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One of the "problems" with writing Spec Fic, that I have anyway, is finding an appropriate point to introduce the created world. It gets harder and harder the less like the real world the created world is. Certain worlds, which are familiar to Spec Fic fans (I'm thinking Tolkein, etc. here) need it less, but sooner or later I feel I end up needing a big chunk of text explaining where the hell everyone is, and why things are working the way they are.
I try to break it up as much as possible, leaving whatever parts I can until later, and to use scenes to demonstrate certain facts whenever possible, and yet still the info dump remains. My current tactic is to have a scene, chapter 1, and then stick the info dump at the beginning of chapter 2, usually buried in a flashback.
Is that a safe plan or does that yell amateur? What do other people do?
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Ideally, you want to find a way to weave in the necessary information seamlessly and avoid an infodump altogether.
You don't need to present the entire world culture in one big chunk. Just present the one tiny bit that's necessary at the moment, and as other moments come up, work in the info.
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I don't usually write anything that varies too much from reallity or at least doesn't vary too much from familliar/traditional sci-fi milieus. This makes it easier to describe things without having to go into too much description.
As for Tolkien, I read an interesting article in an e-zine I subscribe to, called "Ten Things Tolkien Got Away With (But You Won’t)". While you might not get away with exactly what Tolkien did and how he did it, this might help or at least be food for thought.
quote:9) Endless descriptions of terrain. Reading some parts of The Lord of the Rings feels like perusing a nineteenth century travelogue through some newly discovered country. Each tree, each brook, each mountain is accounted for, and probably has a name, and a history, and a linguistic pedagogical analect dating back three hundred years. As usual, sigh, it works, and because it seems so real.
10) And of course, there’s the end. It refuses to. Frodo destroys the ring. Then, there’s the crowning. Then, there’s the Scouring of the Shire. Then, there’s the Grey Havens. Then, there are the appendices. Then there are the forty two books of unfinished material related to Middle Earth. How does Tolkien get away with this???
The answer is simple. Middle Earth is a character in its own right. Tolkien’s creation is so vivid, so detailed, so rich, you cannot deny it and you don’t want to leave it, despite the odd things he does with the story. Of course there is a lot more to his story than the setting, in which themes of death and heroism and friendship are dealt with in a mature and powerful manner, but it is the setting that really stands out in his epic. But unless you are willing to put that much detail into your setting (and you have a couple of decades in which to do it), you are not going to get away with the things he did. Which brings me to the end of this article.
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited September 21, 2005).]
posted
Info dumps are bad because most readers will forget the majority of it before they finish. The first thing you might want to think about is what do you have to explain. As an example, lets say you walk into a bar, or other public place, and the interior is bazzar. Out of the hundred things that are weird, how many will you notice? Probably not more than a handfull. The point? Find things that vary so much that they need to be relayed to the reader to make sense. Out of those things dribble them out over time. Why must the reader know the details of a creature that isn't met or introduced till chapter 7, until you get to chapter 7?
Too often we feel the need to tell the reader all the details we possibly can even when many of them are never important to the story. I'm not saying hide information from the reader, but give them enough to make sense without providing an explination for every detail. If it is scifi and there are automatic iris doors, does reader need to know that there are 15 moters that activate the iris when the proper code sequence has been entered? Not likely. Give the readers a bit of credit for being able to grasp things that are within the realm of believability.
It is also a nice when you can link the background information with the current events of the story. This keeps the story flowing and makes the background information relevant to what is happening.
posted
I agree with a lot of what's already been said here--you need to know nearly everything about your world, but the readers don't. Examine how some of the masters of world creation do it and you'll see that rarely is there any kind of info dump that last longer than a few paragraphs, if that.
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My best advice is to not put in an info dump until the reader not only needs to know, but really, really wants to know. In my last novel, I avoided all info dumps. Just bit my nails, and then let someone read it. There were a few pieces of information they did desperately want to know -- and then I graciously stuck three-quarters into the novel. By that time, the reader wouldn't be rolling their eyes going, "Oh great. An info dump." The reader instead, reacts in a "finally! I've been dying to know this for thirteen chapters!"
Of course, there's a thin line. If holding the information until later is confusing and frustrating, something else must be done...but usually with background information, that isn't the case. Readers are smart: they can get along just fine without all the information so long as you give it to them eventually. So...if info must be dumped, dump late in the piece, when the reader cares and really wants to know. Then it won't feel like an info dump, and they won't resent it. (Oh, and cleverly disguising info dumps by dramatization is nice, too. I love characters who are cheerfully and reasonably ignorant of a thing of two that needs explaining).
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Provide the questions when the reader will want and expect them. That an "and" and, not an "or" of any kind. If the reader doesn't already want the information, don't provide it. If the reader doesn't expect the information, same thing.
There will be several points in your story at which a reader will want information but does not expect you to give it up right away, such as when the POV character is still ignorant of the point in question. There are a couple of other points where the reader will expect unwanted information (like in your prologue). And then again there are places where a reader will have wanted information but will have ceased to expect you to provide it.
You have to get the timing right. Information that shows up when your readers either don't want or don't expect it will hurt your narrative flow.
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I've thought that, if you discard Tolkien's appendices and such and just consider the novel and its natural end...that the climax is actually about two pages back from the end...and, in a way, it's not really about finding or losing the Ring at all.
I'd post more about it, but not only would it involve spoilers (assuming anybody here hasn't yet read Tolkien), but, really, it'd be more appropriate on the Published Works forum.
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Tolkien got away with a lot of nervy stuff because his work was new and fresh. He is the grandfather of the fantasy genre. But he was highly guilty of infodumping, and I confess that while I love Tolkien and the rich world he created, I bleeped over a lot of the infodump, or at least felt like I was slogging through wet cement to get to the end. He got away with it because there was plenty of other other content to grasp your attention.
I sympathize with your hesitation about how much, and when, to include the info that has to happen to shape the feel of an alternative world. I have a pretty complex milieu in my WIP. I am slowly learning that much of what I thought I had to explain can easily be put off until a more appropriate point in time. (It helps that I have one character who is a learned scholar and enjoys sharing his knowledge with others.) But I'm also finding that much of what I've invented for this world is completely unnecessary for the reader to know. It is useful for ME to know it, because it makes my writing consistent and smoother. But the reader really doesn't need to know the names of each and every country on my continent and the capital cities and population. Not until the characters pass through the city is the detail important. Things that DO affect the characters directly, like the social pecking order that influences their daily lives, I've managed to drop the info in. I still suffer from a few "As You Know, Bob" passages I have to weed out.
But I'm learning that simple is better. It takes fewer 'hints' than you might think to make the reader feel he or she is in an alternate world and to convey a sense of what is happening.
posted
Tolkien is a special case...if you are part of the audience he was really writing for, there isn't even one example of infodumping. There are some cases of rather silly plot elements and so forth, but none of the information is simply "dumped". If you were ever going to care about the information, he put it right where it should be. Like the little speil about Bilbo's song about the cow and the moon comes right when Frodo decides to sing it to distract everyone from Pippin...if you're one of the tiny minority of people that actually cared about the connection, it was right where you wanted it
It helps if you remember that both Frodo and Bilbo were comfortably fusty middle-aged hobbits when they went on their adventures. You don't actually have to be a fusty middle-aged bachelor who spends a lot of time in a large upholstered chair in your well-worn study...but it probably helps. Certainly there is much in the text that is not there for the young or those who are "part of life".
The point is that if you want that information at all, it is right where it should be.
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