Okay, my current progress is abjectly deplorable. I'm barely scraping the bottom of 8 pages and much of that will have to go.

A problem I keep running into is explanatory dialogue, and I'm wondering how everyone else gets around that. (Explanatory dialogue is, for example, having your characters superfluously call each other by name, or summarise long explanations about their culture and background to someone who already knows, for the purpose of educating the audience, who doesn't.)

It doesn't help that my story is a sci-fi set in quite a detailed world that is very different from ours, and that much of the plot centres around political and sociological events in that world.

My usual modus operandi is have the story already planned out, and written in any old order (ie, I'm writing all the scenes jumbled up and so don't bother thinking about where they are in the story.) This means I end up with something that's naturally written. I then just bung it all together in the right order and leave the reader to figure it out without any help.

Sadly, doing that requires airtight scene planning in advance, which I haven't done, and having solid characters, which I haven't got. It helps that usually I'm writing something quite surreal and so not providing information is sort of more acceptable (even encouraged.) This time, however, I'm not.

What do the rest of you do?

"It doesn't help that my story is a sci-fi set in quite a detailed world that is very different from ours, and that much of the plot centres around political and sociological events in that world."

Hello, me, is that you?

I sympathise, I do. I think I'm a little luckier as:
a) I have a character in there who doesn't belong in the world and hence can ask questions and have things explained to her without it being too contrived. (I still try to avoid too much Explaining and instead try to suggest the society subtly through the action and description, but it's tough to do.)
b) I'm writing for TV, so the audience is going to be more concerned with being excited and engaged than with understanding everything at first. (Gotta leave lots for seasonal story arcs etc.)

My instincts are the same as yours in that I'm inclined to go the character route. I.e. literally give birth to several full-formed people and have them go at it. Hopefully they'll keep the audience so engaged that any cheeky explaining I do throw in won't grate too much. I'm generally concentrating more on character than on highly-detailed scene-planning as I've found that giving so many characters room to grow, the scenes are starting to write themselves and all I have to do is guide them plot-wise.

It's still only the end of Week One, though. I've got plenty of time to get myself into a pickle with loose ends and explainy monologues! I think when that happens we've just got to go with the clunky exchanges, get through it and promise to come back when we re-write!

Good luck :)

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ANNA
+ SF 08: Paragon for TV [sci-fi action-drama]
+ NANO 07: The Block, WIN!
+ SF 07: untitled, no win
+ NANO 06: Paragon, no win

I completely sympathize, I've got a bad habit of making Huge-Complicated-Universes and then having to explain it all :P

I usually do one of three things:

Spock It. My 'affectionate' term for creating a character that just Won't Shut Up. These characters are usually science people or cultural attaches that don't know when To Much Information is being given. It allows for long explanations while giving your characters someone to be annoyed with, and for you to kill off to the delight of the audience at a later time.(note: this is no reflection on Missur Spock...much ;)

Angry Tirade. Have a central character get mad at someone because they're questioning thier knowledge about whatever you need to explain. Then a character can vent in Large Paragraphs but get it over quickly without much akward, unwieldy conversations. EX. "Yes RANDOMCHARACTER I know what I'm doing! Any idiot out of med school would be able to tell the diffrence between THINGYMABOB1 and TMB2. It's not like I'm SOMEODDBIOLOGICALFACT." (This works especially well if a character is bitching about the lack of knowledge of thier students to another friend)

Poetics This is usually really hard so I don't resort to it much, but it's sneaky so it's usefull. If you have an artistic character they can write/sing/etc. something about um...something you need explained. For example a scene I'm in the process of writing has my Engineer/Artist making up a rather unflattering little rhyme as to the backward nature of his Captain's native culture. Exposition and a few laughs.

Ummm. So not exactly a way to *avoid* long exposition, more how to chop it up a bit and make it less painful. Cause I don't really think you can really avoid expository dialogue with new universes, you just have to work it in sneakily so it doesn't sound like expository dialogue.

oh, and another cheat I use as to names: Nametags. Slap your characters in a formal/ridiculous setting and *bam* nametags. (Or really cheat like me and just make 'em all military so they're labeled anyway)

Hope that helps ^.^
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There once was I time I was sure of the bond-

One of my all-time favorites for explanatory dialogue is in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' when the government guys come to see Indiana Jones at the university, to get him to find the Ark. The scene is set up so the government guys don't know any more than the average audience member does, so while Indiana Jones is explaining to them about the Ark, he's also explaining to the audience... and at the same time, we're seeing that his character knows a lot and is good at his job. You get all the information you need to follow the story, and don't even realise that it's an exposition scene.

I am having this problem, too. I know, for example, that there was a war some ten years before the events of my story, and my characters know it, too. At the moment, I'm having the characters argue about how they should feel about the war (i.e. should they just accept that they were conquered or should they start a rebellion?), but I'm still concerned that the audience isn't going to know what they're talking about.

I have characters that only know fragments of what happened to the world, so together, they are putting the pieces into the full picture throughout the story in-between the actual plot and action. Having new, confused characters always works.

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NANO '07 - "Crux Shadows" (Winner - 50,596)
SF '08 - "Esper" (45/100 so far)

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It's a bit weird, trying to transfer a novel full of non-dialogue world description paragraphs and normal dialogue into a script. All of the non-dialogue stuff has had to go. So far, I'm living by a phrase I just invented a few minutes ago, which is a variant of "Show, don't tell."

"If you can't show it, throw it."

It seems to be working for me thus far, and it looks as if all my time spent on TVTropes.org is finally paying off. Certain tropes related to writing now stick out like a sore thumb to me when I start typing.

Wow. Hello mirror image, you have my sympathy.

First off, take a deep breath and relax. Seriously.
What you're trying to do is amazing and will most likely be perfect somewhere between drafts 3 and 6.

I'm not kidding.

Try not to worry too much about the first draft. Most first drafts are dreadful things. Scenes typically fall into place after many many rewrites. I speak from personal experience.

Havlock's idea of having the "Spock" character is dead on. Lots of movies have the character that explains things to the hero when really, they are explaining things to the audience (that bald dude in the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a great example).

Try showing as much of the story as you can so you don't have to explain everything. Or try working weird ideas into everyday occurances and the viewer will figure it out. Some great examples are in "Children of Men" where on page one a TV announcer tells the audience everything we need to know as the people in the movie go about their daily lives.

We're all in the same boat, but together we'll make it. Good luck to you!

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Scriptfrenzy '07: Darkness Rising (winner!)
Scriptfrenzy '08: Quest for the Soul Stone
ML for Denver, Colorado

I do the same thing others have suggested: I have a convenient person who doesn't know what I need the audience to know. Then, someone can explain it to them without it being odd.

When it comes to identifying the characters for the audience... until I see a chance where the characters would naturally introduce themselves by full name, I just leave the audience with what they need. It's normal for people to use each other's names from time to time - like when my character's mother scolds him and his older brother... Nothing gets a kid's attention faster than hearing their name.

Aspects of the scenery can be described in the scene description parts. That's the beauty, for me, in script writing. Anything that's important can just be set out in writing. The only people who'll read those parts are the director and the ones creating the set. You can use as much space as you need and you don't need to have the characters say anything. The audience will actually see your world.
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NaNo 2006: Steel Bars - 59,233 words
Screnzy 2007: The Enchanted Forest - won
NaNo 2007: Turning Beetles into Buttons - 51,949 words
Screnzy 2007: Simple Gifts & Butterfly

Don't edit.

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Well, quite.
Although, I've never seen a fruit that could hold a pen before.