How do you avoid "as you know" exposition?

TV Tropes refers to "As You Know" exposition as information shoehorned into dialogue for the audiences' benefit, even though characters talking should've known about it already. Thus them explaining it to each other would in universe would be awkward and redundant. With my hypothetical scenario, how do you avoid "As You Know" while setting up important information for your readers?

In this hypothetical story, a generic nobleman had conceived a son with the daughter of his castle’s blacksmith. Although the nobleman never officially acknowledged his illegitimate child for political reasons, he did permit him to periodically intermingle with his trueborn sisters. For most of his childhood, the bastard was raised by his mother’s family.

Once the bastard turned 15, with his father's blessing, he became a low ranking castle guard. This was done to remove a potential threat to his legitimate daughters’ claimant to succession, without curbing him out altogether. However, if the bastard proves himself, he might be awarded with a more prestigious occupation.

With this in mind, how you would inform the audience of the bastard's familial connections to his ruling nobles, without resorting to "as you know?"

Here are some of my ideas:

1.The bastard is having a conversation with his fellow guards. One of them asks him, if he knows what the nobles are currently planning with the upcoming winter festival or something. He answers them with "No, I don't." They then respond with an "Aren't you the duke's bastard son?" type question. The bastard follows up with something on the lines of "Yeah, but they don't tell me everything."

2.One of the bastard's legitimate sisters has called for him in private. Once he arrives in her room, he gives her a standard greeting etiquette, like he would with any other nobles. Paraphrased, she responds with "There is no need for such formalities here. Right now in private, we're just brother and sister." The noblewoman then proceeds to inform the bastard of her plans for him and some form of general life advice.

3.Last not but least, introduce an outsider (probably a passing merchant) who isn't aware of the family dynamics, as a stand in for the audience. The merchant is conversing a business deal one of his legitimate sisters and her husband, and noticed their daughter addressing the bastard as "uncle." Confused on why a noble born child would refer to a lowly guard as "uncle", he asks her parents about it. They inform of how he's related to them.

 

There's a difference between an important backstory that needs to be covered and Maid and Butler talk. It depends on the execution, "as you know."

I think there are ways to do this, but I don't know if the ones you suggest would be realistic in a medieval setting. No way guards would talk to even an illegitimate heir that way, and I don't think the sisters would be told. I find it unlikely the illegitimate heir would even be near the castle, it's just messy (although I know one story of a claimant defeated as a pre-teen becoming a falconer of the new ruling house).

You mainly want to avoid true maid and butler talk like

"Hey Harold, where is Godwin, it's time for the changing of the guard?"

"I don't know. As you know, Godwin is the illegitimate heir to the throne, he just got the job because the King wanted to offer him some role within the Kingdom."

 

As a little nitpick I would like to make clear, the bastard in this scenario isn't an heir to anything. The duke deliberately gave him a lowly occupation just to ensure that he doesn't threaten the inheritance of his legitimate daughters, without tossing him aside altogether. Other then that, I agree with the points you made in your response.

 

Oh, I didn't notice that he was just a generic nobleman. Depending on the setting, it still may be problematic to have him intermingle with the legitimate daughters. I'm not sure how realistic that would be, especially of the original wife is still alive.

 

I don't know how plausible this is, but I'm picturing that the duke's wife in this scenario is mostly indifferent to him and her husband's other bastard children. As long as the bastard(s) don't pose a danger to her and her daughters' present and future holdings, she has no problems turning a blind eye towards them. At the most, she is a little annoyed by her husband's "games behind her back", but understands that it's almost customary for noblemen to have mistresses on the side.

 

I wrote a trilogy where I featured "as you know" prominently, just to see if I could. The main character was a newly crowned king and his chief advisor spent a lot of time effectively saying "as you know" to bring him up to speed without him feeling discouraged for being ignorant.

 

From years of growing my writing skills and revising the book I am working on, it turns out you don't need to explain a lot of backstory to the reader. It's actually better if you don't. Let the backstory unfold as you go.

All three of your options look great to me. I like #3: A person unfamiliar with the situation asking about it. That is if this piece of the story needs to be revealed here and if the reference to 'uncle' fits with the rest of the story. Be careful that the stranger asking actually has a role in the story. Otherwise it might seem like a loose end.

It could be people in the street or in the market gossiping about the bastard as he walks by.

1 and 2 aren't bad. Again it needs to flow with the story.

 

Yeah, I think it is often better to slowly reveal it through the story (unless the OP wants to make it a big reveal later, but sounds like it needs to be explained early in the narrative).

I think holding off on revealing his true origins is a good option as long as you given the readers some hints early.

Like maybe he gets into a fight with one of the other guards that questions his capabilities and training. Something like:

"Do you think we believe a bastard son of the blacksmith's daughter somehow proved himself worthy of guarding the castle?"

 

Your options seem pretty good. I think #3 would work best if it comes from an audaciously perceptive outsider (perhaps a fellow bastard), rather than a merely curious one. "Don't act naive. I've seen how you look at him. I looked at my father the same way for years." I would make sure the scene is serving the plot in other ways, too, though. I think that's what makes "as you know" stand out is that it's usually the entire point of the scene or conversation and delivered with a flat-soda approach.

It could also be faintly featured in a few scenes. It doesn't take much to get the readers' cogs turning. They are almost always more clever than the writer gives them credit, I find:
1. Why is that woman so casual and comfortable around him (first name basis), but relatively curt to the other guards?
2. Room temperature drops 20°C whenever the noble's wife is around. Perhaps his post is always carefully arranged to be far away from her chambers.
3. Could top if off with a dramatic moment where one of the sisters kindly calls him Brother at the end of an exchange, or he defiantly calls one of them Sister.

GRR Martin had a sort of similar situation with John Snow in aSoFaI. I couldn't really get through the book, but maybe you'll have more luck and catch some hints on how he did it. That said, I remember some complaints that he was too angsty/whiny to be very likeable, for what it's worth. It's also been too long since I watched the show to remember how it was handled in the first season.

 

I, for one, like your suggestions.

 

Introduce a character who doesn't know anything and have the other characters explain the situation to him.

 

Another option used a lot--just tell the reader directly. Not in the context of a conversation that ends up being an 'as you know' or some trick to avoid it. Just present the information directly and move on.

 

The TV show "Scandal" started from the POV of a young attorney who was recently hired and joined the law firm. We followed her around as she learned about the law firm from other characters. After the exposition was done, the character was demoted to a minor role because the show wasn't about her.

 

How do you avoid "as you know" exposition?

You could replace it with "As everyone in our society, which is based entirely on the export of the heebly gweeblefig, is well aware..."

Sorry. Sometimes I can't help myself. I should seek counseling...

 

I have one simple rule for dealing with this. Just say no. Just don't do it. Leave it out. Write the story. Novels are long. Act like it. At first I though that idea was crazy. Then after the first dozen books I realized it's one of the most rational things I ever did for my work. It's going to drive you crazy, though, until you get used to not writing the essays and cleaning off the desk, like they taught you in school, but instead write the novel by engaging in meaningful scenes and content. For the most part, exposition is just an admission that you've not found the story, yet, anyway. It also helps to know that you are in control of the entire concept of your work. If the concept requires tons of exposition, it's your fault.

 

Okay, I'll be that guy.

This is the first mention that there are other bastard children. How is THIS bastard child a potential threat to the legitimate children, but the others aren't? If it's because he is male and the legitimate children are female, does the system of inheritance in this world place illegitimate males higher in the line of inheritance than legitimate females? If that's so ... then how does making him a palace guard in any way negate the potential threat to the legitimate daughters?

 

Ooh, interesting experiment! I'm curious, did you get any feedback from readers about it? Did anyone even notice enough to mention it?

 

The cult-of-mediocrity: "Show don't tell" they say. And then "Don't exposit."

Two suggestions to the OP:-
1. Try replacing "as you know" with "as I know," and give the character an interesting take on whatever the storyworld elements are. Then if the reader is sick of storyworld clutter, they've got some character - or vice versa
2. Use gimmicks. "When the hurlyburly's done // When the battle's lost and won. // That will be ere the set of sun." < that's shoehorned exposition in the form of a rhyming witch-prophecy

 

I don't recall anyone saying anything about it specifically but people seemed to like it.

 

Thanks, good to know. I think writers can sometimes get caught up in being perfect and "pure" and lose focus on how their work affects the reader–who often cares a lot more about the story and characters than the little technical detail writers love to debate.

 

I’ve never really understood why it’s felt information has to be given to the reader ‘naturally’, in dialogue. If the reader needs to know something, just tell them. Scoresese does it all the time in his mafia films, with a narrator directly addressing the viewers to give them the whats and whys.

 

Yes. Poking a bunch of info into conversations is transparently the writer interfering with the flow of the story. It's like Clark Kent with glasses. I mean, Clark puts on these glasses, and all of a sudden Superman disappears. "Where'd he go? I thought I saw him come in this room, a minute ago!" Then you not only have the writer dumping a bunch of stupid backstory or expose on us, but we now have two stagnant actors boring the crap out of us in some kind of talking head situation, which is always the worst way to do almost anything.

Which is why the third option is almost always the way to go: JUST SAY NO. Don't do it. Move forward with story, and pretend like your novel might be more than four pages long.

When I first started writing novels, I filled the first few pages with expose, not even knowing I was doing it. After a few months I'd look it over and apply the power of thirds. One third was completely unnecessary. Another third would find a way into the work over the course of the novel. That left a third, which I figured was a big success, but as time has gone on, I find that final third to still be suspect, and at least something that can emerge naturally while in process. I mean, we have two broader ways to do this: One, stop and expose. Two, move along and expose. In either case we are getting the info out, but in the former case we are telling the reader to put the book down and move to the next one on the shelf.

 

I'd say it's the same kind of thing as Showing and Telling. Somehow it gets misconstrued as One Good, The Other Bad, which is an oversimplification.

The big problem there is that beginners usually have no clue that showing exists, how to do it well, or even how to do telling well and when it's appropriate. And the ubiquitousness of the phrase 'Show Don't Tell' isn't helping, it only serves to further separate the two and demonize one of them.

Exposition isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it's far too often overdone, or done poorly, and most beginners have no idea there are other ways to get information across. They need to learn about some of the other ways, and how exposition can be made interesting.

But most people's minds tend to divide everything up into these simple dichotomies and then decide one side is good and the other is bad.

The biggest problem isn't exposition, it's infodumping, which is exposition on steroids. Our job is to show them other ways to get information across, to make them aware that massive indigestible lumps of exposition are to be avoided, how it can be made more palatable, and ways to distribute information across swathes of dialogue, action, and narration without bringing the story to a full halt for three pages.

The worst offender is several solid pages of nothing but exposition at the beginning of a story, before any characters are introduced or the story is set in motion.

 

Yes! ZZZzzzzz. That book’s going back on the shelf, never to be picked up again.