First draft work on character-driven story: 1) how to know when you’ve explained & exposed enough to complete a scene—can some parts be summarized to sort of give a gist of what’s happening? I’m familiar with the purpose of a scene, but fleshing it out is something else again—leaving some insecurity over the length of each ‘chapter’, some being more fleshed out. (Don’t want to short-change myself or readers, and need to go back adding a lot of filler, nor do I want to drag it out with stuff that would be cut out by an editor). I know it’s not all about word count, but it still has to fit norms for the genre. Maybe that is more than one question.
—Laureli
There’s actually only one question in there, hon, and it’s a brief one, but I think I see what you’re getting at.
For your first draft:
Never apologize, never explain. You don’t need exposition. No exposition. Just record the facts: who said what, what they did, where they were and what it was like. In total, overwhelming, passionate detail. This is not filler. This is your imaginary world. Don’t be afraid of fleshing your scenes out too much—write EVERYTHING.
You guys think I’m kidding about this, but I’m not. You can write an entire, gripping, heart-stopping novel without a single spec of exposition. Everything you pause to explain pulls your reader just a little bit out of your fictional dream.
When you go back and revise your manuscript, you’ll do that cold, so you’ll feel when a scene is lagging and you’re having that urge, “Just get on with it already.” You’ll also notice which telling details jump out at you, and you’ll be able to flag those as the ones to keep, which you will use to highlight the hooks, biggest conflicts, and climaxes of each scene. You’ll trim the details, dialog, and actions that aren’t important enough to keep. That’s why you must write with your keyboard on fire the first time around, so you have plenty of room to trim without worrying about trimming too much.
If you find entire scenes you don’t need, that’s fine, just drop them out. Don’t replace them with exposition. Watch how the tension leaps as you move from one scene to another without explaining, and the reader is filled with the thrill of having to run to keep up.
If you find your wordcount has dropped below the acceptable minimum for contemporary genre (and this is a silly, silly hoop to have to jump through, but it’s how the game is played, so if you want to be published and don’t want to do it yourself, you’re just going to have to play it), spend some long, luxurious hours analyzing your structure to discover where you have room to elaborate or develop a subplot. No filler. You may only add substantial material, material that matters, that always, always forwards your plot toward its Climax.
Eventually, at the very, very, very end of revision, when you’ve done everything you possibly can with your manuscript and it’s time to illuminate what you have in the most minimal, succinct, glorious way humanly possible, you may decide you want a little bit of exposition in only those most vital places. Put it in only where you simply can’t live without it. Let your ms go cold. Re-read and ask yourself whether or not the exposition is absolutely necessary. Put in a tiny bit more if you find a few spots that are still awkward. Let your ms go cold again. Squint your eyes, lean backward, and type any final exposition with only the very tips of your fingers. Resist. Resist. Resist.
Exposition is never, ever used to pad wordcount. It is only and entirely good for illumination, and if you’ve written your scenes properly you shouldn’t actually need it at all.
And if all this letting it go cold and then testing and then letting it go cold and then testing again seems like an excruciating process, be assured that it is. The faster, less-painful way to do it is to take your completely fleshed-out, 100%-scene-filled beyond-your-genre-wordcount novel to a professional line editor (not a copy editor! not even a developmental editor! an experienced line editor, of whom we are few and far between) and let them cut loose on it.
That judgment call about what’s exactly enough and not too much is a skill it takes decades to develop. Ask Bob Gottlieb. That’s why, unfortunately, almost nobody knows how to do it really beautifully anymore.