It's not my original thought, but you're welcome.
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
About Info Dumps...
- Thread starter Roughdragon
- Start date
Mythopoet
Auror
Yes. This is exactly right.
Terry Greer
Sage
Info dumps aren't bad in themselves.
The main problem is putting them in when there's action either happening or just about to happen. If something is about to kick off I'm impatient to know what happens - I don't want to read detail on why its about to go pear shaped - I want the action to flow quickly. After all that's what action does.
Info dumps should only occur when the pacing allows for it, e.g. after the action explaining why something attacked. Or as part of an anecdote or disguised in some way as joke or saying.
You can also always (as Tolkien often did) write an appendix with the details, and then just allude to it with the most important facts in the main story.
use them carefully.
The main problem is putting them in when there's action either happening or just about to happen. If something is about to kick off I'm impatient to know what happens - I don't want to read detail on why its about to go pear shaped - I want the action to flow quickly. After all that's what action does.
Info dumps should only occur when the pacing allows for it, e.g. after the action explaining why something attacked. Or as part of an anecdote or disguised in some way as joke or saying.
You can also always (as Tolkien often did) write an appendix with the details, and then just allude to it with the most important facts in the main story.
use them carefully.
Dreamer
Bruce McKnight
Troubadour
It's a tough subject and it's hard to get readers up to speed without being overt. Like thedarknessrising said, you don't want to play coy - that get's even more annoying than just listing everything out in bullet points. It can be done well, though, because Caged Maiden made me go pull out Lies of LL again and it was so well done I didn't even think of it as an infodump when I first read it, thus proving T.Allen.Smith's rule.
My favorite approach, though, is full immersion, when the author trusts and challenges me as a reader to figure it out. I read this advice in a couple places, but it took me a long time to believe it. Then I started to notice it when I was reading and I realized that the more subtle it was, the harder I had to work, the more I liked it. I'm sure it would be very easy to take this too far, but editors and beta readers should be able to sniff that out pretty easily.
I compare it to full immersion when going to a foreign country. It was pretty easy to figure out what the connotation on "tosser" was and, even though it took me a while, I figured out what "bangers and mash" was without Google.
My favorite approach, though, is full immersion, when the author trusts and challenges me as a reader to figure it out. I read this advice in a couple places, but it took me a long time to believe it. Then I started to notice it when I was reading and I realized that the more subtle it was, the harder I had to work, the more I liked it. I'm sure it would be very easy to take this too far, but editors and beta readers should be able to sniff that out pretty easily.
I compare it to full immersion when going to a foreign country. It was pretty easy to figure out what the connotation on "tosser" was and, even though it took me a while, I figured out what "bangers and mash" was without Google.
