Writing - What does "Exposition and Ammunition – back story" mean in screenwriting?

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"Turn exposition into ammunition" is shorthand for a writing technique. A quick Google turns up this article: http://michellelipton.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/mckee-on-exposition/

Money quote:

“Convert exposition to ammunition … when [the] story is thick with conflict, the characters need all the ammunition they can get. As a result, the writer has little trouble dramatising exposition and facts flow naturally and invisibly into the action … when stories lack conflict, the writer is forced into ‘table dusting’.”

What your assignment means is to take the backstory of your character, break it down into individual items (known as "beats") and use each item in dialogue. Create some kind of conflict between the characters so that the backstory of A is brought up, and use the items either for B to attack A, A to defend against B, the reverse, or both.

For example: B'Elanna's mother is Klingon and her father is human. Her parents fought increasingly during their marriage, to the point where her father gave up on her fractious mother and left. B'Elanna blames her mother's Klingon-ness for driving her father away, so she tries to repress her own Klingon instincts.

Tom loves B'Elanna, Klingon-ness and all, and thinks her Klingon heritage is cool. He can't understand why she won't join him in bat'telh fights or drink bloodwine.

So you open with the two of them having an argument about why B'Elanna will spar with Tom using any other kind of martial arts or weaponry, but not the bat'telh (the curved Klingon sword). She makes lots of excuses, Tom keeps pushing, and eventually she starts shouting at him that if he loves Klingon culture so much he can go be one. He doesn't understand this, he shouts something back, and through the course of the fight he gets her to explain what happened to her parents and why she feels the way she does. The backstory (exposition) of B'Elanna's family is now ammunition for their conflict.

(Source: Star Trek: Voyager's "Lineage")

posted over 13 years ago

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