INFO DUMPING IS NOT COOL JUST LIKE WRITING IN CAPS LOCK
Write Better Now
After our podcast on Tuesday, someone asked for me to explain a little more about info dumps. And me? I’m a people pleasers. So, here we go.
WHAT IS AN INFO DUMP EXACTLY?
Alexis Furr of the Writing Cooperative defines it as:
“Info dumps occur when the writer has information they want to convey in a story and just dumps it into a paragraph, page, or even scene. Some of this information may actually be important. Other parts might be information from research that a writer has made and they can’t bare to not show it off. Big places this occurs is in the beginning and as backstory, but info dumping can happen anywhere.”
Lex Writes and Edits explains them as
“Info dumping refers to when writers give readers too much information about the background of the characters, the setting, or the world a story takes place in all at once instead of sharing the information as a natural part of the story.
“In other words, an info dump is like pressing pause on the story to explain something. The last thing you want to do is pause your story because it causes the story to lose its momentum, and then readers get bored and stop reading. Yikes!”
THE THREE GROUPS
The Write Practice (and others) groups info dumping into three groups. These sorts of things can be sprinkled in, but it becomes an info dump when it’s a big block of information.
Those groups are:
World building information
The character building dump
The dialogue dump (gasp!)
LET’S EXPLAIN THOSE
All of these are pretty self-evident.
The world building dump is when you explain and explain and explain about the world of the novel, its magical systems, how the streets are mapped out, the ancient history.
The streets of Bar Harbor were once the carriage trails that brought the wealthy from one estate to another. Now they made no sense, hardly any were on a grid pattern and some missed sidewalks. Those places where the sidewalks were gone were the magical ones and on and on.
The character building dump is when you explain every little thing about the character.
Shaun was six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds with short-cropped military hair and he never tucked his shirts in unless he had to, and he rarely had to. And so on.
The dialogue dump is a bit harder to explain, but usually it’s when they are monologuing and that monologue (or even sometimes dialogue) has no action at all going on, no stakes, no nothing. If I put either of those other examples in dialogue form? It could be a dialogue dump.
She said, “The streets of Bar Harbor were once the carriage trails that brought the wealthy from one estate to another. Now they made no sense, hardly any were on a grid pattern and some missed sidewalks. Those places where the sidewalks were gone were the magical ones and on and on.”
“More than that though,” she added, “Shaun was six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds with short-cropped military hair and he never tucked his shirts in unless he had to, and he rarely had to. And so on.”
The Write Practice suggests:
”However, dialogue is, more often than not, far more interesting if it's broken up with (shocker) action (a character doing something while they talk—body language can be as emotionally effective as words themselves) or other dialogue (create a conversation instead of a wordy explanation of something).
“When you're writing, flag any areas of lengthy dialogue in your books. Then, ask yourself if you need to really have the character say everything, or if it could be discussed with other characters. If it's not the time for a conversation, see if you can replace content with actions that show instead of tell, like:
A detective examining a dead body instead of talking about it.
A wizard walking through a magical shopping area rather than being told about it.
A spouse proving their love by doing THIS instead of telling their partner why they love them so much (although you'll probably want some dialogue here).”
HOW TO FIND THE DUMPS
Most of us don’t realize when we’re info dumping.
Janice Hardy, in her book Understanding Show, Don’t Tell, says that great words to look out for, words that might tell you that you’re info-dumping are “when, because, realized, knew, used to, had always, which had been, caused, made, starting to, began to, would have.”
There are places where they tend to be:
When you introduce a character
Transitions—walking/driving to a new place
imparting history
Beginning of a chapter or scene