There are many types of literature or writings. There’s fiction and nonfiction. Both fiction and nonfiction are split into several categories, known as genres. There’s biography and autobiography, self help books and research papers or textbooks in nonfiction. There’s literary fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, romance, drama and fantasy among others. Blurring the lines and beyond the realms of fiction and nonfiction are folklores, mythologies and legends.
Every form of writing or text has a certain style. There’s narrative text where the author writes from one or multiple perspectives. Narrative text can have beginnings, well formed plots and subplots, many characters and an ending among other literary structures. The narrative can be in first person, second person or third person and multiple perspectives are also facilitated by many authors. These types or styles of writing exist in fiction and nonfiction. One such style of writing is expository text.
Expository Text: Defined!
The term expository text comes from the term exposition. It is a method used in writing, even in plays and filmmaking, to get the audience or readers accustomed with certain facts or the reality. Exposition can also pertain to fiction where some matters of fact within the fictional world are established without playing a role in the narrative.
A narrative is just a narration of events, one leading to another, perhaps more than one event and then culminating in a climax. Expository text is more informational. It helps the readers or the audience to understand a particular process, concept, reality or just lays out the ground rules as a matter of fact.
Expository text can be at the very beginning of a written piece, somewhere in the middle or anywhere in the book or play.
Expository Text: Explained!
Let us consider a crime or mystery novel where the perpetrator has been caught and the trial is on. Now, the author may use expository text to lay out the legal process of trying the accused, how the evidence is being stacked up, under what sections the defendant is being tried and how the prosecution should go ahead and prove the accused or defendant to be guilty. This may or may not happen in the narrative but the process is laid out so the reader can understand.
Expository text can be used in all kinds of writing but is more popular in nonfiction. Expository text in fiction is used more as the foundation for dramatization and getting the audience accustomed with something imagined by the author than stating a fact.