Good Ways to Reveal Exposition

[Evan]

What's a good way to present the history of your world without having to resort to full on exposition dumps?

To clarify, there's about 500 years of general history that I want to cover. It's not immediately pivotal to the current story, but it's more of the origin story for how everything became the way it is.
I've thought about poking fun at exposition dumps by making it that the readers were seeing an actual history class from that world, but I want to know if there's a better option.

[nessiefynn]

I think it would help if you broke up your exposition instead of putting it all in one long dump. You could reveal a few facts here and there whenever they become relevant, and let your readers figure out the overall backstory as your comic progresses.
It could also help to have an in-universe reason for giving the exposition. Say you might have a character who's new in town, and doesn't know the history, and is wondering why X thing in the world is the way it is, then another character could explain it to them.

I would avoid doing an exposition dump just to make fun of it in-comic. Personally, I'm not fond of that because it just shows that the author knows that this isn't the best way to deliver exposition, but is doing so anyways.

[AnnaLandin]

As far as I'm concerned, the general rule on exposition is to do as little of it as you can possibly get away with, and try your best to incorporate it into conversation and the actions of the characters rather than as big blocks of information dumped on the reader.

To clarify, there's about 500 years of general history that I want to cover. It's not pivotal to the current story, but it's more of the origin story for how everything became the way it is.

If it's not absolutely essential to the immediate situation the characters find themselves in, don't do it. Drop a fragment here and there if you must, but really. We don't need 500 years of history. We need things like "Do group A and group B hate each other? If yes, why?" and "is the place we're going to over here or over there?", and "What big plot-important item and what does it do?" in as few words as possible. I'm talkinga single speechbubble or two.

Necessary details only. If you're desperate to share your worldbuilding info, do a special separate post on it, or whatever, but don't plonk it right into the story.

Think of it like this. Are you able to function in your daily life IRL without knowing 500 years of world history by heart? I'm going to guess yes, yes you are. Then your characters are too - and your readers will be able to cope without those 500 years of history as well. Just give them the absolute necessities, and space it out so it doesn't get dumped on them all at once.

[digitalvalium1]

Anything you can do through character action is better than an info dump. Having characters run up against, and complain about antiquated rules, or the Kafka-esque "permit is required to enter, but you must first enter to apply for a permit."

Show is always better than tell. It might be wise to add another character. A wise old man or bookish girls are popular choices, and serve as expository dumps at appropriate times without having to write out exposition as they'll naturally direct action towards rules, behaviors and cultural artifacts that build the world.

[shazzbaa]

It's not pivotal to the current story, but it's more of the origin story for how everything became the way it is.

Then why include it at all?

World-building stuff is fun, but only if it actually pertains to the world that we can see. Like, in my story, there's a huge racial/holy war in the southern country of Ilvanov and there's some slavery and biological warfare going on and etc etc, but the only way it affects the story I'm telling right now is, there are a bunch of people who are refugees from the war in Ilvanov. So, that last piece there? That's the only exposition I need. One character off-handedly mentions losing everything when he ran away to this country; there's a mention when meeting another Ilvan character of "oh, are you a refugee?" and bam. Exposition complete. I would have no reason to explain the war and how it began to my readers unless it directly impacts the story.

When information applies to the things we experience, it's a lot easier to exposit -- it's something that's not weird for characters to talk about because it affects their lives. If you were going to tell a story that takes place in the fantasy world of America, for example, it wouldn't be necessary to explain George Washington and the American Revolution -- but it might be necessary to talk about the country's history of slavery since those effects linger. But you wouldn't have to share it in any kind of big infodump - it'd be easy to encounter someone just talking about it, because it's relevant.
Any exposition is gonna sound more natural if it's a character talking about their life rather than explaining the way their world is. "As you know, in this country we hold an election to vote for our president every four years" sounds weird and stilted. But,

"Election's coming up, are you gonna vote?"
"Nah."
"What! Come on man, this determines the president we have for the next four years! It's important!"

is a conversation I can imagine actually happening in real life, and it shares the exact same information.

I've thought about poking fun at exposition dumps by making it that the readers were seeing an actual history class from that world

Poking fun at a thing and then doing the thing anyway doesn't actually help much! It's revealing information in the exact same clunky way as an infodump, so it's still going to have all the problems of an infodump: readers can't retain the information because they don't have a reason to care about it yet. So I wouldn't advise it!

[tomatobird]

I agree w/ what @shazzbaa said, if it's not immediately pivotal to your story you should leave it out, ESPECIALLY in the beginning, and find ways to sprinkle in info as you go along. Think about what do these characters take for granted in their world, what's ordinary to them? Even if say this is fantasy/scifi and things are done completely differently, having a character go through their "ordinary" routine establishes to readers what is normal for them. Characters, unlike gods or authors, have a very limited scope in what's important to them and what they know/interact with, and audiences learn more about the world through the character's relationships both with other characters and with the world...

Sorry if this is wordy, and its definitely much more easier said than done. I'd say look at other works of fiction with intense worldbuilding that set it up well. For example, Steven Universe has extremely complex worldbuilding that covers over 50000 years, with a ton of stuff about wars, an alien race, their hierarchies and social order, but all this information is pretty gradually revealed to the audience as the main character learns more. Thats a p straightforward way of doing it, if the protagonist is initially ignorant and they learn as they go along. Avatar: The Last Airbender also has a very complex world that the inhabitants take for granted. There are new things about the world that the characters learn more as they travel and participate in the story, but there are also a few basic things that are normal to them. No one has to sit the audience down and explain to them why and how there are people with bending powers, it's just assumed to be normal, and only later do we slowly learn the origins of that.

Ultimately, I think the most important thing would be whatever the history is, what matters is the character's relationship with their history. Even in real life, relate to their history in very different ways. A person whose family went through a lot of historical trauma is going to be much more connected and aware of their background and heritage than maybe someone whose family was rather well off and never needed to think about it. If someone was on the "winning" side of history, they would probably be much less inclined to be angry than someone who was on the "losing" side. And someone who lived through dramatic events is going to have a much deeper understanding than someone who only read about it in a newspaper or heard about it through word of mouth.

Also when it comes to the landscape and scenery: what things speak to the history of the place? this is great for visual storytelling. In real life, we have statues and memorials dedicated to famous people and events that happened, but most everyday folks pass by them without a thought–just one example.

[tayo_rafferty]

It's not pivotal to the current story

Then don't mention it at all. If the reader doesn't need to know something then don't tell them. Everything should contribute to the narrative, if some moment in your story is not adding to the narrative then it is contextually redundant.

[trinkettrancemusic]

@nessiefynn and @AnnaLandin nailed it.

Sneaking in details in the background is another fun way to expand on the world history without disrupting the narrative flow.

[DMBrigman]

I think it is important that the author knows how all this stuff happened so the plot can remain consistent, but as mentioned in the previous replies the reader doesn't have to know. World building is a fun exercise for a writer, not so much for the reader who has to slog through it.

It is also important to remember that your readers will have consumed other media, and will be primed to expect and be familiar with a lot of things. If you say a certain group of people are treated as inferior, then people get that, if something is forbidden, that this is the main religion, people get that because it relates to our own world.

@shazzbaa excellent example about the election really drives this point home. If your world has a king that comes with expectations, you don't have to explain how the whole kingdom works or how inheritance works.

Less is more, and sometimes it is for the best. Think about fan theories, people are more than willing to connect the dots and extrapolate from the info they are given.

[J.Z.Castillo]

You can slowly reveal things as your character learns. In my comic, MC finds out about his situation by watching TV or reading the news, but that only reveals surface value stuff and he doesn't see the full picture until he is thrown into the situation himself. I try to make exposition happen as organically as I can, whether through conversation between characters or background tidbits of information. I believe @shazzbaa gave great examples.

[Devika]

If you want a specific example to look at for great exposition, play or watch let's plays of the game The Talos Principle! (I recommend playing it, it's pretty cheap by now I think, and available for PC and PS4 if I'm not mistaken. And googling/videos might spoil it.)

You can tell that there's a lot of worldbuilding behind the game, and that an extreme amount of thought went into it, and yet the way they deliver all that to you is in the best, and the most extreme form: By telling you nothing.

How does that even work? Well, they tell you nothing in two ways:
1. You know nothing when the game begins. You don't know what kind of world you are in. Ours? A real or fictional one? Past, future, present? All you know is that you are some sort of robot, that you woke up all alone, in the middle of silent ancient roman ruins, there's a disembodied sky-voice sometimes talking to you, and a 90's computer. Literally anything could be going on. You just don't know... And that's the joy of it all. It hooks you.
2. They literally don't tell you what is going on. It's all "show". Fragmented, corrupted files on the random computers you find and scattered QR codes are your only hints as you try to make sense of the world around you (and solve really cool puzzles).

It's like leaving you in a desert, and you scour the place for the smallest hint of water. It's engrossing, as it only gives you a taste big enough for you to want more. The details of the execution might be a little different from a comic or a book, since you have agency as a player, but the idea is definitely very much applicable to other medias. Less is more!