How to explain complicated things
Penguin March 17th, 2008
Source: John August
boring bits of a movie are generally the first things to get trimmed out in an edit, these crucial explanatory moments are likely to get dropped unless they’re written extremely carefully, in the (often misguided) theory that no information is better than boring information.
Keep it short. The audience doesn’t need to care about how your contraption or whatever works. Stargate got it right. Whenever Carter would get into some technobabble, O’Neil would just cut her off.
Use a supporting character. Make sure the character has a function beyond exposition. A villain is a classic choice of this. Just don’t explain everything right before your hero’s death. Another solution is to have your hero “pursue the Answer Man” so there will be a sense of progress.
Let them figure it out. The best way to do this is to build scenes where their discovery is organic and moves the story forward. “A great recent example is the videogame Portal (from the Orange Box), in which the player has to learn how to control a physics-defying device.” In other words, let the characters experiment.
Pre-empt the questions.
For instance, the make-believe science of precognition in Minority Report raised a huge number of causality issues, which you could easily spend the whole movie trying to address.
But it was meant to be a thriller, not a head-scratcher, so I added a scene in which a skeptic (Witwer) catches a glass ball just as it rolls off a table… by showing it as something visual and physical, we’ve preempted endless questions about the physics and ethics of their legal system.
Similies and metaphors. By relating to something that’s easy to understand or easy to visualize, you’ll clue in your audience without getting into the nitty gritty.
Show a clip. “Obviously, it’s not always possible or appropriate for your characters to stop what they’re doing to watch a film. But if it makes sense in context, it’s worth considering. Just keep it entertaining, and brief.”
Related posts“Entertaining and brief” is good advice no matter which method you choose for presenting difficult information. Done artfully, the reader should never sense that he’s being told anything. It was just story. To that end, avoid scenes which could be summarized, “Hero learns…” That’s a tip-off that your character is listening rather seeking, observing rather than participating. “Discovering” is an action. So are “confronting,” “exploring,” and “testing.” Put your characters to work, and the audience will never realize they’re getting an explanation.
