So, a scene with hardly any exposition would consist of dialog and description of people and places? That’s like real life: we look at and listen to and feel the “scene,” where we are, and somebody talks to us and we talk back. There is no running commentary that informs it. I get that, I think, but what makes the whole thing go, if there’s no adrenaline-inducing action? Is it still that our hero wants something, and something else opposes them?
Victoria, you talk about the hero having “wants” and “needs,” and how the two should conflict. But the need and the want aren’t the story situation, I think? I’m a little confused about this.—Susan Kelly in the comments on 6 Things I Learned from Dashiell Hammett
Hey, Susan! Yes, you are exactly right: fiction is creating a real-life experience for the reader. You want them to feel as though they’re right there, living the adventure alongside your characters.
If you look in the Table of Contents of The Art & Craft of Fiction (it’s in the column to the right) you can see the differences between scene and exposition. Yeah, little bits of exposition can be slipped into scenes, but for the most part scene is description, action, and dialog (and, as legendary editor Max Perkins says, dialog is really a form of action). I’ve defined exposition a lot here in the advice column. I you do a search on “exposition” you’ll turn up a whole bunch of stuff.
And, yes, all story comes down to the needs of the protagonist. That’s why writers and mentors keep saying, “plot grows out of character.” The character’s needs are what put them into their situations—otherwise they have no investment in their story. I wrote The Art & Craft of Story specifically to delve into the myriad wonderful aspects of the connection between characters’ needs and their situations.
That connection is a fabulous, rich, and complex world, the very heart of writing.