The Question of Exposition

From a recent script review of a western.

"Let's start with the exposition on page 1. Halfway down the page, we find ourselves at a river bed with the gang of antagonists led by Doyle. We're given six lines of dialogue that establishes practically everything about this group. That the leader's name is Doyle. That they're being chased. That Robbie's been shot. That a sheriff is hot on their trails. That the river will slow him down until dawn. That they're heading to Settler's cabin to get the bullet out of Robbie. Ho hum. The idea for the opening, that we see the antagonists in mid-chase is great, but it's undermined by a poor approach to exposition in the dialogue. And this is important. On the one hand, it's no surprise that the dialogue felt contrived because the writer's forcing these characters to say things for the benefit of the audience - NOT because these characters would actually say these things at this particular moment. On the other hand, this is symptomatic of a bigger issue of technique throughout the script in the way that you approach exposition. I can tell from how you wrote this script that you think exposition means simply that you explain everything in the dialogue that you think the audience should know. That's not it at all. Great exposition is NOT explaining things. Great exposition is putting questions in the minds of the readers that'll get answered in later scenes and those answers would hopefully be visual ones. Thus, almost none of the dialogue was necessary in this scene that I pointed out on page 1. We didn't need to have verbalized that Robbie has a bullet in him that needs to get taken out. We could see that he's wounded and since it's a western, everyone will likely assume that he's been shot. You didn't need these guys talking about where they're going either, because we'll see where a couple of scenes later. You didn't need to verbalize WHO is chasing them. All you needed to do was establish that they're ON THE RUN, talking about someone that's chasing them, and then REVEAL in the next scene WHO it is. That's how you hook people into turning your pages by putting questions in the minds of the readers that makes them want to keep on reading to get their questions answered. To take it a little further, you also could have left another question up in the air - will the river slow the Sheriff down or make him stop chasing them until dawn? Doyle doesn't know and won't wait around to find out. And then in the next scene when we meet the Sheriff we LEARN that the river does, in fact, stop him until dawn. Do you see what I mean? As it is, I didn't feel compelled to keep turning the pages because you would consistently over-explain things in the dialogue."