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The Do’s and Don’t of Exposition in Literature

Afraid you’re overexplaining? Here are some things to consider.

Andrew Johnston
The Writing Cooperative
5 min readAug 21, 2022

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

One of the most common questions new writers ask is, “Am I explaining too much?”

It’s a sensible thing to ask. We’ve all seen at least one example of extremely bad expository text, those passages in novels that explain what’s going on in very blunt, inelegant terms. They’re boring (at least if they’re not hilarious), they drag the action to a halt and they can break the narrative, especially if they go on too long.

And yet exposition is necessary, at least some of the time. There are moments where the author needs to make some point very clear, and there’s just no way to do it without a character (or a document or something else) laying it right out.

So let’s consider some of the mistakes writers make with exposition.

Situations where exposition should be cut

As we’ll discuss later, there are situations where expository dialogue or text is necessary, but whenever possible it should be removed or at least kept short to maintain narrative momentum. Here are a few things to look for:

Excessively long expository passages

Published in The Writing Cooperative

Medium’s largest collection of advice, support, and encouragement for writers. We help you become the best writer possible.

Written by Andrew Johnston

Writer of fiction, documentarian, currently stranded in Asia. Learn more at www.findthefabulist.com.

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