Back story through conflict

Maybe this is too simple an example, but...

How about Bud White in L.A. Confidential? With just one line of dialogue and one short scene he's intro'd as a guy who hates "wife beaters" and pummels the crap out of any creep who abuses women. Later, when Bud confronts Lynn about her seducing Exley and loses his temper with her, the script says: "the sins of the father are visited on the son" -- which arguably can't be filmed, yet the meaning translates to the screen and the viewing audience gets it. There's Bud's past, neatly explained without showing any details or flashbacks.

-Derek

dpaterso said:

Maybe this is too simple an example, but...

How about Bud White in L.A. Confidential? With just one line of dialogue and one short scene he's intro'd as a guy who hates "wife beaters" and pummels the crap out of any creep who abuses women. Later, when Bud confronts Lynn about her seducing Exley and loses his temper with her, the script says: "the sins of the father are visited on the son" -- which arguably can't be filmed, yet the meaning translates to the screen and the viewing audience gets it. There's Bud's past, neatly explained without showing any details or flashbacks.

-Derek

Click to expand...

Nailed it.


Basically - conflict is the seed of drama. If you can illuminate backstory, with a moment of drama - it's worth a minute of exposition.

The best back story

is backstory that stays in the author's mind.

Exposition isn't bad at all. Exposition is essential. It's how we learn all the information that's occurred before the story began (or transpired off screen).

It's poorly executed exposition that you want to avoid. You want to find subtle, visual and dramatic ways to introduce exposition and explain away what we must know to understand the unfolding story.

As stated above, if one has an expository scene, it's best to put in the middle of conflict/action instead of simply stopping the story.

However, exposition can be revealed via dialogue - often best when its doled out in pieces. Some here and some there. And the audience eventually has to put it all together by themselves.

Sometimes exposition is revealed in a monologue - like Robert Shaw's USS Indiana speech in JAWS. But the script has been moving full speed ahead up until that point, and it takes a rest with the masterful monologue - having earned the talky moment.