Expositional and implied settings

[Yora]

Recently I've been playing the game Darkest Dungeon and noticed that it has what I consider to be very strong worldbuilding, but does so without any exposition. There is never any mention of places other than The Mannor and The Hamlett, no history other than the fall of the mannor, no mention of cultures, or any kind of map. Instead the setting is entirely implied. The mercenaries who arrive to fight in the dungeons are crusaders, highwaymen, occultists, and plague doctors. One dungeon is inhabited by pig men, another one by fish men and squid things. The occultist has spells that curse enemies or make tentacles appear that attack them, but also has a healing spell called Weird Reconstruction that heals a random amount of damage that can be much higher or lower than the healing of a priestess, and regardless of how much it heals can cause the target to start bleeding for several rounds. Nothing is explicitly stated as exposition, but would you want to let this guy use that spell on your wounds? There is a lot of things implied about the world simply by the things that are found within it. The magic that heroes and enemies use, and the kinds of creatures they encounter and the treasure they find.

Now this game has an outstandingly good visual art direction that greatly adds to the impliations it makes about the world, which is something that literature does not have. But in a story you can describe the looks and feels of things, as well as how the characters are perceiving them. Communicating a world to the readers through the things that are actually present in a scene and the way characters talk about things is an approach I find very intriguing. And one I think could have many advantages, though it probably isn't any less work than fleshing out a detailed history and geography for a world. The common problem with exposition is a disruption of flow of the story and making it feel like a natural element of the scene if it is presented in dialog. With an implied setting this problem can be avoided, though at the same time I see the risk of getting swamped in excessive descriptions.

But the big advantage I see is how this suggests shape without actually showing it. In any work of horror, a monster is always the most scary when you can't see all of it. You only get vague impressions of eyes over here, teeth over there, a suggestion of a tail and a quick glimpse of dark fur, but never all of it and not at the same time, which makes it impossible to tell how everything is really arranged on the body, what other parts there are, and how big it all is. When the creature is shown in its entirety and the viewer can take a good look for more than a brief moment, it's never as scary as it would otherwise be. The things that are invisible in the shadows are a crucial part of its overall appearance. Because when the brain is filling in the gaps, it's not really making an estimation of specific shapes that complete the picture of the creature. Instead the gaps are being filled with emotions. "I don't have an idea how the full creature could look like, but I am certain it is even more scary than what I am already seeing." The thing is that this emotional expectation is more scary than any possible shape that could be hidden under the shadows. No matter how much effort and creativity you put into it, the shadow will always create stronger emotions than any revealed things.
And the same thing applies to magical wonder. If you want to make something feel magical, wondrous, and mystical, suggestions and implications of what is really going on will always be more emotionally evocative than anything you could outright state. So when I decided to create a world that feels wondrous, dreamlike, and mystical, I made the choice not to give it a history and only a very rough pencil sketch for a map to help me stay consistent with compass directions as characters are travelling.

A consequence of this that I am seeing is that stories in this world would have to stay small scale, as there isn't really any big picture about politics snd regional issues. It's a world that only exist within the range of perception of the characters.

 

[skip.knox]

Pretty much any kind of contemporary fiction does this. There's no need to describe the world that we all inhabit, so the author can take it for granted. This frees the author to concentrate on small things, such as the details of a police procedural, the twists and turns of wedding planning, or the details of nuclear submarines. As you say, no need to describe the larger context.

But certain kinds of fantasy are all about the world, and that's fine. In Senlin Ascends, for example, the author has to explain to us the whole bizarre world of the Tower of Babel (as he has conceived it), which is composed of multiple bizarre worldlets within. One technique he uses is one I've seen used elsewhere: we see this world first as its public face, as it were. As the travel brochures would have it. Chapter by chapter we discover all sorts of secrets and wonders. In other words, learning about the world is actually part of the adventure.

 

[Yora]

I very much enjoy highly rich worlds, and actually think there isn't really enough of that yet. But I am looking into alternatives to presenting such worlds through exposition. I think you can give a lot of impressions about the setting through things that are present in the scenes. The reader won't know for certain what things are or how they work, but they can get pretty clear assumptions about it. And if you aim for wonder and mystery, I find assumptions to be much more effective than knowledge.

 

[skip.knox]

Yes! I'll reference Verne again. Read any of his famous novels and you'll find an almost overwhelming amount of exposition. That approach simply does not hold up today.

That said, the word exposition has more nuance than is sometimes accorded it. Often I see the word used as a synonym for infodump, a term I've ranted about before. Pages and pages of nothing but describing the religious systems of your various races? Blech. But let's go to the other extreme. How about describing the royal palace as having a copper roof gone green with age? That's exposition, too.

In Mad House I have an ogre. Now, in Altearth, ogres value a contract most highly. Once they agree to a contract, they do not break it. I could try to show that, by having John Golly react in various situations that demonstrate his adherence to a certain code of conduct, but that would detract from the focus of the novelette. So I just say it. Ogres don't break a contract. If I only say it and don't show it, then I've wasted my breath. But by saying it first, I need show it only once, in a way that contributes to the story. So there's another case where a bit of exposition carries its weight.

All that is by way of agreeing with you, Yora. My first instinct is to describe, to resort to exposition. This is particularly true when introducing some fantastical element into the story because of course I have to explain it, right? I might even do so in the first draft. But my ShowTell radar improves with every writing, and where I see it, and where it makes sense, I'll suggest and imply and show. Because you hit it exactly right: the reader wants to discover wonders, not have them served up like a roast on a platter.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Oh, I have to quibble... A copper roof gone green with age sounds more like simple description, not exposition in a literary sense.

The royal palace stood on the horizon, its copper roof gone green with age = description

if you continue with...

Its marble walls were built during the reign of Oglosus the Terrible, and its halls had been painted with blood during the uprising that ended his empire = exposition.

 

[Yora]

I think you can expose (?) entirely through description.

"The royal palace stood on the horizon, its copper roof gone green with age. Nicks from sword blades could still be discerned on the blocks of marble, many of which had cracked as if under intense heat, while sickly brown stains were clinging to the seams."

That would be the kind of implied exposition that I mean, as opposed to the explicit exposition from Demesne's example. The readers won't know what has happened, but they will get a general idea of what did.

 

[skip.knox]

I don't think exposition can be defined as purely a matter of volume. It must be a qualitative difference. Gotta agree with Yora here (except we won't see nicks from sword blades if the thing is out on the horizon!)

"The royal palace stood on the horizon, its copper roof gone green with age. A hundred years before, a terrible siege conducted by the wild Knoxites left the building scarred by a thousand weapons, seared by sorcerous fires. The brown stains were the last visible signs of the terrible curse laid upon the land by the Knoxite mages as they retreated before the royal armies who had showed up at the last minute."

Blech. I call it shoehorning, sometimes. Forcing information into the narrative. If the story at this point is to find the treasure secreted beneath the palace, then none of that history is needed; instead, we need sensory information and mood. If it's important to know about the wild Knoxites and their fearsome mages, then let us meet them face to face and get scared, and we can get to the treasure in another chapter.

But I'll still not use exposition as a pejorative. There's good writing and bad writing. Exposition is like any other aspect of writing, like dialog. It's not intrinsically good or bad, to be avoided or cultivated. It's merely what the literature major notices as part of the term paper.

 

[FifthView]

Yora, it seems to me that you are treading that line between showing and telling. If you show the castle rather that explain its history...well, this implied history/background is exactly that type of rich subtext we expect from showing.

 

[Yora]

Yes. I think that would be all showing, no telling.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I think you can expose (?) entirely through description.

"The royal palace stood on the horizon, its copper roof gone green with age. Nicks from sword blades could still be discerned on the blocks of marble, many of which had cracked as if under intense heat, while sickly brown stains were clinging to the seams."

That would be the kind of implied exposition that I mean, as opposed to the explicit exposition from Demesne's example. The readers won't know what has happened, but they will get a general idea of what did.

Expository description is possible but it’s also limited in its functionality. Sword nicks on the marble? I need exposition to explain that one, heh heh. That’s hard on swords. But really it’s mostly just description with a hint of background exposition... there was a battle. Or, somebody really had a thing against marble... or their swords. I’m not sure which. Maybe it means something else entirely, I don’t know.

One can blend description and exposition, but its usefulness is limited.

And a fun additional tangent, an info dump can be “showing” because dialogue is inherently showing... hence the hideous Allanon conversation in the Sword of Shannara. And of course, exposition does not equal info dump, info dump is the excess of exposition in one giant spoonful.

And enough cold-medicine-addled babbling from me.

 

[skip.knox]

Dude, never addle your cold medicine.