Exposition

Hi everyone,

I’m rewriting my scene today and it’s fun. It’s satisfying to find better ways to say things. This isn’t a high action scene. It’s the aftermath of one. A space for the characters to react to what happened and to plan for what’s coming next.

It was hard to find a scene goal but I found one and I’m busy trying to hang the scene on it when the main purpose of the scene is the development of friendship, a lot of sneaky explanation and a breather for both the reader and the character.

Which brings me to another thing I do in my second draft. It’s where I pull out any exposition or summary and thread it better into the story.

When writing the first draft, there are rules and information about the world that I needed to know—and therefore write—to move forward with the story. I can now delete or thin these out. I’m having fun weaving this exposition into my scene in an interesting way.

The biggest question I keep asking myself is: what information MUST the reader know NOW. If I can get away with not telling them something, I will. I can always add the extra information into a later scene where it’s more urgent for the reader to know. So my task is to discover what is MUST KNOW NOW and what is MUST KNOW LATER. And then to figure out what is the most interesting and subtle presentation of it.

I’m not finished. Hopefully, I’ll be done with the scene tomorrow.

That’s it for now.

Happy writing,

Joanne.