Exposition, Description, and Dialogue: How to Find the Balance

The balance between exposition, description, and dialogue is essential to the success of your story. They significantly impact your pace, show interactions between your characters, immerse your reader in your scenes, and reveal time has passed. Learn when to use each of these techniques, so you can find the best balance for your story.

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What is your preferred balance among exposition, description, and dialogue? Why? Share your thoughts in comments below.

[pjzitaconquercancer]

Hi Caitlin, Thank you for an excellent explaination in how to balance dialogue, description and exposition in a story.

[geminiwriter]

Thank you so much for this. Very straight to the point, yet pushes what I know forward. I’m in writing college but my tutors don’t actually explain this but mark my pieces down on too much of one.

[jjstuartonwriting]

I know this video is from three years ago, but what about first person point of view. Does this ratio still apply if it's a story about a single character vs nature for example, and would internal monologue constitute as exposition or dialogue, as he/she isn't really speaking to other characters, but rather thinking with the voice in their head. Thank you in advance if you see this and could give me a quick reply. Loved your video.

[twilight_lupinesilva]

Is more white space really a good thing? I've been told that one-liners or paragraphs that are no more than three lines in length are bland or don't really do a whole lot, and that it's better to be more descriptive at times. Do you really need to give each character talking their own paragraph, or can you have two different people talking in the same one?

I have a question about dialogue too. If you have two or three characters talking, how do you 1: make it clear who is talking, and 2: balance text with little mannerisms? On the second one, I know that these little actions can really show how someone is feeling or give an insight into their thoughts, but if 2 or 3 people are talking, I feel like it can be jarring for dialogue to be broken up with "she groaned as she tilted her head back" or "he yelled while throwing his arms up".

[Captain-mzmg]

I slightly disagree. Dialogue can definitely be used to quickly deliver information.