: Drama is conflict, while exposition are facts. All stories have facts, but the facts themselves are not the storytelling. Sometimes I use this analogy. If storytelling is motion, facts

Drama is conflict, while exposition are facts. All stories have facts, but the facts themselves are not the storytelling. Sometimes I use this analogy. If storytelling is motion, facts are the brakes. Hit the brakes too often and the whole thing grinds to a halt. This creates one of the big dilemmas of storytelling. How many facts can safely be provided (or how can they be conveyed) without disrupting the story itself?

The principle of exposition in ammunition (facts in drama), is a strategy for safely providing factual information without disrupting or pausing the storytelling. If two characters are old friends, inform the audience by having the characters argue. If their insults suggest an intimate knowledge of each other, than the audience catches their established relationship without the author explicitly informing them.

The advantage of this approach is to merge fact and storytelling together. This avoids the 5 pages of story. Pause. 2 pages of information. Pause. 7 pages of storytelling... You get the idea.

Not sure what your teacher meant by backstory in this context save that authors often struggle to convey the facts of a character's backstory through exposition - often leading to the dreaded prologue or flashback both of which tend to become story-stopping, data-dumps.

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: What are jobs that prefer or require MFAs in Creative Writing? Other than getting adjunct work with your shiny new MFA, what other professions like them? (I'm gainfully employed, and while I

: Drama is conflict, while exposition are facts. All stories have facts, but the facts themselves are not the storytelling. Sometimes I use this analogy. If storytelling is motion, facts

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: How can I create my own deadline? I'm very responsible when I'm writing a tech book or article under contract. I have a deadline, my editor is expecting my work, and I turn it in on time.

: How do I find an affordable editor? I wrote a few chapters of a book several years ago. How do I find an affordable editor?

: Quoting text from a country with different internationalization I'm writing my doctoral dissertation here in the United States, and quoting some text from an English-language paper written in Germany.

: What are jobs that prefer or require MFAs in Creative Writing? Other than getting adjunct work with your shiny new MFA, what other professions like them? (I'm gainfully employed, and while I

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