Pointing out during an exposition can be done via a dialogue or whatever?—@so_you_know
In 3rd person, is there the same leeway for expository dialogue? Still characters talking, feels different—@Wiswell
Now, there are three levels of specific perspective you can employ in telling a story: dialog (“She said that?” Yes, she really said that), interior monologue (He thought that? What are you going to do? He really thought that), and POV (I had had it. Mary had had it. George had had it. I’m not going to tell you who had had it, I’m just going to show you what they do and say and let you figure it out for yourself).
Exposition is the narrator’s experience. “Let me tell you a little something about this story here, kid.”
Can dialog be exposition?
NO.
Dialog is the character’s experience, not the narrator’s. (Kurt Vonnegut, working in experimental fiction, actually put himself into stories as a character.)
Sure, dialog can contain material that would be cast as exposition if it weren’t dialog. You can think of it as “expository” stuff, if you like: “This dialog is meant to give you backstory or let you know what’s going on that you can’t see or hear or feel right here in this scene.” (“That’s the third time you dropped that thing on my foot!” Because it was the third time he’d dropped that thing on her foot.)
But when you jump into dialog you are of necessity showing a character’s experience, not shooting the breeze about your own narrative information. So it’s part of the scene, not exposition.
Is there any distinction at all between 1st person POV and the narrator’s exposition?
NOT REALLY.
Because the writer has cast the narrator as a character, i.e. the protagonist. Therefore everything the narrator goes through, that character goes through, as well. And everything the narrator thinks or knows, that character thinks or knows and can tell the reader. The narrator can tell the reader anything that goes on inside that 1st person protagonist. BUT BEWARE. The narrator can’t tell the reader anything that 1st person protagonist doesn’t know.
And therein lies the rub with 1st person.