An attack of the expositions has hit one of the TV series I like, "Person of Interest." I don't know why, but the last couple of episodes they have started explaining (more than once) what is obvious. You know the sort of thing: "Need I remind you that your life is in danger?" No, you needn't remind him and you needn't remind me, either, somebody just took some shots at him two minutes ago.
This also drives me crazy on a lot of the reality/semi-documentary shows. They take a commercial break and when they come back they spend a couple of minutes recapping everything we've all just seen. Either they think our last vestiges of attention span have already departed, or it's a cheap way to fill a few minutes, or maybe it's a combination of the two.
I think a lot of it comes down to not trusting the viewer or the reader. When I worked in television, several times I had network executives tell me, "I understand what you're doing in this script, but the audience won't."
Really? Frankly I didn't see much evidence of the intellectual superiority of the people in these positions at the networks.
Author Lauren Beukes ("Zoo City," "The Shining Girls") told SciFiNow magazine, "You can give them [readers] clues without having one character sit the other down and explain it to them. Give people information in the details, make it implicit, not explicit. Trust your reader to be smart enough to figure it out."
Amen!
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