I Can Show You The World

Shining, Shimmering, Splendid

Ah, info dumping. It’s the bane of writers everywhere.

You just spent lord knows how long making up a 3,000 year backstory for the Kingdom of Kirkphaelia and now you want to share it with the world!

Here’s the sad truth, dear reader. Unless the secret history of the lesser branch of the royal house of the Kirkenids somehow plays a direct role in your story your reader doesn’t actually give a fuck.

I know, I know, you worked really hard on it.

Yes, chances are it’s even very good and should be appreciated.

The sad fact is that we as writers have to do the hard thing and leave a lot of the extraneous facts on the cutting room floor.

Some things cannot be cut however. Maybe that juicy tidbit on the Kirkenids actually does play a role in your story! But the delivery is the key.

Too often new writers give into the temptation to over explain and splooge a three page long explanation into their story with all the enthusiasm and none of the restraint of a 13 year old who just discovered tugging on their dick.

Don’t do that. Please, please don’t do that.

I know it’s hard (no pun intended) but you need to try and dilute the information through dialogue whenever possible. Layering in the facts over several paragraphs (or pages) is a good way to have characters interact with each other and develop their personalities while simultaneously conveying necessary information to your reader. Not only that, but it’s far more entertaining to read than what amounts to block text from a history/geography documentary of a place that doesn’t actually exist outside the chambers of your mind.

Nothing ruins a good adventure like throwing on the brakes to get a page and half lecture on eastern trade routes from an omniscient narrator and that doesn’t provide any meaningful addition to the story at hand. One might even go so far as to say that such instances make the engine fall out of the narrative with an audible clunk.

Now here’s the kicker, dear reader: sometimes the block-text-dump not only works but is necessary. Often times when I feel this works is when a character is seeing something new for the first time and they take in a bunch of information at once. Even then I recommend two things: first that you severely limit the use of info dumping. Second, that even when you do info-dump you at least use one or more of your characters in the process.

Maybe a character is from a poor background and has never seen any display of wealth and suddenly finds themselves at a noble’s banquet. They find themselves staring slackjawed at the silverware, the plates, the food. They gape at the ermine coat of a noble lady or the rings decorating a man’s fingers. You could extrapolate for paragraphs (maybe even pages) dumping information on how wealthy the people are and all the while the reader is becoming more familiar with your main character. Your readers will feel engaged with the narrative because you’ve woven the information into the characters instead of pulling the reader out of the story to give them an impromptu Ted Talk.

Just think of info-dumping as you would drinking: you should only do it in moderation and you definitely shouldn’t do it and then drive or operate heavy machinery (the jury is still out on whether info-dumping is a good idea to do pregnant, however, so I’m afraid there the similarities end).

Think twice before doing it, dear reader. Make smart choices. And, failing that, at least try to make it fun for whoever decides to pick up your book.

Give Em The Ol’ Razzle Dazzle