Ah, exposition. That place in your story where you stretch your little writer's wings and take flight, astounding one and all with your magnetic, nay magical prose. Or the part where your readers fall asleep and/or hit the "Back" button while cursing your name. Dr. Merlin has been known to shout at her monitor when she finds herself in the middle of Too Much Information, and not even in the fun way.

Exposition is not your friend.

My gentle readers already know the basic writing tip, "Show, don't tell," but Dr. Merlin still stumbles into long passages of text where nothing happens, or worse, too much. Exposition is the little devil sitting on your shoulder that says to get the history out of the way to get to the good parts (not to be confused with the devil sitting on the other shoulder urging the author to tell her audience every single detail of the childhoods of each character).

Exposition means telling the audience what happened, typically in simple prose. In film, the exposition happens when one character tells another a core-dump of information ala "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." In fiction, the author's doing the telling.

An example is in order. As you are reading a story, you are told that the heroine met her beloved at such a place and time, that they were married in a gala fashion, and that her husband was murdered in front of her eyes. You would not expect this entire sequence to take two pages, during which time both he and she only get two lines of dialogue each. You would expect the author to spend some time on the husband's character, evidencing by his speech and manner how deeply he loves his wife, and you would equally expect the heroine to show through big and small ways how much his presence in her life changed and enriched her (especially if the story were to tell you flat out later that this was the case). A proper introduction to the husband's character would allow you to become emotionally involved with his fate and would give you insight into the heroine's character: what she saw in him, how deep their bond was, clues about her thoughts and beliefs and dreams as reflected through the prism of his eyes, and so on. You would mourn his death with her, and so grow more connected to the heroine herself.

In short, you would expect meat on the simple bone of the storyline: "They met, they married, he died."

As a writer, you need to provide that meat. (*looks at metaphor, sighs, plunges onward*) Sometimes it is tempting to rush past certain things. Perhaps you're introducing a new character and you know he used to be in the Air Force, and he's the night manager of a gas station now, and he was married twice, no kids, likes to go fishing on the weekends, secretly dreams of owning the gas station someday and had Eggs Benedict for breakfast. This is all well and good. These are excellent things to know about a character you've created, and I applaud the effort. However, if you tell your readers all of this in two paragraphs as you introduce him, and then promptly kill him off less than a page later (or send him off-camera for the entire rest of the story because he's not actually part of the story) then you're going to lose your audience.

Descriptions are always important in your writing. Descriptions set places in mind and give faces to characters and bring moments to life. Do not, however, get too bogged down in trying to describe every last detail of a scene that you forget what's going on, or worse, that your reader does. Taking a moment to reflect on the history of a particular piece of art is fine, especially when it was created by someone dear to your character and thus showing more detail of the character's interpersonal relationships. Taking more time to go additionally into its historical and aesthetic value may even be acceptable, including religious iconography related to the piece and references to Renaissance-era painters with similar themes. Doing all this while the character is in the middle of a climactic swordfight is alas not advised. Everyone will be surprised by the sudden epee to the heart, especially your easily-distractible character.

Related: you are not Victor Hugo. Do not spend two hundred pages of your fanfiction giving us the historical background of Franciscan friars and their presence during fifteenth century England, simply because Harry stopped to look at the painting of the Fat Friar for a moment and then went on his way for the rest of your eight hundred page story. Or do, but I won't be reading. No one cares how smart you are. You don't need to show off.

None of this is to say you shouldn't explore or experiment. You can tell a story entirely in third person past tense without a single line of dialogue or direct action. You can go on long tangents; one of the joys of reading is learning something new and unexpected while being entertained. That last word's the kicker.

Your reader has clicked open your story because s/he wants to be entertained. S/he wants a quick (or longer --- Dr. Merlin likes well-written epics as much as the next fan) hit of the same stuff s/he sees in the canon. Maybe that's the interplay of two particular characters, even divorced from the canon setting (perhaps an SGA John/Rodney AU set in a NASCAR venue, for example). Maybe it's the witty banter like in Buffyverse or Aaron Sorkin's shows. Maybe your readers are madly in love with any character named Hermione, regardless of how she's written, be it rocket scientist or valley girl. You're there for the same reason, and you're not just writing to satiate your audience but to scratch your own itch.

Entertain yourself.

As you delve into the five-page summary of the last twelve years of your character's life, ask yourself: is this interesting? Be honest. Do you like reading summaries? Or do you prefer to meet characters as people, watch them grow, let them breathe, listen to them talk and walk along the path with them awhile? Give your readers the same chance to know your characters the way you do. You don't need the brand of their breakfast cereals, but one wistful flashback to a perfect (or less so) day will do much more to give your readers a feel for the character than reeling off his/her resume and favorite pastimes.

The converse of this is the question, "Is this important?" It might be important to you, it might be important to the character, but as much as it's good that you know the details, does it add anything to the story? Sometimes the answer is going to be no, and you need to hold back. Don't tell the reader what the minor character had for breakfast the other day, not unless it's relevant. Bring forward details to define the character and fix him/her in your reader's minds: maybe a single physical feature, or a particular talent, even one lost dream. Reveal the rest with dialogue, not necessarily having the character tell someone else everything, but instead in the words s/he chooses to use, the things s/he changes the subject about, and so on.

Flashbacks are optional. Dr. Merlin believes the pensieve from the Potter books was a fantastic way of working in flashbacks for a series told almost exclusively from a youngster's point of view; they would have been bizarrely shoehorned in otherwise. Sometimes a flashback is a writer's best friend. Flashbacks allow a writer to show a scene rather than merely describe it secondhand.

On the other hand, a well-written stretch of dialogue as a character is relating a story to someone else can give important information, not necessarily about the story itself, but about the character speaking: what s/he thinks is important in the tale, who features most prominently (and how this reflects back on the speaker's personal interest in the story being told), and what s/he leaves out due to the audience. It's a fine line to walk. If you find yourself using the speaker as an exposition-dump, stop. Back up. Try again. Rewrites never killed anyone.

At every point, ask yourself how the story you're telling is going to affect your readers. Do your readers know the characters in question well enough to care about what happens to them? In general, if the character is from canon, the answer is probably "Yes." Much of your legwork has been done for you then, and you can focus on how the events of the story affect the character, assured that your audience is already buckled in for the ride. If the character is canonical but disliked, or if the character is original to your story, you need to do more work to make the audience care about the outcome.

Don't do it by laundry list.

Spend the time, spend the effort. Show the character in his/her natural habitat. Don't be afraid to show the character having a good time, instead of constantly wallowing in misery; trying to evoke pity is not a good way to get the audience on the character's side anyway. Show the interactions between characters instead of telling the readers about the relationship. Show the aftereffects of traumatic (and other) events by how the character acts later, show how s/he relates to people now and how that might be different from the way the other characters expect, and then let the character talk about it, instead of front-loading your story with summarized drama. Let the character be funny or quirky or stolid or smarmy or quick or giving or all of the above, and let us see her/him doing it. Don't tell us what the character is like, show us examples in your story so we think the same thing. Don't tell us what happened, let us walk along that road too. Let us experience the emotions the characters do instead of just hearing about them, let us revel in their victories and weep in their losses, and let us miss those characters long after we've finished the story.

And that's all I have to say about that.