Does anyone actually LIKE the info-dump?

Been mulling this one over, hoping an example might come to light where I thought yes, that's an info dump and I loved it. Never happened.

I don't read widely anymore, but when something grabs me I have to lap it up. In the nineties, that thing was babylon 5. Could not get enough, so where the series tailed off, the books picked up and I read the lot, or at least the ones I could get my hands on. A world I was fully immersed in and captivated by, but even then, an info dump was an info dump, and they were hard work.

I prefer to think of info dumps as shite exposition. I don't write them because I know that I can do better, even if it takes months of attrition.

My first novel being in its final stages of editing, this topic has me insecure. My story is set in a fictional - though likely, as inspired by Gaza - setting, and I can't just dribble bits and pieces as I go. People need to know off the bat where they are and why characters are acting certain ways. I have maybe one paragraph or two, no more than a page, of info dump/world building. The political "revolution", and the resulting situation. I don't know how else to do it. I don't think it's bad - I just keep getting told it is (not my specific case, which has not been under review).

I think it depends, among other things, on the length. I admit I just couldn't do Lord of the Rings. Too much trees and hills and architecture; I only remember world building, dancing hobbits, trees, meadows, and a pony pushing through shrubs for the first 50 or so pages and I simply could not go on; I literally got drowsy (ADHD). I don't mean to disrespect Tolkien. His work is tremendous. But I just could not get past the info dump.

I think there are books where the info dump needs to be an info dump - but done well and as short and powerful as possible.
And then there are books where you can perfectly drop info as you go. Especially contemporary, where the reader can easily establish the setting in their own head for knowing roughly what it looks like in terms of literal environment, and social/political.

I don't think it's necessarily disrespectful to struggle with or skip the info dump, though I can see how it may be. But respect comes in many ways, as well as partially or unconditionally. I can respect Tolkien's work in the big picture, but still struggle with the world building, I think. It doesn't necessarily have to be disrespectful to dislike one aspect of a greater work. You may still praise most of it, yet respectfully believe that part of it was a difficult. I just posted a picture for comments on the content, not the quality. I spent days on it. It was hard work and I take pride in it. I didn't ask for criticism, but I still got some from a person who didn't really respond to my initial request. I don't feel disrespected just because there are people who don't like how part of the picture turned out, yet didn't give me the answers I did ask for. They haven't been disparaging or mean about it, rather helpful actually if I wanted to keep improving this particular piece. Likewise, skipping the info dump can be disrespectful, or not, depending on the whys, the hows, and other factors.

So to answer your question - I like a relevant, interestingly done info dump that puts me in the story deeply and quickly. I don't like a history/geography lesson when I want to be entertained. I mean no disrespect to the author when skipping such a lesson; I just want to get to the good part for which I do respect the author, who could have done a better job getting me there. An author is no god. To respect their work doesn't need to mean to soak up every page. Some of the best books by the best authors still have passages you cringe at - it happens to me all the time with Coelho, though not in terms of info dump. You can respect someone's work - even if not enjoying all of it.

I think info dump is like foreplay. It's good to set the mood when done right - intensely and quickly. I don't want 15 minutes of groping though. I need it to get to the point while still hot.

Here's what it boils down to for me: the Game of Thrones TV opening. It's 1 minute and 50 seconds of animated blue prints. Why? Every episode reminds us what castle/house/war is in the north, the south, the west, the east. We know across what sea lies what city because it keeps being said. If you don't have digital television, you can cook popcorn and check your emails during that opening sequence. It's too much stuff you don't need to see in its entirety, at the beginning. It is well established whenever needed. I still respect the makers for this awesome show.

morngnstar said:

One of my favorite parts of A Song of Ice and Fire was Theon's return home. "There was no safe anchorage at Pyke," it begins. This does a few things. It gives a strong impression of the forbidding nature of the geography. It demands an explanation of Theon's nostalgic reasons for sailing this impractical course. And it provides an excuse for a page or two of description that reads like the voice-over of a travel documentary.

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It also serves as foreshadowing.

Well, I was gonna say The Left Hand of God, but while I enjoyed the first book for the first 3 quarters, it got kinda slow towards the end as I seem to remember, and made the 2nd catch dust on my shelf as I haven't yet mustered that courage. While you could beat someone to death with those books, I don't remember tedious world-building in the beginning, although some cumbersome sections throughout that confused rather than explained the setting I had by then painted in my mind.

Adversary said:

Yes... lets just change 'info-dump' to something less controversial. I meant a large wall o' texty deal that might look daunting to grapple with at first, but presumably serves a purpose. Its all in the execution. I'd prefer a massive preface/prologue type first chapter that works and sets up a story well than a running action/dialogue that paints a poor picture. Bad is bad.

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This is fine. If it serves a purpose and does it well, then it's not an info dump.

Obviously, in most stories, at some point, you would need to include some worldbuilding, and maybe some exposition, etc. It just helps to make it work in an interesting manner, so there's less of a chance of losing some readers' attention, is all. But, sometimes, you have no choice but to include certain details or exposition from time to time. It really depends on the content, maybe the genre, the writing style, the narration, POV, etc.

I'm wondering if you're confusing verbosity with info-dumping? (Which an infodump can be.)

In terms of modern authors who have more... wordy writing styles, have you read any recent adult scifi/fantasy or literary books? There are still books out there that are pretty wordy (or have lots of text in chunks).

Just one book off the top of my head is "A Play of Shadow" by Julie E. Czerneda, published last year. That one has a prologue, though it's Book 2 of a series. (The first one is called "Turn of Light", published 2013.) This series is pretty text-heavy in some areas.

The "Eli Monpress" series (or the self-published Dragon book) by Rachel Aaron feel pretty wordy to me. I think it does it in a very engaging manner.

Is this what you're talking about?

Check out current scifi/fantasy books, especially stuff published by DAW, Tor, etc. Skim and look at how they handle exposition, worldbuilding, description, and prologues/intros, etc.

I generally don't mind them, being a pretty patient person, but there are plenty of books I've read multiple times where they do start to get a little annoying. But, the book is still worth reading again, info-dump or no, so there is that.

Adversary said:

It makes me wonder how the truly word-heavy greats like Tolkein or H.P. Lovecraft (excuse my limited references) would write if they were writing today... being born, raised and educated in the modern era, and had today's readers to please. I wonder how it would look?

Are there popular modern authors who are this thick with detail, description and world-building? Seems to me it might be an apples to oranges thing though, as in older eras there guys would write a book, or three. Today you have mesmerizing arrays of novels in a single series to build that same massive world. Perhaps just the format has changed?

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I'm reading LOTR to my kids at the moment. Because I want to be a writer I tend to read quite critically and take notes on what I thought worked and didn't work in the story - which should hopefully help me write better. All I can think about while I'm reading LOTR is how it probably wouldn't be published if it was written today. Waaaaaay too much description and it's so slow moving. It takes them about 200 pages just to leave the Shire (in my edition). If I have to read another description about sunrise/sky/the moon/mountains I might go mad. Reading it is hard going, especially with all the unfamiliar names. That really slows you down when you are reading aloud. I ended up making up my own pronunciations for a lot of the place/character names - hopefully my kids won't talk about the book to anyone else using my mispronunciations.... Maybe I should have gotten the audio book version.

I DO like the story and I can see why it is considered one of the greats, but I keep thinking about what it would look like if it was written today, following rules like show don't tell. I imagine it would be much shorter and faster moving.

(We read A Series of Unfortunate Events before this. I thought it was quite word heavy, which made it a bit slow and boring in parts).

My first novel being in its final stages of editing, this topic has me insecure. My story is set in a fictional - though likely, as inspired by Gaza - setting, and I can't just dribble bits and pieces as I go. People need to know off the bat where they are and why characters are acting certain ways. I have maybe one paragraph or two, no more than a page, of info dump/world building. The political "revolution", and the resulting situation. I don't know how else to do it. I don't think it's bad - I just keep getting told it is (not my specific case, which has not been under review).

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I don't mind these types of "info dumps". Just please don't start off with it and make it fun to read, not a text book.

If I open a book and immediately greeted by a page or two of world building, info dump, etc it is a big turn off. If the is prose is good, I may continue reading if the world is interesting enough. It just isn't much of a hook to lead off this way.

Smgrant51 said:

I'm reading LOTR to my kids at the moment. Because I want to be a writer I tend to read quite critically and take notes on what I thought worked and didn't work in the story - which should hopefully help me write better. All I can think about while I'm reading LOTR is how it probably wouldn't be published if it was written today. Waaaaaay too much description and it's so slow moving. It takes them about 200 pages just to leave the Shire (in my edition). If I have to read another description about sunrise/sky/the moon/mountains I might go mad. Reading it is hard going, especially with all the unfamiliar names. That really slows you down when you are reading aloud. I ended up making up my own pronunciations for a lot of the place/character names - hopefully my kids won't talk about the book to anyone else using my mispronunciations.... Maybe I should have gotten the audio book version.

I DO like the story and I can see why it is considered one of the greats, but I keep thinking about what it would look like if it was written today, following rules like show don't tell. I imagine it would be much shorter and faster moving.

(We read A Series of Unfortunate Events before this. I thought it was quite word heavy, which made it a bit slow and boring in parts).

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Bear in mind that LOTR is not YA, like Series of Unfortunate Events. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit first, for his own son, which is why it's a bit lighter and quicker.

I do think it's fair to critique LOTR for some of the excess worldbuilding but I also think to use it as an example of info-dumping is slightly misleading. At least as I've always read it, Tolkien isn't overdescribing. He's another example of a writer whose execution is so good that he can support a lot of detail. What details he includes are still carefully chosen--again, it's the "dump" part of info-dump that's a problem--so that they actually do show his world. Often they're the best showing he does--the long lists of minute Shire features, the variance between the mountains and their natures, the particular Elvish names--these things are situated in the world. Yes, he uses an omni narrator but his narrator is also part of Middle-Earth. Shirefolk (and older people in rural areas in general) talk in genealogy--it conveys a huge amount of culture. Bear in mind that he needs his characters to care deeply about the Shire so that they can return to it. There are many, many ways to "show" something, many of which do not rely on describing action or expression. I don't think it's entirely fair or even desirable to look at what's comfortable and assume that's what's right. There's no accounting for taste, of course, and maybe the way Tolkien wrote LOTR isn't effective for this particular situation. But it's not bad writing.

I don't think one has to love Tolkien's writing, or even LOTR in general. He is one half medievalist scholar when he's writing. The pronunciations don't matter, but all the languages are based on Old English to various extents. Some of his worldbuilding informs this. But a lot of it informs the story directly and a lot of it is what makes LOTR what it is: a touchstone for a lot of contemporary fantasy, possibly the Ur-example of secondary world (along with Narnia; Lewis was a contemporary of Tolkien's), and a phenomenal example of how to create something a lot of people love, even today.

I don't mean to pick on your particular experience, Smgrant51. Just that as it relates to the broader topic of this thread, it's too easy to reduce LOTR to "info-dump".

(It is totally an info-dump series. It took me three tries to get through Two Towers as a teen, what with the wars that took place thousands of years ago being related in minute detail, and everybody having six names... and then ancestors all having the same name, so you can't tell any of them apart. Aragorn, son of Arastorm, son of Aramark, whom the elves call Ellessar and the dwarves call Pud... it's 200 pages of a great story, wrapped in an excruciating NatGeo travel documentary. But then again, I'm married to someone who considers the Silmarillion great light reading, so what do I know?)

I appreciate the massive amounts of work JRRT put in to his worldbuilding. But they're just not exciting writing.

(The movies were better.)

(I'm going to get tarred and feathered.)

I much prefer books where you get information doled out little by little-- just enough so that you can clearly follow what's going on in a given moment. I love that 'a-HAH!' moment when pieces of the universe start to fit together as a story progresses.

TessB said:

(It is totally an info-dump series. It took me three tries to get through Two Towers as a teen, what with the wars that took place thousands of years ago being related in minute detail, and everybody having six names... and then ancestors all having the same name, so you can't tell any of them apart. Aragorn, son of Arastorm, son of Aramark, whom the elves call Ellessar and the dwarves call Pud... it's 200 pages of a great story, wrapped in an excruciating NatGeo travel documentary.

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lmao! I love LOTR, but, yes.

And I thought the LOTR example would see me skinned alive

Sword&Shield said:

I don't mind these types of "info dumps". Just please don't start off with it and make it fun to read, not a text book.

If I open a book and immediately greeted by a page or two of world building, info dump, etc it is a big turn off. If the is prose is good, I may continue reading if the world is interesting enough. It just isn't much of a hook to lead off this way.

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Ah, no, it opens with the MC expressing disappointment at his shitty world and wiping up cat puke.

I skimmed half of The Girl with the . . . . Parts were good. Other parts wouldn't, and life is short.

Adversary said:

How can you buy a book, that presumably, you liked the look/sound/reviews of, and then disrespect the author by skipping or skimming ANY part of the book? .

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Respect has to be earned. Every chapter, paragraph, sentence, and word. Be happy readers are skimming, they could be tossing.

Agents don't like prologues or info-dumps. That alone is enough for a new writer not to do them. Don't confuse what an established author did 20 years ago with what an unpublished author can attempt today.

TessB said:

(It is totally an info-dump series. It took me three tries to get through Two Towers as a teen, what with the wars that took place thousands of years ago being related in minute detail, and everybody having six names... and then ancestors all having the same name, so you can't tell any of them apart. Aragorn, son of Arastorm, son of Aramark, whom the elves call Ellessar and the dwarves call Pud... it's 200 pages of a great story, wrapped in an excruciating NatGeo travel documentary. But then again, I'm married to someone who considers the Silmarillion great light reading, so what do I know?)

I appreciate the massive amounts of work JRRT put in to his worldbuilding. But they're just not exciting writing.

(The movies were better.)

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Depends what you're looking for. (And I know this is partly tongue-in-cheek--I also dip into the Silmarillion from time to time for fun.) For me, it IS exciting writing because Tolkien is also a master of subtle prose rhythms and knows how to make those lists interesting in the same way Genesis can sound fantastic if you get a lay reader who has any idea what he or she is doing.

The takeaway lesson, though, is that Aragorn's many names are a distinct and important part of that story as it's told in that particular way. They're not throwaways. Arathorn is damn important, his relationship with the elves is why much of Gandalf's plan actually works, which is in its own way a commentary of sorts on European political alliance-making, and so on and so forth. It's good info because it's all there, layered in the details. LOTR is packed full of goodies--just because it is difficult in places does not make it Bad. If he really wanted to info-dump, he'd have gone into the meta-story of Aragorn, which is basically Ser Orfeo, which is the Middle English retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, which makes the Roads of the Dead make a lot more sense than just a random plot device because it's really a reference to 2500 years of shared myth.

Would that style fly today? I don't think there's any sense in having that argument because it is what it is and the second we start using trends to prescribe instead of looking at what actually works for the story in question is the moment we lose the forest for the Ents. It's not like Tolkien's style is one particular thing, either: Hobbit is very different from the way the Ents speak which is different than the way Dwarves convey their geneaology. And hey, we write exorbitant backstories for Superman and Batman nowadays. I think it's kind of myth-building gone wild but my friends who are into superheroes just adore it. That tradition owes a lot to Tolkien, as do many tools in fantasy (not all!), and they have uses.

At some level I'm attempting to make this useful advice about the crafting of detail vs. info-dumps but I suspect I'm mostly just derailing now so I'll bow out.

TessB said:

(It is totally an info-dump series. It took me three tries to get through Two Towers as a teen, what with the wars that took place thousands of years ago being related in minute detail, and everybody having six names... and then ancestors all having the same name, so you can't tell any of them apart. Aragorn, son of Arastorm, son of Aramark, whom the elves call Ellessar and the dwarves call Pud... it's 200 pages of a great story, wrapped in an excruciating NatGeo travel documentary. But then again, I'm married to someone who considers the Silmarillion great light reading, so what do I know?)

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Well, as a very wise author friend of mine is fond of saying: not every book is for every reader.

And that's not the fault (necessarily) of either the book or the reader.

VeryBigBeard said:

The takeaway lesson, though, is that Aragorn's many names are a distinct and important part of that story as it's told in that particular way. They're not throwaways. Arathorn is damn important, his relationship with the elves is why much of Gandalf's plan actually works, which is in its own way a commentary of sorts on European political alliance-making, and so on and so forth. It's good info because it's all there, layered in the details. LOTR is packed full of goodies--just because it is difficult in places does not make it Bad. If he really wanted to info-dump, he'd have gone into the meta-story of Aragorn, which is basically Ser Orfeo, which is the Middle English retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, which makes the Roads of the Dead make a lot more sense than just a random plot device because it's really a reference to 2500 years of shared myth.

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Which I knew little to nothing of back when I first read LOTR, and yet on some level I must have sensed it, because I felt I had stumbled into a world that was not only fantastic (in more than one use of the word) but somehow real and deeply true. LOTR is a one-of-a-kind novel, and for me, a one-of-a-kind reading experience. And the more I learn of all that went into it, the more I appreciate it. But my visceral response to it was there from the beginning.

LotR does stand, though, as a perfect example of why 'info dumps are bad' is not a one-size-fits-all statement. Some people, my father and better half most emphatically included, love every word in the trilogy and wouldn't change a thing -- their comments about the depth of history and story layers that the details convey is very much what's been said here. And there are other readers, myself included, who would much rather he got on with the story instead of detailing the history of every hedgerow between the Shire and Bree.

(I also groan in shul when the weekly parsha is all 'cubits and begats,' despite the academic value of having those chapters in the Torah, so you know I'm a philistine. )

Which type of reader is each agent you submit to? God alone knows. The trick, as far as I'm concerned, is to work the necessary information into the tale-telling, so that what you don't have is a massive Wall-o-text in a prologue or first chapter, and then a rollicking story from there. It's the style disparity and the difficulty in hooking a reader with an encyclopedia entry that matters.

(Though done well, I've seen false encyclopedia entries be fantastic ways of getting information to the reader. Hitchhiker's Guide uses that and sidebar-style digressions to get a lot of information, voice and humor across in minimal amounts of text.)

To call something an info-dump rather than exposition, I'd have to consider it fails a number of tests.

1. Is it relevant to the story? A lot of info-dumps contain information that isn't actually important to the story. Often, an inexperienced author is trying to make the story sound important by loading half a history textbook into it. Sometimes, it's just the author has another story they want to tell, so they try to work it in as backstory.

2. Is there a better way of providing the reader with essential information? Instead of the Prologue of Doom, can it be worked in as snippets of conversation, a short briefing to the protagonist in Chapter 5, etc.?

3. Does the exposition itself have aesthetic qualities? Some writers have the gift of giving exposition so smoothly, so sweetly, (or conversely, with such grand boldness) that one scarcely realizes that it's all about the facts, Jack. The info dump fails by forcing a story to a halt (or, as prologue, by keeping it from starting). Well-written exposition carries the reader along.

There are still lots of writers providing info dumps instead of exposition. However, I think that some commentators have had "info dumps are BAD!!" burned into their brains to the point that they sneer at all exposition. This leads to the alternate fault - a story where the reader is expected somehow to understand the story with no underpinnings of exposition at all.

I think this is what the original poster was talking about. Exposition can be beautiful. Joyous. Awe-inspiring. It just takes a lot of skill to make it so. The info dump is pedestrian and stifling.

BethS said:

Well, as a very wise author friend of mine is fond of saying: not every book is for every reader.

And that's not the fault (necessarily) of either the book or the reader.

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Yup.

The LOTR books were not for me, but that doesn't mean they were bad.

(Can we look at more recent books to use as examples for this thread instead of an old classic book series, lol?)

Adversary said:

Its been a lonnnnng time, but I remember picking up The Hobbit years and years ago and starting into it. I dont remember it, as I didn't get that far in, maybe a few pages. I do remember that it didn't strike me as much harder to read than many other novels I've read, or to get into, prose-wise. I wasn't put off by anything, it just wasn't my scene at the time. I was into all-out fantasy (D&D type stuff) far more back then, and thought, hey, a classic, but I think it was just the actual hobbits for me. Too small cute and happy. I like dark stuff. I always said I'd get back to it and give it a go, but it never quite happened...

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Um...there's a difference between the Hobbit book and the LOTR series books....

Pretty sure The Hobbit was a children's s book vs the LOTR books which are adult books. That could be why The Hobbit was not that hard to read compared to other books you've read or not that hard to get into, "prose-wise"....

As someone who usually loves reading MG (children's) books over adult books, I loved the Hobbit book, but I couldn't get into LOTR books (which were still good, just not for me).