Your comic has some cool worldbuilding lore that ties into your plot and characters in some fun ways and you’re excited to show it off to readers. But how do you explain these things without putting everything else in the story on hold? How do you use prologues, how do you explain the gods/creation myths, how do you set up the custom jargon? And how do you avoid scaring readers away with a big infodump? Let’s get into all the different techniques you can use!

Once again, a lot of this episode is opinions or personal experience, so I marked the timestamps so you can hear our hosts' share their stories.

2:30 - Our hosts share examples of moments or concepts in their comics where they handled exposition either poorly or well.

The next question is answered throughout the entire episode. For best results, give it a listen!

How do you make sure your exposition doesn’t stall the story’s flow and isn’t boring?

40:39 - Do you have any advice for other creators about balancing exposition with plot?

Some Bonus Tips:

When deciding what to include, make sure you have a clear view of which bits of your worldbuilding/plot/character backstories are critical for reader understanding

Try to avoid taking a pause from the story every time a character needs to catch up a different character on events.

Be careful of using jargon that may not be known to your readers. Use it in obvious context for the first couple times so that it can be inferred or have it explained by the characters or something similar.

How you say the thing is more important than what’s being said.

Remember to make use of your art and backgrounds to aid you in providing the exposition you need.

Motivated delivery: if it must be explained in story dialogue, WHO is talking, and WHY? (Why these characters, why now? Who wants to hear this?)

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Episode Release Date: March 30, 2022

Episode Credits:

Claire Niebergall (@phantomarine) - she/her, phantomarine.com

Kristen Lee (@feathernotes) - she/they, ghostjunksickness.com lunarblight.com

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.