The trick is not to hide to the exposition, it's to make it enjoyable. Heck, if you're writing in first person, you can have a character straight-up explain to the audience. The Dresden Files does this all the time, and it might get annoying, but it doesn't because 1) The exposition is largely kept very brief, and 2) it is absolutely dripping with personality: this isn't the writer telling you a thing, this is Harry explaining his world.

The Eddingses loved doing this, using a fake historical account as a prologue. The Belgariad starts with what's basically a religious story; each book of the Tamuli starts with a scholarly study of the events you're reading about. Heck, Tolkien does it, too, name-dropping King Elessar in his discussion of the Red Book.

What they do is to introduce you to the world and its background without having a character say it to another character. If the Prologue can tell us that Middle-earth is 'Earth but long ago and with elves', then Frodo doesn't need to have a conversation about it with Gandalf. ("Gosh, Gandalf, I do wish you'd tell me that old tale about how the world was created, I always so love to hear it...")

Another example is Brandon Sanderson (again!); each of the Mistborn books has false-document quotes at the head of every chapter. They let him feed in the backstory that everyone in the world already knows, while at the same time using it as a storytelling device and subverting it (by casting the setting's myths as a diary, I seem to recall).

The trick to doing this successfully is to use your false-document (or any other form of exposition) not just as exposition, but as part of the story. Check out the opening of Serenity (y'know, the Firefly movie), which manages to recap the relevant backstory from the series as part of the introduction of the villain. If you have a mentor to deliver information, make her teaching style relevant to the plot - the Wonder Woman movie gives us its founding myth as a bedtime story for Diana, which builds her relationship with her mother, feeds into her motivations, and - through what she is and isn't told - helps to establish both conflict and the plot of the film.

And for the love of all that's fictional, never do what some comic books do and have your hero yell "I'm trying to use my laser vision to stop you, but your forcefield is making you immune to it -- how?!". Trust your audience.

hS

I think the best mindset towards exposition is: No exposition.

Or, to be less hyperbolic, with regards to explaining how things work in your story, you should try and take a very minimalist stance (or, at least, that's how I do it.) One of the things I've found in writing - not just with magic or technology, but writing in general - is that you are essentially trying to get heaps of information into the heads of your readers, without them knowing or feeling like they're having information shoved into them.

This is the difference between telling, and showing. In terms of characterisation, you can just say: 'Jim Jackson is a very angry man' - you are delivering the information that he is angry, but the readers can see, so obviously, that you are just shoving that fact down their throats. It's awkward, and takes them out of it. Meanwhile, if you have Jim Jackson get very angry at something, snarl, throw something and go red, the information - that he is a very angry man - is delivered, but so is an actual event in the story. Rather than feeling like they've just read an infodump, the reader feels like they've simply read an occurrence in the story - which has also had the effect of telling them that Jim Jackson is an angry man. It fits right into the flow of the story, and doesn't feel awkward.

It is a similar thing, then, with magic and technology. In essence, you 'disguise' information, by weaving it in alongside something else. Remember that all these sorts of rules can be very vague and floaty - it is possible just have a short paragraph explaining how a magic or technology works, so long as it feels like it still has a role in the story beyond just 'explaining.'

I've found a lot of times that, if you're sneaky with it, you can pass off a straight explanation as a character simply thinking of the technology/magic in question, as they look at or approach it or such. Which works even better, then, if you use that to also show their character - like having them think that force fields are cheap and lame, which shows that the world has force fields, that they aren't rare, and that our character finds them lame and is probably a dope. In doing so, the information is successfully disguised! But that's, ah, only one example. So long as you get it disguised.

You also need to consider the relevance of the information you're delivering - essentially, be on the prowl for unnecessary information that can be removed, and considering what information can't be removed.

Going back to the minimalist thing, you will only want to explain things that are actually relevant to the plot and the character - there is no point going on, in detail, about Jim Jackson's fondness for dolls and motorcycles, if these are irrelevant to the occurrences of the story, both the plot and his character. Even if you show, rather than tell, about his fondness for dolls and motorcycles, it's still irrelevant.

Similarly, with magic and technology, you should use its relevance to your story as a basis for the existence of an explanation for it - what would you lose, if you removed the explanation for this technology? Would the story make no sense, would the world make no sense, would a point you want to get across with the story not be there? Does a person reading this need this information, for the story, or world, to feel complete? You should, in essence, consider - very specifically - what it is you want to do with the piece of introduced technology or magic. If you're not losing anything by removing it, and it's not doing anything, it's probably going to be very distracting, and ought to get a chopping.

Going back to my force field example, above, it is necessary to know about force fields in the world - to explain how they can have their ship defend itself, so that it makes sense when, later on, the force field is used to defend said ship, and to demonstrate that the existence of force fields is a part of this particular world. What you don't necessarily need to know is how the force field works, or how the voltron crystals that make up its motor are made out of diamondised grapium that are flux capacitated to the nth dimension, or that it it was the Jim Jackson and Co company that built it. These pieces of information are not relevant to the story, world, or plot.

But!

You will need to demonstrate that information if, for example, the main character deals in diamondised grapium and it's a big part of the plot, or if, for example, you wanted to make some sort of statement mocking big corporations, and mention the shoddy job Jim Jackson and Co did in building the force field, or so on, so forth.

So, er, there you have it, I guess! If you want to have exposition, you ought to consider, essentially, how you deliver it, and what you are delivering (and what doesn't need to be delivered.) Explain only what is precisely necessary, and make sure it never feels like it's only an explanation.

This, of course, is all just how I write, and is all guidelines, and I'm sure other people may think differently, and I'm sure there will be cases where you'll be entirely within the right mind to go against these guidelines. So long as you know what you're doing, and why, and all!

Well, there are couple of ways this could happen.

If you have an inexperienced protagonist, or inexperienced character in general, you can probably have a mentor explain the system to said character. For example, much of what is said about chakra usage in Naruto comes from Naruto's various mentors explaining different aspects of chakra usage. This appears natural since a teacher has to explain things to a student in order for the student to learn.

Another way would be to drop some hints here and there and have the audience connect the dots. This can only be done if there was previous explanations on the basics of the world concerning the hints. For example, a user of a mangekyou sharingan would gradually go blind through extended usage. However, Obito used his mangekyou sharingan a lot and isn't blind. The answer widely accepted by the fanbase is that because the right side of his body is made of the cells of Senju Hashirama, his eye is constantly being healed. Fans came to this conclusion because it has constantly been stated and shown that the cells of Senju Hashirama has remarkable regenerative properties, hence, the fans connected the dots and came to this conclusion despite no offcial answer being given.

If there is fighting going on, some minor exposition can be given by showing the thoughts of a character. It could be anything from strategizing or analyzing an opponent's techniques. For example, when Saber was hit by Gae Bolg on Fate stay night, her thoughts were shown to the audience as she tries to figure put exactly what happened. "No, that was a reversal of cause and effect." From this, the audience learned what Gae Bolg does from Saber analyzing it.

Also, sometimes exposition dumps can't be avoided, especially for really complicated universes such as Nasuverse. In this case you can "show and tell"; show what is happening, but incorporate some exposition into the description.

Rough summary:
-use training scenes.
-make the audience play detective.
-have a character analyze their opponent's powers.
-sometimes you just have to use information dumps.

My NaNo last year both succeeds and fails at this: a chunk of the plot is about figuring out what this new piece of technology can do, and I then make use of the details to make the finale work. (Being NaNo, obviously it's still pulling things out of nowhere at the last minute...)

Sanderson discusses Tolkien, and I think the tale of Beren and Luthien is a useful example of 'hard' magic. Luthien shows off her key powers - enthralling people with song (to Beren), shapeshifting (lengthening her hair), and bringing sleep (with the nightcloak) before she even leaves Doriath; she then proceeds to use those three powers pretty much exclusively through the rest of the story. Nargothrond? Put it to sleep. Tol Sirion? Knock Sauron out a bit with her cloak (then borrow his magic for the rest). Entering Angband? Shapeshift into a vampire and put the Wolf to sleep. Stealing a Silmaril? Enthrall Morgoth with song and put him to sleep. Then we have some generic healing (which she already did for Beren after rescuing him), and... nothing else until she's enthralling Mandos with her song.

If we didn't know that Luthien's song was captivating, her using it to overcome Morgoth would be a weak resolution of the plot (especially if we also didn't have the duel between Finrod and Sauron to look at). But Tolkien introduced it early, used it repeatedly, and gave it a firm place as a part of the magic system.

Contrast with Gandalf, whose powers are (as Sanderson says) very loose. He can fight stuff. ... yep, that's about it. And the biggest things he pulls off with that? Knocking a Balrog off a bridge, making an already-defeated Saruman a bit weaker, and rescuing Faramir from the Nazgul. The plot is never continued by 'oh, btw, Gandalf is strong enough to just beat this'.

~

The one place I disagree with Tomash is 'you just need a line or two that somehow establishes how the power goes and doesn't go, preferably before it becomes super-plot relevant'. That's Tell, Don't Show right there. ^_~ Far better would be for us to see how it works. In a movie, you might demonstrate that vampires don't appear in images by cutting from them robbing a museum (say) to a shot on the security monitor of the exhibits moving by themselves. In a book, you could clue it with your human character noticing that there's no photos of Secret Leah Vampir in her flat, for instance. It doesn't have to be explicitly stated with a waving flag; you can allow your audience the satisfaction of piecing it together.

hS