Exposition within dialogue

the things i reckon you want to avoid when expositioning (?) through dialogue are

• characters telling each other things they both know
• characters quoting your project notes verbatim

neither is a cardinal sin by any means, but both risk boredom and/or a break in immersion.

the former is regularly discussed here and elsewhere--you'd generally solve it by either moving exposition to narration or introducing a character who doesn't already know whatever it is--and from my reading, that's not really what you're asking. cmiiw, but you're less concerned with the "good morning, sister"-type of exposition than the "let me tell you about the history of my people"-type, so here are some ways of approaching that

• *give your characters opinions--*the stronger the better--an especially opinions based on experiences. so it's not just "this is the spell used to heal a wound", but "this is our healing spell: it smells really weird and hurts like a bitch, but i still have both my thumbs so no complaints here."
• give your characters opinions that differ from those of other characters. this is especially helpful when you want to make as sure as you can that the reader will absorb some specific bit of lore or mechanics. it's good to restate your key bits of information, so if you can reframe it by giving a different, or even conflicting, account, that will help it from growing stale and repetitive. think "our great leader" vs "their terrible autocrat", though you can of course be far subtler in execution.
• filter through your characters' voices/interests/experiences. this one is maybe obvious, but i tend to have to remind myself so i'm adding it here as well. looking at, say, a faction's central source of power, one character might take a reverent tone--"this is the Grand Crystal, may he hold us dear"--where another may be significantly less so--"what, the crystal thingy? yeah, it's pretty lit i guess". this is also a great way to approach expositionary (?) dialogue in a way that also builds theme/character/relationships/etc.
• include false and inaccurate information, especially if in service of a character/voice. it can be outright lies, things misremembered, or things the character in question has been lied about to.
  • this can EITHER be unimportant exposition which you just move on from: e.g. "columbo is a whodunnit" is inaccurate, but only a character who cares a lot about mystery fiction/tv detectives/fashionable trench-coats would be inclined to notice and it (probably) isn't plot-crucial,
  • OR it's plot relevant, in which the wrong and subsequently corrected information helps it stick in the reader's mind by having the topic come up multiple times in a way that nonetheless keeps it fresh and interesting.
• provide exposition gradually. broad strokes and then details, apply in combination with
• tell me why i care first. this really applies to exposition as narration as well, but many of the most tedious bits of text there are is exposition that comes before and without stakes. a detailed rundown of every type of curse that exist and how to break them is way more interesting to me as a reader if i'm already invested in the career prospects of the witch MC. in this case the order to tell things, roughly, is (mention) "MC is a cursebreaker" -> (introduce) "main conflict" -> (gradually build) "curses/cursebreaking worldbuilding".

if you're worried that your expositoriolliary (?) dialogue reads to much like a quote from an in-uiverse text-book, it might also help to revisit which characers you're giving this dialogue to. it's been mentioned before--i forget where--but there are plenty of people in real life who like to info dump, plenty of mansplainers, plenty of children repeating things they learnt last week ad infinitum. it's maybe a bit of a cheap trick, and you don't want to overdo it, but there are traits you could give a character to make exposition read more natural.

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tldr: dialogue is good for exposition, and exposition is better with an angle

I’ve been reading a lot to build up my skill set, and as far as I’ve noticed, published authors tend to leave the exposition out of the dialogue often times while implying that it’s said. So it’d read something like:

“”You don’t know about magic shoes?” James said, not giving me a moment to answer before he hopped right into into the explanation. [lore here]”

Though I have read some things explained in dialogue, but it’s usually kept short and sweet. I think really depends on the style, and I definitely find myself reading dialogue the most closely out of all the text so it would sense to sneak key important details into the dialogue if it’s REALLY important. But otherwise you can just leave it as body text and imply that it’s being said.

I'm also planning a scene where two characters believing in different gods learn about each other's religions.

Is there a story point to this, do those religions play a role in the story you are telling, is there information within that which is crucial to know for further scenes to make sense?

The key question when you are dealing with exposition is: does the reader need to know this stuff. And tbh a lot of times the reader needs to know very little about worldbuilding because it doesn't always connect to the story that hard.

Hopefully these videos can help? Mostly, I'd summarize that advice as "boil it down to as little information as possible for your reader to still understand the story, then try to distribute it evenly throughout the story (so gradual trickles of pieces of information that come together over time, instead of info dumps) in a variety of ways that have your characters experience whatever it is your readers need to know, instead of just hearing about it".

Yeah the trick is it has to sound good to you. If it doesn't toss that garbage. Don't cling. There's nothing to cling to.