OKAY, I admit it. I know more about writing than I understand. Take setting up a story so that what follows doesn't confuse the reader: I need to better understand when info becomes dump.

Anybody got a suggestion?

• I need to better understand when info becomes dump.

That’s easy. It’s when you appear on stage. The moment you describe the scene it’s telling because it’s not something the character is focused on. Instead, it’s something you’re focused on. That matters because you’re not in the story. And if you’re not, how can you talk about anything?

It’s a point most new writers struggle with, because all our experience with telling stories is verbal, and there, since we’re the only one on the stage, of course everything comes from us.

On the page there’s the problem that when we do speak to the reader they can neither see nor hear us, so all the emotional content we may place in our words through our delivery is lost.

The trick is to use the character’s senses, not our own. If we view the scene we focus on what’s happening, and what the place looks like—in other words a cinematic approach. And too often that reads like a report. But in the character’s POV the focus is on what has attracted the character’s attention in that moment. If someone’s hunting them they’re not going to look at the big view of the scenery, and everything they do look at will be seen in the context of the problem they face. It’s a much tighter focus than the view the storyteller has.

The trick is to slip the description in as a secondary element, in passing, and as enrichment to the primary function of the line.

Here are a few examples:

Melody hung, weightless, studying the empty lobster trap before glancing at her watch. It was time to admit that this had been a wasted trip and begin the long swim home. With a sigh that sent a plume of bubbles upward, she turned toward the coastline.

Nowhere did I say she was wearing scuba gear, or did I give detail on the situation. I simply gave her viewpoint as she sees the trap and makes a decision as a result of it. But with two sentences the reader knows whose skin they’re wearing, where they are, and the beginnings of what’s going on.

Cooled by Maine’s chill water she shivered, in spite of the wetsuit. The time spent on this quest was expensive in terms of lost body heat. But sunshine and the warmer water of the surface would solve that, so she finned through the algae-green water, slanting toward the surface some forty feet above.

Three sentences, and we know several things, none of it told to us by the author:

• She’s been in the water, at depth, for long enough to be chilled.
• The season is probably summer or fall because the water at the surface is warm.
• It’s daylight, and a nice day, to boot.
• The water isn’t clear as it would be in tropics.
• She’s already turned toward the coastline (so probably has a compass) and we know it’s a long swim. Now, she slants up as against simply rising, so she’s beginning the swim as she surfaces.

Note, too, that the final sentence is worded as her decision in response to the empty trap and an admission that the trip had been a waste.

The reader has a fair amount of data on the situation, but none of it was given them by an invisible voice, who can somehow speak underwater.

As her head broke water Melody spit out the mouthpiece of her regulator and substituted that of the snorkel, blowing it free of water with a puff that sent a cascade of droplets upward, only to patter down on her hood in a tiny rainsquall.

Here I appear and describe what she’s doing. I’m not thrilled with this, and the fact that I do, but it’s a short story and because of the word limit there’s more telling than in a novel, so I tried to limit my telling to what she would do first as a response to surfacing.

My point is that the reader has been given a fair amount of data, but it was fed in as enrichment, not as the focus of the line. And much of it was something that caused the reader to draw their own conclusions (which, hopefully, were the ones I wanted them to reach).

Hope this helps.

You're right Angela, there is a different tone. It's like something I feel obligated to say but don't want to hear. Ha! I'm gonna enjoy leaving out that stuff. Thanks.
O, and, I've learned to ignore the voices in my head. I just concentrate on doing what my Rice Crispies tell me to do.

Rommel, I know what you mean. Even reading (especially early) Clarke and (later) Heinlein there are paragraphs that glaze my eyes over and I always enjoy the story without knowing what was in those paragraphs. It's a little harder to know when I'm boring myself, but luckily, my wife will happily tell me. Thanks. Boring is a good indicator.

That's a useful technique, Jay: write from the character's POV. It should have been obvious to me but it wasn't. Now that I look at my writing with that in mind, I can see specific ways to fix paragraphs that trouble me. Yep, this helps. Thanks.

Jay Greenstein's post (in this thread, above) is detailed and offers clear examples of how to give the reader information without spelling it out in an info dump.

If the information is such that a reader cannot be expected to be familiar with it, maybe you could use a "go-between" character, one who is already familiar with both worlds and can be used to ease your reader into the unfamiliar world.

Nevena did a Q&A with Urban Fantasy author Anton Strout for the blog today, and he had a really beautiful way of explaining how to know when to provide information:

NG: What’s your advice for budding fantasy writers on how to avoid infodumps? Can you talk about your personal strategy in the series? 

AS: There are things that you the writer need to know that the audience simply doesn’t. I get it, writer…you came up with this amazing world and want to give it ALL to me, but that’s the kiss of death. Your world is the seasoning to flavor the dish that is your plot and characters. Too much salt kills a stew, too much infodumping ruins a book. I ONLY care about the details of your world insofar as they affect your character in the moment.  For example: I don’t need to have the Fodor’s Guide to Your World in the first fifty pages. But the second your character is hungry and doesn’t have the three distaris for a loaf of bread, I know the currency, and the value of something familiar from my world. Over a book you can dole out all the awesome you thought up, but it’s a mistake to show it unless it’s affecting the characters directly in a scene. 

--edited by Lucy Silag on 10/31/2013, 3:17 PM--

Mind if I run something by you guys, touching on points already addressed?

I'm working on the opening scene of Suicide King: A Chronicle of the Four Families set in a fictional country during the 1630s (modeled loosely on the Republic of Venice, in-universe and in real life).  The story opens with the inaugural parade of a new doge.  Our main character is a captain in the local peace-keeping militia and the younger son of one of the four most powerful and influential families in the republic.  He's on crowd control during the parade - watching for everything from cutpurses to assassins - and as he does so, I bring in the set-up of the history and current structure of the state and what today's inauguration represents to the people by having the captain ponder it (along with the influence of the Four Families and why they're such a big deal, and how he feels about being a member of such a family).  His thoughts don't come out of nowhere - they're triggered by things he overhears from the crowd while waiting for the parade to start. 

I'm trying to keep his ruminations on the history that brought everyone to this point it as brief as I can - currently it's at three paragraphs, but I'm working on trimming it as much as possible.  Length aside, however, does this approach work?  (I can post the scene here if anyone's curious or needs to see the actual execution before commenting.)

--edited by Ian Nathaniel Cohen on 1/9/2014, 10:24 AM--

Is it something he would really think? Would you were you him? I can't tell without reading, of course, but it sounds as if it would be obvious that you're giving him an excuse to info-dump rather than his thoughts flowing naturally.

I have to ask: why does the reader need to know all this history? For the character the situation exists, and someone born in that society who never went to school would get along fine, because like us in our every day living, they work with what is, not what was. Must I know how my government came to be to handle the situation I'm faced in a given day? Only if there's a history test that day, or the knowledge is necessary for some observation or decision.

Here's something to think about: let's assume a given reader only has time for your story at lunch. Given that there will be days when other things keep the fromm reading, and that they only read about ten pages a day, it might be a month reaching a given point where that knowledge is necessary. Will your reader remember the opening lecture? Can you depend on that? No.

Why not give context where context is needed? If we truly are in the POV of the protagonist, when they use that information in making a decision we'll learn exactly what the protagonist needs for that decision. Why do we need more?

--edited by Ian Nathaniel Cohen on 1/10/2014, 12:32 PM--

We know you guys like to hear advice straight from the horse's mouth... Here's some excellent worldbuilding commentary from SF/F Penguin editor Danielle Stockley (read the full Q&A here): 

One final piece of advice regarding worldbuilding that I can offer is that sometimes less is more. You wouldn't assume that a society that has invented the wheel is also familiar with heart transplants, steam locomotives, and programmable coffee machines. Just because your world contains characters with psychic abilities doesn't necessarily mean it also contains wizards, enchanted objects, demons, and a parallel universe. And if it does, there needs to be a good reason why you are spending time talking about all those things in the same novel.

 Thoughts?

Nevena 

BC Coordinator