Is there a syntax that will allow me to exclude certain columns versus explicitly stating every column that I want?

You could get the list of columns (comma separated list)for a table using this query. If you know the column names that you want to exclude , you could put them into the where clause in this query and later the column list can be used in dynamic query.

Hope this helps

select Stuff((select 
        ','+c.name 
        from sys.columns c join 
          sys.tables t
        on t.object_id=c.object_id
                for xml xml path()),1,1,'')

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Satheesh