backstory so that you leave them wanting even more.
3. Make the characters in your story want the information as bad as WE do.
4. Use exposition as a setup for future action.
5. Combine exposition and action.

Properly Exposing

In search of a page to post in response to the one page gauntlet, I skimmed some of my screenwriting efforts from the past year and -- well -- ouch. Those screenplays are collecting dust bunnies under the bed for a reason. More painful than recognizing the flawed writing is realizing that a year from now, I will likely have the same yuck-in-my-gut reaction to what I am working on today.

I don't know which parts read the worst, but I'm thinking it's a tie between my dead-on dialogue and poorly crafted exposition. Did I say it was poor? I meant tragic, calamitous, pitiable, and shockingly lamentable.

Okay, poor.

So, I'm on a quest for the keys to crafting a screenplay without insulting the intelligence of the reader by using exposition that couldn't be more offensively obvious if you pointed it out with flashing neon lights.

I have nothing against neon, mind you. It can be useful in pointing the way to ATM machines, pool halls, nail salons, tanning beds, tattoo parlors, slot machines, the exits of smoke filled aircraft, and -- beer. Oh, and anyone who has ever consumed two full bottles of Snapple green tea while driving four hours to Austin can ballyhoo the merits of neon signs over restroom doors in crowded convenience stores.

Neon has its place. Exposition, too, has its place. So why is it that some exposition works and some sounds like dialogue from a Dick and Jane early reader? Could it be that exposition often uses neon signs where better craftsmanship would require only a small blinking light? Or, do we sometimes use so many blinking lights that it spoils the view of everything else?

Karl Iglesias has an article about exposition in this month's Creative Screenwriting Magazine. My magazine arrives in the mailbox weeks after everyone gets theirs (and the mail lady wonders why I chase her down?), so I haven't gotten to read it yet but I'm thinking that on this quest to better write and better understand exposition, that article is the place to start.