Writing a good info dump?

[Lord Ben]

I've seen a lot of discussion here on whether or not to info dump but not much for how to write a good one if you've decided to do it anyway. My goal is to write a story and also write a separate infodump page or two and write it as best as I can and only then after it's written decide whether or not to use it.

What is some of the better methods used? A direct note to the reader ala Princess Bride where the author stops to say things like "(Here I took out 170 pages written by Morganstern discussing the history of the wars between Florence and Guilder)"?

Something cute and folksy like the opening chapter of The Hobbit?

I've read a few Clancy novels where they had excerpts from intelligence intercepts pretending to be a summary document on why nuclear/chemical weapons weren't used in a war instead of revealing it through some Politburo meeting, etc.

Any suggestions?

 

[Penpilot]

IMHO the best way to get information across to the reader is to find situations in which that information would logically pop into the POV character's head or pop out of dialogue. For example, if you need to get a bit of information about cooking technique out, you could have a scene in a kitchen, or you could have a character reading a cook book, or watching a cooking show, etc.

If you want a POV character to muse about something, it's about setting up the external stimulation that triggers that train of thought. If you want a character to muse about their childhood, maybe they see a children playing a game in the street and that triggers the thoughts about their childhood.

Having info coming out in dialogue can be a little trickier, because if you don't do it right it becomes very obvious that your dumping info on the reader and that can take them out of the story. Watch out for "As you know Bob" type dialogue. If you don't know what that is here's a link. Main/As You Know - Television Tropes & Idioms

 

[Lord Ben]

My story is a fantasy world during a "western" time period instead of a medieval time period. I'm hugely ripping off several things from history like the story starts 1870 years after event X and nearly 400 years after the Elves and magic left "In 1492 the Elves left and took magic too" being a popular rhyme, etc.

I have a lot of it being told through dialogue, but I want to keep the story focused on action and not having two characters discussing world history while changing a wagon wheel or something.

I'd like to write a "straight to the reader" bit of telling that gives up the extra details and then decide later whether to include it. If used I imagine it being plugged in somewhere after the first two chapters. After there is some action, protagonists, antagonists, etc I'd maybe try to explain a bit of the "deep" history as concisely as possible without trying to fit it into other stuff. The story would already tell you the MC is a veteran of a civil war fought between barons but the reader might wonder if it's a war to free slaves/keep the union together or if it's something else, etc.

 

[ThinkerX]

"In 1492 the Elves left and took magic too" being a popular rhyme, etc

And there you have it. Introduce a character - an old guy with a guitar, who sits around and sings these little ditties. Your other characters hear snatches of this as they go in and out of saloons, banks, and the like. Maybe he could contribute a bit of info to an MC.

Also, might want to think about wanted posters and notices nailed to posts. Have a character straight from the sticks spend a moment or two looking them over. Throw in a weird notice or two that pertains to your worlds history.

 

[Lord Ben]

Yeah, but plenty of things cover those little tricks and such and I want to ignore that and focus on some ways to write a good info dump rather than avoiding an info dump. More for learning than for my specific story examples I've been using.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Some advice in this recent thread about info dumps & effective exposition. I see you were a participant in the thread but there are some decent methods illustrated here:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/9539-handling-exposition.html

 

[Lord Ben]

Yeah, I remember the thread but I mostly remembered it was advice on how to blend it into the story rather than making a straight to the reader dump entertaining to read. It's good advice but I think if it was followed 100% of the time you'd have the Hobbit open up with Gandalf being aghast at having tea in a dirty hole in the ground and Bilbo being indignant as he educates Gandalf on the realities of the Hobbit lifestyle. So if it's not to be blended seamlessly 100% of the time than I'm looking for tips about the remaining 5% or so.

Not that I'm determined to actually use one in a book or story, but I am determined to write one as I learn best by doing. Perhaps it'd work out for the story, perhaps it wouldn't but I'd like to write the best "note to the readers" that I can before making that judgement.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Okay, so in that thread. I talked about exposition done through character conversation, specifically in the telling of a story from one character to others.

Also, if memory serves, other members mentioned the use of dialogue for this purpose. To do either of these effectively though, you must ensure that the dialogue, or spoken story, is:

1) Relevant to the current surrounding & time. Meaning, there has to be a natural reason for the character to be talking about this stuff, at this moment.

2) It has to be interesting. Boring details for any reason you can dream up, don't work.

3) Foreshadowed; Hints to the importance of information, help to enhance reader curiosity when you're finally revealing key information - this last one isn't 100% necessary, but I find it helps a great deal. Properly written foreshadowing, dropping hints about important story elements, piques reader curiosity and builds interest.

If done well, your reader will gobble that exposition up without ever thinking of it as an info dump.

That's one way. If you're simply asking how to write an obvious and blatant info dump, and do it well, so it doesn't turn readers away....

Make it extremely interesting. That's it really, but foreshadowing can help.

Regardless, I'd advise against it. You referenced The Hobbit as an example. Understand that The Hobbit was written 60 years ago. Does it work? Sure, it does. However, if you want to appeal to a modern audience, the general advice is avoidance, but you already know this.

I'm not trying to discourage you really, just stating my opinion. If you want to try to write an info dump that is also a page turner, I say go for it! Experiment away.... Understand though , it's going to be very difficult to pull off.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

Sometimes when I had a lot of stuff to say, I will write out all the things I want to get across and then check them off the list as I add them in piecemeal. I think one tidbit per chapter or so adds another layer to the story - you get the main plot moving and build the backstory at the same time as opposed to stopping the real story for two pages to give all the background.

It's also possible to just jot everything down and wait until you are sure you want to include it. Then you will have a little more meat to your story and can decide the perfect places to put each piece.

 

[Lord Ben]

That's one way. If you're simply asking how to write an obvious and blatant info dump, and do it well, so it doesn't turn readers away....

Make it extremely interesting. That's it really, but foreshadowing can help.

Regardless, I'd advise against it. You referenced The Hobbit as an example. Understand that The Hobbit was written 60 years ago. Does it work? Sure, it does. However, if you want to appeal to a modern audience, the general advice is avoidance, but you already know this.

I'm not trying to discourage you really, just stating my opinion. If you want to try to write an info dump that is also a page turner, I say go for it! Experiment away.... Understand though , it's going to be very difficult to pull off.

That's exactly what I'm asking!

Mostly as a writing exercise than anything else but I was hoping there was a few good tips somewhere I missed. Keep it short, don't explain everything, etc. Was reading something and it had the top tips from Vonnegut and one basically said to start close to the end and give the reader the most information possible as quickly as possible so they would understand what's going on.

I notice for instance that some of my favorite dumps also hint at more story while still revealing enough to get the plot moving. Star Wars for instance has Rebels fighting a Galactic Empire but doesn't say what their reasons are for fighting, a timeline of the struggle, the history of the Jedi, what Princess Leia is a princess of, etc. A lot of that is revealed through the more traditional methods of Obi-Won explaining it to Luke, etc. But it was a rough explanation through a brief dump.

Mostly I find myself in a fairly unique (maybe not) situation in which large parts of my history are just minor changes to the real history of the West. Knowing what the minor change is along with grade school knowledge of US history should provide most of the info. But it starts to feel clumsy after a bit to keep divulging little changes.

So now I'm trying to decide whether to soldier on with how it's going and revealing a bit at a time as it makes sense, or perhaps taking what Vonnegut says and giving them the details quickly, etc. One of my favorite bloggers has a lot of internal dialogue on is blog with an "editor" that is really just a second voice of his that he uses to express internal doubt about what he's saying. Like "We should do XYZ in Syria." (We shouldn't ignore the chance that XYZ will lead to a regional ABC -Ed) I enjoy reading that style on his blog personally.

I'll try to find a decent example from something I've written and do it a few ways like I mean. Just really rough.

“If you’d have fought in the Baron’s Rebellion you’d never say such a thing. I seen way too many good friends die because some Barons didn’t like how a vote went against them. Four years of war over price controls of a few key rail lines through the mountains?” Monty ground his teeth in anger “I’d sooner see them swinging from a rope.”

Through dialogue but is it overly explainy?

“If you’d have fought in the Baron’s Rebellion you’d never say such a thing. Too many men died for a senseless cause.” Monty ground his teeth in anger “I’d sooner see them swinging from a rope.”

Not explainy enough?

“If you’d have fought in the Baron’s Rebellion you’d never say such a thing. Too many men died for a senseless cause.” Monty ground his teeth in anger “I’d sooner see them swinging from a rope.”

Footnote at the bottom says the Baron's Rebellion was fought in 1861-65 when the mountain Baron's broke away from the Kingdom in order to exploit their key locations.)

Right blend or awkward?

“If you’d have fought in the Baron’s Rebellion you’d never say such a thing. Too many men died for a senseless cause.” Monty ground his teeth in anger “I’d sooner see them swinging from a rope.” (I had to eliminate a 7 page history of the Baron's Rebellion from Ben's original manuscript, it's enough to know that a war was fought between two factions over control for the railroads between 1861 and 1865 -editor).

Too cute?

That's the kind of thing I mean as a rough example. Perhaps an appendix with a timeline people can look at if they want to and ignore if they choose also. I have no desire to be overly wordy but wanted to experiment with a couple delivery styles for info that weren't strictly a POV character experience.

I'm not aiming for art or literature or a well detailed world, just to tell a good story in 200 pages or so.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Out of those four examples, I like the first best.


It explains enough, but not too much so it raises interest. The dialogue reads naturally and it seems like he's talking to someone that needs Monty's opinion, making it relevant at that moment and not contrived. It also hints at Monty's character and a setting brimming with violence and conflict not completely settled.

Of course, greater context may be necessary to be certain but I wouldn't consider any of that an info dump.

 

[Lord Ben]

The first wasn't the dump and was straight paste from my first chapter. Thanks for the feedback, you nailed the character pretty good.

For the other thread you linked one of the bits of advice has caused me to continually press backspace over large chunks of texts and it was some of the best bits of advice I've seen so far.

My first tip is: the reader probably doesn't need to know as much as you think they do.

My second tip is: the reader probably doesn't want to know as much as you want to tell them.

But I was playing around with alternate methods like the editors note. Nothing pleased me yet but instead of giving up I figured I'd check here. I'm having as much fun learning a skill as I am actually telling the story so far so it's good to play a bit with different ways of writing and presenting data.

 

[wordwalker]

If you're interested in slightly more dump-y approaches:

A classic bit of advice is, "to explain something, have it break or wear out and show it being fixed." A variation is teaching a newcomer about it, or testing a student. These are all good methods, but they've been used a lot, and tend to look a little artificial (which isn't too bad a thing, if used sparingly and you've got good will with the reader).

But one variation that's a bit more organic is to show someone trying to change things. History, political/military/magical situations, and so on could be read as "the built-up reasons we can't do X now" ("can't" in the sense that it's hard, tends to make things worse, and Might Take A Hero to pull off). Now someone thinks he's found a way to do X, and he argues for a chance, or tries it out, or both. The resulting verbal or physical clash demonstrates the logic behind things, shows which characters take which view of it, and might do some damage (or some good) that has lingering effects on the story.

It could be as simple as a character's hobby of trying to bring back that lost magic, in minor and harmless ways that still spur the odd "we both know that never works" conversation. It could be a momentary side-plot for a lesser character, or one of the red herrings someone tries trying to deal with a major problem.

But, history's made up of cause and effect. And so is plot, both main and minor points. So if you want to show something without purely talking about it, there are always ways to engage with it.