I'm working on the third story in a series. It didn't start to be a series, but what can you do?
The question is how annoying is it to start a story with a piece of background information lifted from a previous story. It's a set up for the state of the universe politically. I'm thinking to use the old Encyclopedia Galactica entry ploy and tweak the background info to sound like such an entry. It would be the fastest way to get the reader up to speed on the "world" of the story.
Too tacky? I'm trying to avoid rehashing everything from story #2 so I can get into the action in story #3.
Yes, that leave a very info-dumpy first 13 lines!
Posted by Louiseoneal (Member # 3494) on :
I guess that depends on how the first 13 lines read. If it doesn't bore me and I can apsorb it all, I don't mind a quick catch up.
Posted by Marva (Member # 3171) on :
I'm talking about something like this. No crits needed, but only is it okay to start with something like this in italic, set off from the actual start to the story.
Encyclopedia Galactica, 2510 CE: When the Terra Combine merged with the Canopis Corporation, IncPlan became the de facto government. Eventually, twenty-three inhabited worlds merged into a massive commercial enterprise. In the beginning, the individual planets maintained separate governments, but over the years, that became superfluous and all but disappeared. Only three planets continued to maintain their own governments, but they were simply mice to IncPlan's elephant. It made a certain amount of sense. Since all trade between the members, and with the few remaining independents, was handled through subsidiaries of IncPlan, it was not a long step to hand over the rest of the governmental functions. All security forces, including the space service, were administered through IncPlan.
Posted by Louiseoneal (Member # 3494) on :
That short an intro wouldn't bother me much, and it's definately less bothersome than trying to get it all into the first three or four paragraphs by working it into your story.
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
Beware of infodump.
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
I like infodumps if they're relevant, but I suspect this one isn't needed. Is it going to be about those 3 resistant planetary governments? A short sentence -- "Mongo and 2 other worlds still resisted the Empire" -- might do it?
Posted by Mig (Member # 3318) on :
I would expect that the reader would have already read the two previous stories (by stories, I'm assuming novels). Info dumps may be OK if they are part of a recap of what's happended in the previous volumnes. I've seen that done on some long multivolume series. I think that such a recap should focus not so much on political background of the story, although that should be covered, but on the journey of your characters. Otherwise, I agree with Wbriggs.
Posted by Marva (Member # 3171) on :
To answer some questions/assumptions:
They are short stories, not novels. People may or may not have read the first two stories. Potentially, the three could be merged into a novelette or novella length. Right now, they're separate stories with the same main character, same world.
No, the story is not about the three resistant planets, so maybe that part could be taken out. It is about rebellion, but the story is POV of a member of the military fighting the rebels.
Yes, it's an info-dump. That's pretty obvious :-) That's why I want to handle it as an introductory remark in the form of the Encyclopedia entry. In story #2, that information is imparted in a conversation between two characters further down in the story.
Thanks for everybody's thoughts on it.
Posted by pooka (Member # 1738) on :
It wasn't very clear to me. I don't think the first 13 lines has to all be infodump if you are starting with infodump, and I don't think it has to be all one paragraph. You've got "When...Eventually...In the beginning...over the years." It's just really confusing.
Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :
What's wrong with staring out with a mini-chapter called "Synopsis of the Story So Far" or something like that?
Posted by Mig (Member # 3318) on :
Think about the original Star Wars movie, or the original trilogy for that matter. It had a rebellion and and evel empire and zero specific political background explaining how it got that way. And it was better for it. The second trilogy, mostly all backstory, and not better for it. I think that the type of info you present in your info dump is important for the writer to creat his/her world but isn't always need for the reader to enjoy the story.
Posted by Marva (Member # 3171) on :
Actually, all the Star Wars movies start with the scrolling bunch of words at the beginning talking about the rebellion and the Empire, etc. I'm just thinking to have a similar thing here, but this seems to be confusing a lot of people. I'll think of something. Thanks, everybody, for responding. It has all been informative.
Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :
Try to write the story as a stand alone story without the background information. If we really need the information, its not a story so much as a continuation of the previous story.
A good series will all be stand alone stories but will hold more meaning for people who have read them all mostly because the characters will be consistant and at the same time they will develop.
If you are thinking serial, then you do have several episodes of one story, but there must be a grand plot connecting them all and they pretty much have to have been designed that way from the first. In this case you will need to have some back ground to catch the reader up or remind them of previous episodes. But, you should be able to do this using one or two sentences in the first page. kind of a:
"They'd finally managed to destroy the death ray satellite and discovered the location of the control base. The base would have to go."
Quick and simple connection to the past without overflowing our capacity for info dumps. Things like intercharacter relationships are best written in such a way to make the history obvious without talking about it ahead of time. Mention the past when it is relevant to the present.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
Be wary of confusing what works in the movies with what works in print. The movies can get away with a scroll or a narrator at the beginning reading important information---I'm thinking in particular of the opening of "Casablanca," the "With the coming of the Second World War..." bit here, that lays out a lot about life in Casablanca---but that'd never fly in a novel.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
A short story has to stand on its own. If you can't lose the infodump, then your story doesn't stand on its own.
That means that the story itself is fundamentally flawed somehow.