Hide your exposition

Nothing grinds a gripping narrative to a halt quite like an exposition dump.

There you are, an unsuspecting audience member thrilling to intrigue, romance, and high stakes action when one of the characters suddenly stops to explain the setting’s complicated monetary system.  This narrative pitfall is all too common and, with some effort, can be avoided.  
First, consider worldbuilding to be the context of your story.  Your characters already live in it, they are already aware of its rules.  They shouldn’t be constantly explaining things to each other unless it deals with an individual character’s expertise or if it adds conflict.    
Second, exposition/worldbuilding should be parsed out over the course of your story.  Putting everything at the beginning or ending of your narrative can be disastrous for pacing and engagement.  
Third, not every detail that is in your head needs to be on the page.  Sometimes backstory is better left inferred or as knowledge that you as the author has to drive character behavior.
Fourth, in a visual medium take full advantage of your backgrounds.  What kind of architecture is in this world?  What sort of tools, shops or goods exist.  What foods are people eating?  These visual cues can tell your audience a lot without a bit of dialogue.    

Fifth, world building applies to telling every kind of story, not just fantasy/sci-fi.  Wotakoi is concerned with modern romance among otaku in corporate Japan.  Its sense of place and time is just as important as post-apocalyptic Earth is to Fist of the North Star.    
An excellent example of well done worldbuilding is Star Wars: A New Hope.  The dialogue gives just enough details to flavor the universe while the visuals do a lot of heavy lifting.  
“Mos Eisley Spaceport.  You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”  A single line of dialogue establishes the locale.  Then the film actively shows you the unsavory customers of the cantina filled with fantastical aliens and down on their luck humans.  Within moments of arrival, Luke is drawn into a bar fight and Obi-Wan cuts off the assailant’s hand.  Do we ever find out these background characters’ names or the species?  No.  Why?  Because it doesn’t matter.   
There are numerous instances of this style of storytelling throughout the film.  What are the Clone Wars?  It doesn’t matter; all the audience needs to know is that it was a war and that’s how Obi-Wan knows Luke and Leia’s parents.  
What are the Jedi Knights?  Old timey warrior space monks who have mostly been forgotten.  Fantastic, no additional knowledge needed.  

​Yes, many of these things were later expanded upon in other media (to varying degrees of success) but in 1977, the audience only got those basic ideas.  
Conversely, exposition dumps can be used for humorous effect.  In Dungeon Meshi, the protagonist Laois frequently goes on long tangents about the monster-of-the-week.  This works because, although his appearance is that of the typical stalwart fantasy hero, Laois is, in fact, a huge nerd.  In another chapter, the Captain of the Canaries tries to explain his tragic backstory and is actively told by Kabru to condense the characters and the narrative since he has to tell it to someone else later.  
Although the last example is a joke, it also serves as a good rule of thumb: can you explain your world to another person without getting bogged down in the details?  It is okay to get lost in the glory of creating your own world, but the key as a storyteller is to make sure that it is a sharable and accessible world.

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Carrie Thresher

Carrie Thresher is the author of Pretty Yokai girls, an excellent story teller, lover of sharks and a certain crispy umbrella.