We’ve all come to NationStates to do one thing. To engage in the traditional work of all intellectuals since time immemorial - dunking on IRL by writing about the ways things ought to be. In our worldbuilding, we expose parts of what we believe in, as we simulate and write about the worlds we envision. No matter whether we want to write for fun or seriously, in our stories we always end up telling people what things ought to be. No matter our intentions.

And in some parts of our telling, we run into a very annoying problem - how do you tell people about your world in an engaging way?


Thus, Welcome to the world of exposition!

MineLegotia and Equestria wrote:

“There was nothing special about it. The same was happening then in Madi, but the fragmented Equestrian state became an easy prey to the Crystallian Empire, created earlier by Cadance I. Her successors, namely the vile Prince, came to Whinnyapolis, plundered and ruined nearly all the cities. The southern part, including the local state of Mnaehatten by the way, and some other cities simply lost independence while northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty. They had to pay tribute to the Empire, but they managed to preserve some part of their sovereignty. And then a unified Equestrian state began to take shape with its center in Canterlot,” Lysandrov remarked, his hooves moving as he explained, all the while Tucker looked at him with confusion.

There is a saying - the first and easiest solution you could think of is usually bad. This applies to loredumping as well. Simply conveying it all through dialogue is bad.

But, conveying some of it through dialogue is alright. The issue is always if you dump it all out in dialogue.

There are purposes to this, after all sometimes you want to convey that a certain character is more knowledgeable on specific things than others. But using this method would easily fall to folly if it doesn’t fit the context at the moment. Why would a person describe the usage of a phone during ana average conversation even though it's something they see day to day? Why would they discuss politics in a very stinted and encyclopaedic way if they were just workers?

Conveying lore through character, informs readers about the character. Meaning that you have to be more careful regarding how you exposit if you want to exposit through them.

This means that sure, you can catch your readers up to speed regarding the world, but at the expense of degrading the quality of your characters. Making them lose a sense of believability in them, which drastically limits how much information you can convey regarding your lore. It is still doable, but now you can’t loredump as much as you want.

So if that’s the case, what if you don’t use a character?

MineLegotia and Equestria wrote:

To house so many delegates, the teeming shores of retinues that followed, and the bureaucrats that could keep with their incessant whining and demands all under a single roof required an absolutely ludicrous fit of architectural engineering. The creation of the Imperial Parliamentary house required sixteen different teams of architects and engineers taking an absolutely eye-slobbering amount of ‘creativity supplements’ to make it work. Maintenance was a laborious process to handle. In addition to that, pegasi and griffons had to fly up to directly work and attach safety nets for them to work and catch any things that needed to be fixed up in the ceiling. The sheer logistical upkeep of the Parliament building in of itself, was a near harrowing task for any Imperial to handle - no matter what their genetic disposition to logistics may grant.

Once you realise that conveying information through characters would hurt their characterisation, you might be tempted to use narration to convey the lore of your world.

This is a much of a safer and popular method to convey lore. Many classical stories start out with narrational exposition to set up their world, and it works quite well in other parts of the story as well.

However, if it breaks up the flow of the story or does not properly convey and connect to the scene. Such an implantation will fail to properly assist your story.

This brings to us a second level of issue, where hence your narration implies that this is something equivalent to common knowledge within the setting. As this is a way of informing the audience without needing the characters within the universe to understand. If it was new information, most authors would end up designating a character as an ‘audience surrogate’, in order to inform them of this new info.

But, if this was common knowledge? Then you cannot have your characters be confused or not understand it except for one off cases, as it would make your characters seem extra dumb.

Of course, you can break these rules if they are one offs or if your character is actually illiterate, but the limitations of Narrative Exposition is that it mainly assumes only the audience is out of the loop. And teaching them via narration on the plot points of the story is a simple way to do so, even if it can easily slide into irrelevant plot details.

MineLegotia and Equestria wrote:

The lead guard’s eyes flicked up and down Berllian.

Berllian kept his stance, waiting as murmurs rose into the air by troops behind him.

The guard’s eyes kept flicking on him, the troops behind him, and back on him.

The minute stretched, and Berllian’s sweat grew more by the second.

And the lead guard turned back to the checkpoint. Sighing, he raised his hoof and drew a circle in the air.

The barrier was raised.

And Berllian let out a sigh of relief.

A more nuanced and more recent type of narration that has grown more popular is implication. Or rather more accurately, inference. A way to ensure that the author only conveys important details, is to only describe actions that a reader would see if they were really on the scene.

Commonly referred to as a ‘non omniscient third person view’, the author describes the situation at hand, but only the situation at hand without external context. With most of the worldbuilding conveyed through the first method and what gamers would recognise as ‘environmental storytelling’.

This, is a rather hard one to pull off in a medium where the author guides where the audience looks, but it has been pulled off before where readers can pick up clues from what the characters say and what they encounter or see to form an idea of a world. Of course, this gives the readers more freedom and leaves the author more open to experiencing “Death of the Author”. But it is more engaging if done correctly, as it allows readers to come up with their own conclusions on the story and the world they live in.

If done properly, the exposition becomes something like background music. Good exposition in inference is unnoticed as it elevates the story forward. But like bad background music, if you mess up it is really jarring and can break the flow of the story in the foreground.

Overall, these are the main three ways to loredump about knowledge of your world - by reading this, you’ve also gleamed that simply using only one way isn’t a good idea and that you should mix match methods of dropping information of the world you’re creating. After all, if all lore is conveyed through each of these methods... through dialogue you make your character stilted and generic, through narration you lose the audience's interest, and through the third you expose yourself to misinterpetation. Meaning that all three ways have their own issues, but if you use them together, or learn how to use them each properly, you can loredump with ease.

Of course, this is not a hard rule, you can break it. But to break it, you have to at least know it properly on how to use them. So I recommend practicing using one method at least once in your story writing and notice if it breaks up the flow - as in, does it jarr the reader out of the current plot?

The reader must be able to read smoothly through your story, meaning learning how to loredump without emascualting your reader's intelligence is a skill that you have to learn. Meaning - you have to practice. So try multiple ways, try each one of them so you can write better. And more importantly - get a well read friend to read over it.