How do I NOT infodump with this?

Well, if the apocalyptic event was a mystery that the characters needed to research for some reason, they could find out about it throughout the story. You probably don't actually need the reader to understand the apocalyptic event itself on page one, you only need them to understand what the current world the protagonist is experiencing is like, particularly how it is different from normal?

BlueMouse said:

Any ideas for me? I did do a search on infodumps before posting this, I swear, but nothing popped that seemed to really apply to my situation.

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People still talk about the Holocaust and WWII. Sometimes they even talk about relatively smaller events such as the Challenger explosion, Chernobyl, Iran/Contra, and the American hostages in Iran.

Under what circumstances do people talk about these things? Can you create similar circumstances in your story, to prompt people to talk about the events?

If your characters had other significant events at the same time as the apocalypse, they may have occasion to talk about them--e.g. to explain why Grandma is the way she is. Perhaps someone in your story was newlywed at the time, or about to be married. Perhaps someone was newly born, or a woman lost a husband just before giving birth. Perhaps someone had just started a medical career at the time. Perhaps she was an intern. Or someone who now holds high office had just been elected to her first public office at the first time.

Perhaps irreconcilable differences about how to handle the crisis initiated rifts in a family or a company or a government body, and those rifts are still playing out today. Those old rifts might play a part in the current antagonisms among your characters. That might give some character a reason to recount the events that led to the rifts.

Perhaps there are sometimes disagreements about exactly what events led to the apocalypse, and about exactly who caused those events, or who contributed to them in what ways. Even if the event was not initiated by people, "somebody should have been able to warn us, and then I wouldn't have lost my baby."

Perhaps new information has recently surfaced about the causes of the event, or about the final minutes of someone important to a character in the story.

Dale

It's not unusual for post-apocalyptic fiction to jump into the story, with no mention of the apocalypse. The readers figure it out.

If it becomes relevant later to know what happened, the characters will be talking about it. Though I find it hard to imagine that no one will talk about it ever, unless it's forbidden by law. Older people often tell stories about their youth, and an apocalypse is some story to tell.

BlueMouse said:

Of course, you're right. I didn't mean to imply that it's never mentioned - it is, in fact. But it's pretty much common knowledge and not much is said about it, although everyone kind of dates themselves by it: pre-Blast and post-Blast, as it were.

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Readers are smarter than you think. Not everything has to be explained in order to be drawn into a story. In fact, not understanding a strange world is often part of the fun.

As characters mention it, your readers will be able to piece it together. Hell, if nothing else, just try posting it on SYW without the prologue and see what kind of reactions you get

BlueMouse said:

Of course, you're right. I didn't mean to imply that it's never mentioned - it is, in fact. But it's pretty much common knowledge and not much is said about it

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Exactly. I tried to pick events that were like that: They're common knowledge, they affected everyone deeply, and they're far enough in the past that most of us now talk about them only rarely. But we do sometimes have occasion to talk about them, and pondering those kinds of occasions may give you some parallels to work with.

Dale

I actually LOVE stories where it's obvious something is radically different about the world but they don't tell me right away what happened. It makes it a mystery for the reader, even if it's not for the characters. I love puzzling it out from a dropped hint here, a bit of dialogue there. I'm trying to think of an example of this, but I can't right now. If one occurs to me I'll bring it up. Anyway, don't be afraid of not explaning things. Just have your characters go about whatever the actual story is, and see how much you can get away with NOT explaining.

sirensix said:

I actually LOVE stories where it's obvious something is radically different about the world but they don't tell me right away what happened. It makes it a mystery for the reader, even if it's not for the characters. I love puzzling it out from a dropped hint here, a bit of dialogue there. I'm trying to think of an example of this, but I can't right now.

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Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It's clear from the first paragraph that something is out-of-joint in this world. Now, it's not so hard to figure out, and by the time the puzzle is explained it's not much of a surprise. But there is plenty of mystery about how these young people fit into a world that differs from ours only in this one important way. The characters' utter nonchallance about their status quo is creepy as hell. Brilliant on every level. I highly recommend it.

Dale

Going to echo the readers will figure it out statement. As long as its clear from the get go that the world isn't normal, you should be fine. If sans prologue the reader can't figure out that the characters are in a post apocalyptic world, then the issue isn't the prologue.
Plus, there are several readers that just skip prologues that are just info dumps on the world. I tend to do that. Occasionally I will go back and read it after it becomes clear that I am clearly missing something, but generally I can't bring myself to care about the dry facts of a world I have no investment in, so I read prologues last if at all. So thats my long way of saying even if you have a prologue, no guarantee that your readers will actually read it. So either way, you should make sure your world is understandable without it.
As for needing to understand the apocalypse to understand about the changed people, knowing there was "the bang", that there are now people that are different, and they weren't around before the nag gives people enough pieces to connect the dots. Mechanics aren't useful until it affects the characters or the plot. You need to know everything about your world, your reader needs to know just enough.

ETA I hopped over to amazon and read the first page of the book Dale linked to. After the first paragraph, I have no idea how the world works, other than not like ours, and I really want to find out ;-P

old journals make excelent tools for this kind of stuff.

Yeah, don't reveal backstory until the reader is dying to know it. They aren't dying to know in the prologue. Post-apocalypse-life-sucks-plus-i'm-all-mutated-and-sh*t is a VERY common trope. Trust your readers to pick it up within one paragraph with an offhand mention of life 'after the blast' and a once-sentence description of how Billy's three extra arms make him a really awesome short-order cook. Add in juicy tidbits throughout the story.

BlueMouse said:

And yet I can't figure out how to "work it in in small doses", because this is an event that happened a quarter century ago; it's not something that's discussed very often anymore. It's over and people are getting on with their (radically different) lives.

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It might or might not apply to your situation, but my first thought was to include a crazy person. Someone who had been really traumatized by the Event for whatever reason, or was maybe a bit old and senile, and has retreated into the past.

"Laura, could you call the electric company for me? I think I've misplaced my phone."
*sigh* "Grandma, we've been over this. There is no electric company. You don't have a phone. All that stuff was lost in the Flash, remember?"
"Well, but I've tried changing the lightbulb, and it doesn't—"
"Grandma, there is no electricity, and even if there were, that bulb is thirty years old."

That kind of stuff.

Izunya

Think if you showed me a medieval type world and then have someone interact with something from "now" (like a horse-drawn farm cart made from an old VW bus frame--with the VW logo still on) I wouldn't figure out your story was post apocolyptic? And do so instantly, AND say, "wow, how neat!"

Is the exact reason for the apocolypse crucial to your plot? Was it a major virus, and now we have to be really careful not to drink the water from there or was it a nuclear war and we have to be really careful not to drink the water from there? What's most important to the characters in the story? What do they want, and how does this post-apocolyptic situation prevent them from getting it? If it doesn't, then the reason for the apocolypse is moot. If it does, then revealing to me, the reader, the why of that is a most interesting thing indeed, and one likely to keep me turning pages.

Pthom said:

(like a horse-drawn farm cart made from an old VW bus frame--with the VW logo still on)

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Wow, that IS neat. Someone needs to use that.

I saw one of those, actually. Not in any post-apocolyptic setting, although close. It was at a hippie commune in upstate New York. The bus had been rolled, a total wreck, and the hippies sold me the engine from it for $500.

BlueMouse said:

Of course, you're right. I didn't mean to imply that it's never mentioned - it is, in fact. But it's pretty much common knowledge and not much is said about it, although everyone kind of dates themselves by it: pre-Blast and post-Blast, as it were.

Your insights are helpful - I'm going to reread your post now and see if I can glean some more ideas from it. Thanks!

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'Pre-blast' and 'Post-blast' are both words that immediately tell us that there was a nuclear incident, with no backstory needed.

Why grandma refused to dump all of that worthless, pre-blast money was beyond Greg's understanding. Where was she going to spend it? The United States and Outlying Irradiated Territories?

Sure, use it. It isn't a unique idea. For example, look at the vehicles in the Mad Max movies of the early 1980s. Or the equipment on the big barge in Water World. Or the fallen Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes. All common recognizable things to us, that in your story, because they're old and worn, show your characters live in a future following some major calamity...or maybe eons of time.

How old were your characters when the apocalypse happened? If they were old enough to remember, and it was a sudden event, you could start with a flashback to how one of them experienced it at the time. That could introduce the character and the situation together. Then jump to the present day and show how things have changed since then.

Realistically, most of your readers will already have a rough idea what's happened from the cover blurb.

People who witness a horrific event are likely to talk about it for many years afterward, even if only in passing. Even people who were not directly affected, but deeply moved are going to share stories of "where were you when it happened." Think 9-11 in the USA. Even in 2027 I'm sure I'll remember hearing the news on the radio as clearly as I do now.