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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.12.129.13
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 05:34 pm:   

I keep reading and hearing that exposition in dialogue is to be avoided at all costs...

I don't understand that point of view. I know when it's done clumsily there's nothing worse

"Hey Sis, what time are we going to the party at the old haunted barn miles from anywhere where even our mobile phones don't work and there's been rumours of a psycho zombie rapist..."

but when done well, it can lift a story or shatter the reader... as quoted in the Cujo thread - "How long has he been dead?" or chapter 38 (i think) of Silent Children are great examples of how dialogue can tell us the story.

As long as the dialogue feels natural, I see no reason not to throw in huge plot developments...

Part of this attitude of mine stems from the fact that the first things I really wrote were plays, where 90% of the exposition has to be through the character's dialogue.

I do set myself certain rules. If I need to let the audience know that a pair of characters are siblings I will not have them call each other Bro or Sis, coz that NEVER happens in real life; instead I'll have one of them refer to their parents eg "Mum wants you to phone her." If they weren't siblings there would be a My at the start of the sentence.

If I want to allude to the fact that the barn is miles from anywhere, I'll have a character ask directions to it.

Exposition in dialogue is good - when done right, like everything else in writing.
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Kate (Kathleen)
Username: Kathleen

Registered: 09-2009
Posted From: 86.137.108.144
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 06:58 pm:   

Eh? My brother and I call each other "bro" and "sis". But yeah, it's probably a lazy and less interesting way to convey the info in a story.

And I don't have any problem with exposition in dialogue. When it comes to creative endeavours there's no unequivocal right vs. wrong way to do *anything* as far as I'm concerned. If you can do something well, there's no reason not to do it. Someone like Stephen King can get away with anything but certainly not everyone can.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 08:18 pm:   

I like exposition done in dialogue - it's more more interesting, and more difficult to pull of. I mean, it's easy to say in the prose "The barn was miles from anywhere." But I'd much rather glean that fact from dialogue. Back story is better done through dialogue, I think: it avoids tedious clunky narrative.

But I don't know shit from shinola. In fact, I don't even know what shinola is.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.24.131
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 09:18 pm:   

He used to play for Spurs, didn't he? Left wing.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.165.39.12
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 09:31 pm:   

A fiction author is more like a goal-keeper than a striker.
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Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker)
Username: Stephen_theaker

Registered: 12-2009
Posted From: 92.232.184.206
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 09:50 pm:   

Proofreaders are the goalkeepers - you can save the team a hundred times but people remember the ones that get past you...
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 10:04 pm:   

A good proofreader is worth their weight on goals.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.96.253.77
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 10:05 pm:   

in inininininininininin

in

Fucking. Typos.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 09-2010
Posted From: 86.165.39.12
Posted on Friday, April 01, 2011 - 10:12 pm:   

Ah, there are many ways that metaphor can work. I think the goalkeeper helps to keep the ball in play - and if a goal is scored suspension is lost. (Suspension between reader and writer, with creative dribbling, and no climax, only future dreams of the crowd's eternal roaring and chanting - no going home - just potential goals). If a goal is scored, all fantasy ends and scoring off each other wins. Life was about winning and losing? perhaps. But Fiction is the state where everone wins in a continuous no score draw between death and life. Ligottian goalessness...
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.24.131
Posted on Saturday, April 02, 2011 - 08:10 am:   

But that's not one of them.

:-)
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.31.24.131
Posted on Saturday, April 02, 2011 - 08:12 am:   

Jesus is like a good striker. Always on the end of a cross.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Saturday, April 02, 2011 - 11:18 am:   

And he turned the other cheek in the showers...
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, April 05, 2011 - 06:04 pm:   

No one, in my experience, is better at unobtrusive expositional dialogue than Robert A. Heinlein... just one of the many reasons he vies with Ramsey Campbell as my favourite genre author.

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