posted
OK basically I am in a situation where I have to dump information, but it's like fingernails on a chalkboard and I was hoping you could suggest ideas on how to smooth it out to a level of tolerable at least. How do you handle this situation?
Posts: 2195 | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
I agree with Hunt. In every story I feel we have to info dump, its just how you do it, either through conversation, or how your character sees the world, etc.
Posts: 98 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
Have your brilliant protagonist explain it all to a janitor for no reason.
quote:"Whatchya workin' on, Doc?" said Willie the Janitor, pausing between broom strokes.
"Well, son," said Dr. Phil, "to explain this right, we'll have to go back about five years, to when my now unfortunately deceased colleague discovered..."
[five pages later]
"Uh, right, Doc," said Willie, bewildered. "Thanks."
posted
The big question is how much info needs to be dumped, and how long is the story. Novels do end up with a few paragraphs that are in the famed class of info dump. When done right and in context, basically have it show up in places that relate directly to the story, then they go over much easier.
Short stories on the other hand, forget it. If you are spewing out more than a couple lines or a very short paragraph of background information you are doing too much.
You can do it in conversations, and there are other means as well. I suggest as many as works. If the character provides a piece or two while talking, and you throw in a bit here and there as you go, then it doesn't come over as a dump.
Last suggestion. Go over what you want to dump on the reader and weed it down to what is necessary. All to often we want to explain all the cool things we've dreampt up, but most of it can not be put in the story without boring the reader to something else.
posted
So far, I've found a few reliable techniques for infodumps, most of which have been mentioned here already. I'm sure there's more than what my limited experience has hit upon, too.
Dialogue - it's okay to create a character for this reason, but find other ways to make them vital to the story, as much as possible.
Slow release - one line at a time, release only whatever information is critical at that time and move on, until some other bit of the infodump must be released. Do that, just what is critical and move on.
Of those, I feel dialogue is best, especially if it's a long infodump. The other works well enough for smaller dumps.
posted
As it is my main character suffers from amnesia and this is the first time in the story (chapter 3) that someone is trying to tell him who he is, and she also tells him about the world, since up to now the reader doesn't have a very good idea of what it is. Part of me want to minimize the detail dumped and keep the world mysterious and appear a lot more subtle, but one reader pointed out that the situations are compelling but they don't like being so left in the dark about the world the story is in.
So, I wrote this scene which is dialog heavy in which a new character (who will be more vital later) explains the world and our main character's role in it, according to her. Our character accepts what she says as mostly true but he is a bit skeptical. The conversation is a few pages long and it seems to break the pace of what has been an "action" story up until this point.
So I'm divided on the issue, and I was wondering if a scene like I described above would stand out as clunky, or if it could be passable without derailing the story. I don't like to appear as an author who "cheats." Rabbit out of the hat, and whatnot. And honestly I can't tell if my readers are so interested in the world that they're hanging on my every word, or if I'm boring them to death.
How much clarity of the world and the MC do you need to know to be interested in the story? And how much are you willing to leave to mysetry knowing it'll be explained later?
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited July 27, 2007).]
posted
From what you describe, Zero, it sounds fine. A couple pages: depends on the length. Could be okay in a 20 page story, kind of awkward in a 3 page story.
Beyond that, the best way to tell is probably to ask for readers.
posted
This is a matter of opinion. For myself, I don't put in more than a few lines of explanation of my worlds at a time, since I usually believe that my reader is pretty much capable of figuring it out. On the otherhand, they're not so outre that a normal reader couldn't. It would really depend on the situation. I don't do hard science fiction where info dumps are much more tolerated.
Posts: 1588 | Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
I posted the question about "explaining things to an idiot", the phrase I was looking for was "info dump".
Basically I was looking for ways to dump backstory info or support data for a hard sf piece without being too cliche. Sherlock Holmes always had his idiot Watson there to ask the questions that needed to be asked and to explain things to, but I don't think readers will put up with that style much anymore.
posted
Though I may be alone in thinking this, I don't believe that infodumps are always bad. Take Jane Austen, for example. She often goes off on several long paragraphs where she describes everything about the character's personality at once. (She then, of course, moves on to show us this personality in action). People accept infodump-ing when she does it because her prose is lively and funny and her language use is interesting, so even the infodumps are fun to read.
posted
Doyle also needed Watson to be the narrator to avoid withholding. If Holmes had been the narrator, he would have had to show all of the things he knew. So Watson served as a reason to unload all of the information needed for the story, and also to credibly hold back all of the information needed to maintain suspense.
Posts: 671 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
I was reading an sf novel of recent vintage and it had a ten page (!) long "conversation" between two main characters which was nothing more than an info dump. The author tried to fancy it up with a occasional "beat" of he nodded, or her eyes took in this or some such thing but it didn't work. Well, it worked for a while until it dragged on so long without advancing the story itself. Then it made the novel hard to read. It needed a purpose to make it work. If one character was giving the other all this info about things as they are now (main character was rescued from a sleep chamber after a hundred years)but her purpose was to worm something out of the main character or to convince him of something...just something advancing the plot rather than dumping info, then the info dump might have been bearable.
Posts: 1580 | Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
I just wrote a 2,000 word info dump and darn if I see any way around it. Fortunately it's surrounded by chapters that are pure action so hopefully people will put up with it. But I can't find any way to get the information in any other way. I put it into a conversation, including an argument. It makes me cringe more than a bit. But sometimes you simply HAVE to tell your reader something things about the world you've built.
Posts: 1588 | Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
Usually info dump irritates me when it's not done well, but so does the oposite. I just read a few stories where I felt like the writer was withholding information, just to withhold it. Even at the end of the story I still felt like I dd not understand what was going on, simply b/c they were avoiding infodump. If it is important to the story- include it.
Posts: 39 | Registered: May 2007
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posted
Mauvemuse, I am not sure if I would call what you described as the opposite of an infodump.
If the reader is introduced to a mubliwump and mubliwumps play an important role in the story, then we should find out what, exactly, mubliwumps are. That is an infodump. Are you saying that you have read books in which mubliwumps (or what have you) are introduced for such a role by never explained?
Perhaps you are referring to when a character comes to a realization that the reader isn't privy to? Charles Stross, unfortunately, did this a few times in The Family Trade (book one of the Merchant Prince series, which OSC reviewed favorably). The main character realized something but the reader wasn't told what this was until a few pages later. It created tension (the reader wanting to continue reading in order to find out what was realized) but in what I would call a very "cheap" manner. The information withheld was never important and none of it really required an explanation (I think at one point the main character discovers that her family is shipping drugs across dimensions, but the reader doesn't find out that it is drugs, even though we see her look directly at them, until about 2 pages later). I wouldn't call that the opposite of an infodump as an infodump really wasn't needed at all. Just the bare facts (now if they were shipping mubliwumps across dimensions, we'd need to find out what mubliwumps are again, probably through an info dump).
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