Info Dumps

We avoid info dumping if and when we realize that what we have written is an undesirable/indigestible dump of irrelevant/boring/unnecessary information.

Mind you, one reader's info dump could be another reader's interesting block of information.

Readers don't need as much explanation as we think they do, and initial explanations of the unknown ahead can easily be boring because there is nothing to which the reader can relate the explanations.

It's preferable to draw readers into new world elements as the story unfolds by showing how characters act/react in relation to these elements.

Bufty said:

Readers don't need as much explanation as we think they do, and initial explanations of the unknown ahead can easily be boring because there is nothing to which the reader can relate the explanations.

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^^^This.

My own go-to example: Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. He doesn't do a whole lot of handholding, but he builds a very different world.

Also, there's an award-winning book many people have told me I'd love, and it opens with pages and pages and pages of infodumping and I haven't been able to get past it yet. So YMMV, as always.

I took a giant infodump in my book, but I at least had the common courtesy to wait until chapter 3, after the reader is (hopefully) invested enough to get power it.

I prefer the guided tour approach. If something impacts the characters' daily lives, then have them encounter it in their daily lives, before the inciting incident starts.

Putting it into dialogue is a good place to start. Also, totally agree with Tufty about readers not needing as much as you think. By all means develop the background of your world, but you don't need to put it all in the book, and shouldn't in fact.

As I told my classmates that did infodumps in their pieces, they belong in your notes file. A decent amount of readers won't want to go through a lot of heavy information all at once just to understand the world. Some is fine, but anything longer than a paragraph or two on its own needs to be woven in elsewhere if it is critical to the story. Anything else, like say your sci-fi piece mentioning the mating cycle of murbles when neither any of your cast is interested in murbles or murbles are involved in getting them to a piece of tension, but are in the background of the planet they're on, needs to be kept in notes for reference and not put into the story unless it becomes relevant down the line. That way, you have gotten the urge to have that detail down on file, but it doesn't distract the reader from the story you're trying to tell in the first place and possibly leave them more confused than when they started that part.

As my teacher said, "make the reader do the work for you."

The rule of thumb with all writing is if you can make it interesting, people will forget it's something you're not "supposed" to do in writing.

So the important question is: Is it interesting?

I just want to thank the OP for starting this thread. I've been struggling with info dumps and this has been really helpful.

lilyWhite said:

The rule of thumb with all writing is if you can make it interesting, people will forget it's something you're not "supposed" to do in writing.

So the important question is: Is it interesting?

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Although not even 'interesting' can be enough to merit the inclusion in many cases. Referring up to Maryn's example above, even if it were well written, a big block of text about the setting can stop the story dead in its tracks. There's a reason why the standard advice is to start the story on action, or something happening, because that pulls the reader into events. If the first thing they get hit with is 12 pages of future history, some people will get through it, but I imagine a lot will run out of patience because there's no story happening.

Thomas Vail said:

Although not even 'interesting' can be enough to merit the inclusion in many cases. Referring up to Maryn's example above, even if it were well written, a big block of text about the setting can stop the story dead in its tracks. There's a reason why the standard advice is to start the story on action, or something happening, because that pulls the reader into events. If the first thing they get hit with is 12 pages of future history, some people will get through it, but I imagine a lot will run out of patience because there's no story happening.

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I'd say if it's interesting--holding reader interest--it isn't an info dump. Background and information to orient the reader to this time/place/story isn't inherently bad. Like anything else, it's how it's done.

Maryn said:

(And a fun little addendum to my story: The person who I advised not to do that gigantic infodump is downvoting every reply I give from two different accounts. Yeah, okay, not everything I say there--or here--is pure gold, but oddly, when I post anonymously, no downvotes. Way to be mature, silly person.)

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Ugh! I hope there are mods there who can help you out. What a nuisance.

Working it naturally into the dialogue of the characters is one good way, such as through happenings like ceremonies, rituals, campfire tales, etc. where the characters organically reveal parts of the world to the reader. That's what I've done with some of my "info-dump". Another way to go about it, if you have such huge amounts of information to share that can't possibly be put into the story without bogging it down utterly, would be to create Appendices like Tolkien did that are solely focused on explaining the world and its history. It then becomes a reference that can be looked to for the world-building in the story proper (what info to include, how much to include, if any) or for future world-building endeavors. But like some of the others above have stated, as long as it's interesting, captivating or memorable then info-dumping can be a positive. It's all in the execution.

If the ridiculous number of cop shows have taught us anything, it's that the general public are far too willing to swallow heaping amounts of infodumps as long as you disguise it with a couple characters. Obviously, it's better if you can add in things like conflict, emotion, subtext, or character building. But that seems to be optional half the time. (Hello all you scenes at the coroners, morgue, or staff briefings. ) And there are pretty strong sci-fi parallels to these kind of things. (Hello Stargate / Startrek briefings, with your big tables and fancy office chairs. ) Seriously, though, as long are people are feeling the story, they can be pretty forgiving so long as you don't do it too early or too often.



p.s. I miss Stargate.

Probably worth mentioning that infodumps in film and TV are an entirely different thing than infodumps in prose. Viewers are used to them, and there are tactics that make them work that don't work the same way in prose. I think that's in part because video is a push model: if a viewer is confronted with a boring bit, they'll think "yeah, yeah, whatever" and wait it out (as long as it doesn't go on too long). Reading is a pull model, and if you drop the incentive for your reader to keep pulling, you've got a much shorter runway before you lose them entirely.

LucidCrux said:

If the ridiculous number of cop shows have taught us anything, it's that the general public are far too willing to swallow heaping amounts of infodumps as long as you disguise it with a couple characters. Obviously, it's better if you can add in things like conflict, emotion, subtext, or character building. But that seems to be optional half the time. (Hello all you scenes at the coroners, morgue, or staff briefings. ) And there are pretty strong sci-fi parallels to these kind of things. (Hello Stargate / Startrek briefings, with your big tables and fancy office chairs. ) Seriously, though, as long are people are feeling the story, they can be pretty forgiving so long as you don't do it too early or too often.



p.s. I miss Stargate.

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This has probably been my most valuable lesson in joining a book club comprised of readers (as opposed to readers who also write). This is NOT to say we shouldn't be paying attention, editing, revising, and doing our very best to produce the best work we can (and, if our goal is trade publication, agents and editors care). But all these things we obsess over? If readers are enjoying the story and characters, they don't care.

I encountered the dreaded info dump in something I'm working on and tried to be extra brutal in paring it down through editing. I also replaced entire blocks of exposition with actual character interactions from historical figures who witnessed firsthand how the world reached its current state. Lastly, I removed some stuff entirely; introducing certain things as they become relevant is a good tactic (which I'm sure everyone here realizes), but I had to explore this strategy more deeply than I expected before I was satisfied. Does the reader really need an explanation on why Australia got destroyed by nuclear weapons, or would it just be cooler to have that info come out of nowhere later in the book?

I'm certainly not saying every work of futuristic fiction needs to be set in a dystopia, but fictional worlds often have something about them that's worse than its counterpart in the real world. Very often, that's where a source of conflict or dread comes into the story. If the characters live these struggles, they should encounter them organically in the book, right? So why lay it all out in the beginning? And if the characters don't encounter the most important aspects of your fictional world, why include them?

Maryn said:

(And a fun little addendum to my story: The person who I advised not to do that gigantic infodump is downvoting every reply I give from two different accounts. Yeah, okay, not everything I say there--or here--is pure gold, but oddly, when I post anonymously, no downvotes. Way to be mature, silly person.)

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[Maryn, a wonderful writer/contributor who is above silly downvotes.]


I have a very complex world and when I tried to give a brief summary in my critique group so they would know what was going on, they jumped to a whole bunch of wrong conclusions. Slowly over time I stopped trying to put everything in my head on the page for the readers.

What Bufty said:

Readers don't need as much explanation as we think they do

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This is the key to not doing boring infodumps. Let the readers uncover the world as they go. It's much more interesting that way.

MaeZe said:

[Maryn, a wonderful writer/contributor who is above silly downvotes.]


I have a very complex world and when I tried to give a brief summary in my critique group so they would know what was going on, they jumped to a whole bunch of wrong conclusions. Slowly over time I stopped trying to put everything in my head on the page for the readers.

What Bufty said: This is the key to not doing boring infodumps. Let the readers uncover the world as they go. It's much more interesting that way.

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Also, going back mostly to Maryn's example, _starting_ with a big info dump is just like, for anybody who's done table top RPG gaming, having some random stranger start telling you all about how awesome their character is and the amazing things they've done.

And you just don't care.

This is why writers can have such problem with info dumps, because just like 'let me tell you about my character!' they've got the involvement and investment with that character and setting that it's all meaningful to them, but to the unexpected audience, they have none of that.

There's nothing to give the info dump and relevance or connection, and for something like 12 pages of background at the start of the story how much of that is actually going to have any relevance to the story? The history of England is going to shape the contemporary London, but that doesn't mean you need to preface a story set in the present day by covering events going back to the war of the roses. Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series and George.R.R. Martin's Westeros both have very significant world building and background events and information, but they didn't get lumped together at the front of book one.

The Fade by Chris Wooding was phenomenal at this, in my opinion. It's a very complex world (a planet riddled with tunnels, subterranean ecosystems, and about a dozen sentient species), and you just slide into it effortlessly. I was really impressed.

BillL said:

..on why Australia got destroyed by nuclear weapons...

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I thought this was common knowledge.

My friend writes Sci-fi and he doesn't over explain anything in his novel, he doesn't go into any real detail.
Then he gets beta readers to specifically look through his work and tell him what they think needs more explaining.
He makes a list and if the same thing comes up a couple of times as confusing for readers, he goes back and puts the information in. Then asks those to view it and see if they understand it now.
It can be time consuming but that is how he does it.

I can't stand info-dumping but some people do like it. And they like to know everything in detail. I don't. So it's hard to get the right amount.

You have a clever friend, sweetshop.

I've used a device wherein a sick character needs to remain conscious in the wilderness, and in order to remain conscious, this character uses a mental trick of singing old songs and quizzing himself on old school lessons. It allows me to put in a few necessary world building points, and two editors have told me it works well enough.

Otherwise, 'avoiding info dumps' might be looking at the issue backwards. Yes, avoid info dumps, but do it by increasing the 'good stuff' that people want.

Like if Sharon is in a brutal breakup, and (you'd elaborate here on the emotional angle), then within that passage, little snippets can be woven in--like the pain of it is so bad, so profound, that the only thing that could possibly come close to what she is feeling is when Australia was destroyed in a nuclear holocaust twenty-three years earlier.

I mean, not that, but yeah, something like that.