Tight Writing Exposition Is Hard
…but when it’s done well, other writers notice and should be awed.
Case in point: In my own fields of comics and television/film, I’ve noticed and stand in awe of writers who’ve managed to ride this trick pony: John Acudi for his consistently great and tight collaboration with Mike Mignola on the “Mignolaverse”—my current favorite reading—and the writing team of Christopher McQuarrie & Eric Jendresen for the undeservedly poorly received “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One.”
In the last couple of decades the standard approach to mainstream comics has become multiple-part stories, which inherently demands complex exposition. Acudi accomplishes this in tight and entertaining casual dialogue between mostly minor characters early in his stories. In one or two pages he catches the reader up to date without bringing attention to the exposition— important in itself but particularly in a story that will eventually be combined with others to form a single story. It’s masterful and I bow in admiration.
McQuarrie and Jondresen have a different task: reintroduce their cast, explain the complex technical problem they have to solve, give the hero an emotional stake in the solution, and do it in the context of an action movie.
They do it by breaking the exposition into four (if you connect two, which I don’t, possibly five) scenes.
First, with narrative exposition over a scene of rising tension and mystery, followed by one that relaxes the tension but makes the mystery personal and reintroduces the hero; next a expository lump broken into brief bits of fast-paced dialogue between deliberately unmemorable minor characters that concludes with a connected action sequence with a reintroduction of the hero’s skills that raises the emotional stakes; and finally, ending the exposition with a reintroduction of the core team, the problem, the mystery, and the emotional stakes.
Whew. That’s a lot to tell the viewer at the start of an action movie. Yet McQuarrie and Jendresen do it by keeping the pace fast, visually interesting (McQuarrie has an advantage here because he’s also directing) and the scenes relatively short.
It’s masterful and I bow in admiration.
Pay attention next time you watch a movie, a TV episode, or read a comic (or a book; it applies to storytelling in every form, even jokes— the setup is crucial to the punchline) and notice how they handle exposition.
It might be the hardest job a writer faces.
Exposition is always a challenge. What works for me when I can is to create antagonism or some emotional situation between the characters so the exposition comes during high emotions. I also like to have more than two people so I
can break up actual exposition with personal situations having nothing to do with the expo.
Hi Gerry, I'm new to Substack and signed up for all the comics-related stuff I could find. I am a huge Cap nerd. I'm in my early 60s, and Loved your brief run in the early 70s; the DD stuff of the era was awesome as well! What are your favs (Marv is a given!).
Also, sheepishly, I started my own blog. It's mostly quirky/humorous stuff. Substack recommends reaching out to writers you like and soliciting, but it feels manipulative to me. So, ya, I hate to ask, but, if you would, pls have a glance. If you like it, maybe you could recommend it. If not, no worries. And thanks for the wonderful childhood memories! P.S. I'd send you this as a private note, but I don't know how. I said I was in my 60s!