What does exposition mean in reading

Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song.

The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept. Martin is able to share insights into Catelyn personally, while also expanding on his worldbuilding , giving insight into religious norms and practices in a natural way. Here, Orwell makes a digression from the action of the scene, the Two Minutes Hate, to give explanatory context to this act, and to provide more background history for his world.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust.

Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago how long ago, nobody quite remembered , had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure.

Orwell takes the opportunity to establish who Emmanuel Goldstein is at a time when he has naturally appeared within the action, meaning the break from the plot is less jarring. The first person narration of Huck Finn allows Twain to easily establish key details about Huck and his story. Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold.

It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. The narration of Amma, one of twelve point of view characters in Girl, Woman, Other , frequently digresses as it follows Amma through the day her new play will open at the National Theatre.

This snippet of her internal monologue not only gives us insight into Amma as a person, and her underlying insecurities, but also provides more background information on her and her storied career as a playwright.

Insomnia, then eternal sleep — held apart from one by death and the other by life, brought closer to one by life and the other by death, and the rain, the rain, the rain, the rain, the rain.

This passage establishes key information about Mary Debenham, through the internal monologue of Poirot upon seeing her for the first time. There was only one occupant at the moment, obviously the young English lady referred to by the conductor. It is usually the first section that sets the setting, background, and characters of a piece. Exposition in written texts also gives background and character information; but, it can be more difficult to understand as a literary tool than exposition in music, plays, or other visual entertainment since there are so many ways to present the information in written text.

Exposition is important because it helps to ground you within the work and give you your bearings. Not only does it provide clarity on characters and time, it helps the reader or listener to orient themself within the work.

Without an exposition, readers, viewers, and listeners would be confused as to what is happening and why. The word "exposition" comes from the Latin and means "to place. Regardless of the type of exposition you write, the writing needs to be concise and easy to understand. The U. In the top left of the flag, there is a field of blue with fifty stars, one for each state.

The alligator has a u-shaped, round snout and tends to live in freshwater swamps and streams. The crocodile has a long, v-shaped nose and can live in saltier waters as well as freshwater habitats.

The Civil War was caused because of conflicts between states on the subjects of states' rights and slavery. Before the war, the southern states relied on slaves to plant and harvest the crops.

These southern states wanted to make decisions separate from the northern states and banded together as The Confederates, threatening to leave the U. The northern soldiers were victorious in the Civil War, reestablishing that states in the South had to confirm to U. He was 32 when he hanged himself from a closet coat rack in the throes of alcoholism, the fourth of my blood relatives to die prematurely from this deadly disease. If America issued drinking licenses, those four men—including my father, who died at 54 of liver failure—might be alive today.

Lincoln was inaugurated. The Civil War began, which the North eventually won. While exposition is found in a lot of great movies, one of the best examples is offered by George Lucas through the Star Wars franchise. Though authors often try to limit the amount of exposition in a story, nevertheless exposition is very important in almost every novel and play ever written.

It is not necessary in poetry, and is very infrequently found there, though sometimes a writer of a longer poem includes some moments of exposition. Authors use exposition for many reasons. As the definition of exposition states, exposition is important for imparting key information.

In fact, if a story contained no exposition and only sensory details then the reader may not know which of the dramatized moments are more and less important. Exposition is also an important aspect of mysteries and thrillers when the denouement comes and the author must quickly fill in the reader about what exactly happened. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

This excerpt is from the very beginning of The Scarlet Letter. However, many authors decide to start their stories with a broad explanation of the setting and the characters that the reader is about to encounter.

I will reconstruct for you as far as possible. I am inclined to think that Miss Howard was the mastermind in that affair. You remember her once mentioning that her father was a doctor? Possibly she dispensed his medicines for him, or she may have taken the idea from one of the many books lying about when Mademoiselle Cynthia was studying for her exam.

Anyway, she was familiar with the fact that the addition of a bromide to a mixture containing strychnine would cause the precipitation of the latter. Probably the idea came to her quite suddenly. Inglethorp had a box of bromide powders, which she occasionally took at night. What could be easier quietly than to dissolve one or more of those powders in Mrs. Famed mystery writer Agatha Christie used many exposition examples in her stories.

Since her mysteries are so complicated, a large part of the end of each novel includes a long amount of exposition in which her detectives either Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple explain exactly what happened at each stage of the crime and investigation.

Harry had been a year old the night that Voldemort—the most powerful Dark wizard for a century, a wizard who had ben gaining power steadily for eleven years—arrived at his house and killed his father and mother. Voldemort had then turned his wand on Harry; ha had performed the curse that had disposed of many full-grown witches and wizards in his steady rise to power—and, incredibly, it had not worked.