Averting Naive Newcomer

Let’s get it out in the open right now: I’m not really a big fan of origin stories. Especially when the first book/movie/etc. uses about 2/3 of the plot as the “growing into a hero” trope.

Also, when the main character is a new meat, the stories become a bit exposition-heavy, with most of the rookie’s dialogue consisting of variations of “What’s that?”

Are there ways to avert/avoid this?

For instance, with one project I’m working on, one of the characters isn’t a squeaky-clean, fresh out of training rookie. He’s been with the group for a little while; just not as much as the others. So he’s got SOME experience, but it’s gonna be a while before he’s the next Slade Wilson/Wolverine.

In short, the trick as I see it is to find other ways of getting important exposition to the audience.

Exactly how this is achieved may depend to some degree on the medium: theatre might get away with asides, or a chorus; video-games might incorporate Story Breadcrumbs; and so on. Visual media in general might incorporate Environmental Storytelling. ([edit] We don't have that trope...?[/edit])

Of course, there are those means that are fairly universal: most media have the option of a narrator, for example.

That said, in some cases it might be enough to simply imply the relevant information.

After all, if we know that the enemy are strange-looking bugs, and our mission to their "home" involves flying through space, it's fair for the audience to guess that they're aliens.

And finally, there's the option of scattering bits and pieces of exposition around dialogue and action.

For example, at one moment a character might exclaim that there are "bugs all around us, sir". At another, we might see the protagonists readying a spaceship; some other character might worry about whether it has the power to reach another star-system. And finally, a general giving a big motivational speech might exclaim that "no alien race will best humanity; we'll take the fight to them", or some such thing.

From those tidbits we know that the protagonists are dealing with bug-like aliens, and plan to fly an untried space-faring technology to go on the offensive against them.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 4th 2023 at 6:28:20 PM

One great trick I've seen work really great is to let all the characters be an expert in one specific area of the world, and have every character be completely in the dark about a different area. That way there's always a character to receive important details for the audience's benefit without it seeming ham-fisted.

Another important tool I've seen comes from The Matrix: The film spends the first 20-40 minutes just setting up questions to keep the audience interested and wondering, and then once the questions all come to a head, Morpheus comes in and gives Neo (and the audience) a much-needed explanation of what exactly is going on.

It sounds like you are looking for the Experienced Protagonist trope. If the main character is new meat, then of course they are going to be clueless. But nothing says that the main character has to be new.

The character can either express a passing familiarity with the subject in question or be simply curious without coming off as stupid, gullible, or at least lacking in some degree of common sense.

Alternatively, there can be another character in the group who acts like they know what they’re talking about while the actual expert immediately calls them out on it by lecturing them.

Thereby in the above cases, you can have a character expositing the relevant information to both the audience and the other characters without having any of the other characters be naive in any way.

If you want a good example of the above, watch [[Series/Chernobyl Chernobyl]].

The show knows for a fact that most of its audience aren’t nuclear physicists or historians, so other than “nuclear power plant that makes electricity go boom”, it knows that the audience isn’t going already be familiar with how the Soviet Union political machine worked, what life was like at the time, and how a nuclear power plant actually works. But it doesn’t talk down to the audience, as doing so would probably turn off a lot of people in addition to probably being a little disrespectful to the very real historical figures it portrays. So it gives us Scherbina and Legasov. Both men are familiar with what nuclear power plants do and how the Soviet political machine works, and they’re both experts in their fields, but they’re also Audience Surrogates when necessary.

To illustrate this, both get a particular scene each that spells this out when they arrive at the exploded power plant. Scherbina (notably after being humiliated by Legasov unintentionally a little earlier), asks Legasov how a nuclear power plant works and Legasov gives a pretty detailed explanation, since he is a nuclear physicist and actually knew about the designs of the nuclear reactors. Later on, Scherbina calls out the local government officials for trying to cover up what had happened by directly asking them why he saw graphite (a direct callback to Legasov’s earlier explanation), knowing full well they can’t challenge him since he’s one of the highest ranking government officials in the Soviet Union (whereas they actually could have done it to Legasov, who doesn’t have the actual political clout to do much of anything beyond advising).