Info-dumps: How to Avoid them

One thing I seem to enjoy harping on in my blog posts is info-dumps. I tend to assume that the reader knows what they are, so I can get to the point I’m actually trying to make.

I realize, however, that while most writers have HEARD of info-dumps, many have vague ideas of what they are. We can all agree we need to avoid them, but what are they? It’s hard to avoid something when you don’t really know what it is.

So.

What are info-dumps?

How do we avoid them?

The infamous info-dump

In short, an info-dump is giving information that isn’t needed precisely in that moment.

To elaborate, any information you give your reader needs to be relevant. It needs to be important within the next five pages. When you describe something, when you give a bit of backstory, when you describe a plan or reveal a plot twist, it has to be relevant in that moment.

Contrary to popular belief, info-dumps don’t have to be long. An info-dump can be two pages long, but it can also be half a sentence. The second you start giving information that the reader doesn’t want or need, you’re info-dumping.

Now, you may be wondering how this applies to foreshadowing. After all, foreshadowing often involves describing something or someone or revealing a hint of a plot twist pages and pages before it begins. Sometimes, foreshadowing in the very first page doesn’t come to fruition until the last page.

Foreshadowing is not info-dumping because it’s never more than a sentence. Well done foreshadowing is so subtle that it can be missed if you’re not paying attention. Info-dumps are blatant. Foreshadowing drops a feather, an info-dump drops a bomb.

Generally speaking, there are four types of info-dumps. I’m going to outline them, and then provide potential solutions and tips for avoiding them.

Info-dump One

Character dumps are most common in stories that are fueled by events in character’s backstories. These info-dumps are lengthy revelations regarding some aspect of one character or another. Whether it’s showing the motivation of the villain or the tragic past of the Love Interest, it’s more than a sentence of backstory revealed at any given time.

Why are these bad? Because they’re supposed to make us feel empathy, but they don’t. The thing about info-dumps… they’re telling. They don’t show us. When it’s a character dump, it’s not even in real time. You’re telling us about something that already happen or has already been decided. That’s not interesting, and it’s certainly not shown.

But… but… we need to hear about that backstory! If we don’t know about it, the story doesn’t work!

Well then, there’s a simple solution: don’t tell us about it until the very last second, and don’t tell all of it. Readers are smart. If you tell me one thing (AKA one sentence) and show me current actions, I will infer more than you could ever tell me in two pages. You should me current emotions, current actions, and give me one hint at the motivation or past, then you create a far better picture than any info-dump ever could.

Info-dump Two

Description Dumps are the next most common backstory, in my opinion, and harder to pick out. These do, however, create small pockets of purple prose. You go into description of a person or object for more than a few sentences, and use the more repetitive set of adjectives you can. For an example of this, see the entire chapter in The Scarlet Letter dedicated to describing one character. Literally nothing happens in the chapter except for repeated descriptions of this little girl in various and sundry settings.

This one is mostly found in stories written by storytellers, by the “plotters”, the people who outline and develop and worldbuild as much as they write the actual story. I’m guilty of this. Storytellers become so focused on the place and people they’ve developed for months that they forget that the reader… doesn’t care that much. We care enough to want to have a few details to work around, but we also want to do some of the work ourselves.

The solution for this one is rather simple: give us three important details. Three. Engage three of our senses with three important details. There are a few times where you may have to give five details, because what you’re describing is complex or too large to be summed up in three, but it’s a good general rule. If you give us three different sensory descriptions, it will cement the idea of the thing in our head. In addition, you leave enough space for the reader to insert their own ideas and imagination. You provide the dots, we’ll connect them. Deal? Deal.

Info-dump Three

Plot dumps are pauses in the story. They’re usually found in the middle chapters, where there’s a lull in the conflict and the main character is resting or meeting someone new. It’s a time when the author looks back at what they’ve written and, for some reason, thinks that now is a good time to bring the readers and characters up to speed. These info-dumps are explanations of what’s already happened or is about to. You’ll find these in dialogue, mostly, but also in narrative thoughts. Usually, it’s the author using a new character as an excuse to sum up what’s happened so far. Sure, your novel may be complex, but let’s be honest… it’s not that complex. Your readers are smart. Let me repeat that: your readers are SMART. We can piece your plot together, regardless of how complex you think it is.

I can say this as strongly as I am because I’ve been guilty of this many times. I’ve had beta readers from my older manuscripts tell me that I don’t need to explain something as much as I do, because they’d already figured it out.

So.

Learn from my mistakes: don’t explain what’s already happened, even to new characters.

Another plot dump is found in the cliché of the prophecy. It seems that the character the prophecy is about never knows about it until the book’s already underway, and so the author has to fit it in somewhere.

Solutions to plot dumps vary, but I’m going to give you a general tip: don’t tell it to us. If your reader doesn’t piece it together at that moment, then it will come across as a form of suspense, until we do piece it together.

Info-dump Four

I keep this one for last because I’m most guilty of it and I find it in my writing all the time. This one is the world dump. You’ll find these most often in fantasy novels, but also in science fiction and some historical fiction. Basically, a world dump is when the author shows off their worldbuilding skills. It’s found in those paragraphs of details about the world that… aren’t really necessary. They do have a natural link to some other description or detail that matters, but they’re tangents. Bunny trails. Unnecessary. I’m so guilty of this it’s not even funny.

See, worldbuilding is fantastic. It’s engaging to do, and it can create the most vibrant tales you’ll ever see. But it can also distract you. If you’re writing a scene, you may find yourself spawning a pair of paragraphs off a detail that reminded you of a piece of worldbuilding.

Solution? Fix it in the second draft. These little nuggets can be useful to you, to help place your story in time and place. They’re still bad, from a story and prose aspect, but you can still use them for yourself. In short, you can write these, so long as they don’t stick around. Collect these info-dumps and store them elsewhere, in case you ever wonder about that element of worldbuilding.

Just remember: your reader doesn’t care about it unless it’s relevant. Good worldbuilding snippets are only a sentence or two long and are never explicit. Grow your world in the way people interact with each other and their environment, not be switching to textbook mode.

Long Winded or Long Plotted?

“Series and Standalones, Part 2”

Last week, I rambled a bit on why you should and should not write a series, then gave you a few vague tips on how to go about writing a series.

They were:

-Pick a Story you love

-Outline, outline, outline

-Don’t give up

Today, I’d like to really dig into what can make a series good.

The Principality of Plot

I seem to say this a lot, so I may as well say it again: characters alone can’t maintain a series. As nice as characters are, most of them… don’t have the ability to take that much weight on their shoulders. Not even Atlas and he holds up the entire sky, ya know.

Here’s why: most of the characters who try to uphold a series are those who are “unique” or “special”. It’s where the “Chosen” cliché of the fantasy genre comes from.

But those characters have to be more than unique. They have to be strong, and they usually aren’t.

What do we use instead?

Plot or setting. You’ve got two other story elements to choose from (unless you consider the idea of theme as a main story element, which I will not for the purposes of this post) to support your story. Setting can hold up a story, but it’s got to be a super unique place. You’ve got to have such a well-developed world that few people try, and even fewer pull it off successfully.

That leaves us, obviously, with plot.

Yup. The princedom of Series belongs to that ever-elusive Plot. For many of us (the Wordsmiths among us), this can be a hard concept to grasp. You’d rather just write the book than waste time coming up with the content for it.

Others among us, the storytellers, will find it easy to come up with a plot to sustain a series of books, or a whole dozen series.

Here’s the deal: you can’t just have any old plot. If you want to write a series (three or more books), what sort of plot do you need?

Arcs within Arcs.

The hardest part about writing a series is finding the right length of plot. Oftentimes, your plot isn’t long enough. You set a goal, find a villain, juxtapose them to the protagonist, and dig up a few conflicts.

Then you write the “series” and find it all fits in one book.

Why?

Because you need more. A good series has a complex plot. You need more conflict.

For instance, say your character has to find a map. This map is at a mountain, and you want your first book to be the trip to the mountain to find this map.

Turns out, your character reaches the mountain in the first twenty thousand words and you’re left with the choice of this: combine the first and second books, or abandon the story.

Well, don’t settle for a false dichotomy, and try the third option lurking behind the masquerading two: lose the map. Boom, more conflict. If the map was your character’s only way of finding the villain’s hideout, then they’ve suddenly got to find a new way, find a new map or guide or visit the old hermit in the mountains who practices the cliché Old Magic.

When in doubt, don’t let the protagonist succeed. If they’re trying for something, don’t let them win.

Of course, too many defeats can feel rather morbid, from a reader’s point of view, so try this: every success has to set up twice as many problems.

So: if your character finds the map, that’s fine. Except you’ve got to set up two problems to cancel this success: perhaps it’s guarded by werewolves and is written in old Gaelic, which no one knows how to read.

Now you have werewolves to deal with and characters that have to follow a map purely by the pictures and guesses on the text.

Watch the problems grow: your characters have the chance to take the wrong road over and over and over, to meet new people, new dangers, new side plots, new friends. Your story can increase exponentially, with the problem-to-success ratio of 2:1.

Yes, this makes it sound like any plot can be used, but don’t get me wrong: the plot already needs to be big. You can’t use a single-novel plot and then create enough problems to stretch into three. That’s the common practice among modern trilogy writers, and it always results in awful second and third books. Instead your plot needs to come with enough ready-made information to last three or four books all by itself.

All you need is to create the problems between the big events.

The Other Stuff

It’s hard to write specifically about something like “how to make plots longer”, because it’s subjective. The problem-to-success ratio is really the best one can do when talking generally. If you really need more specific help, the best idea is to find someone who knows what they’re doing to help you brainstorm.

There are other aspects of series, however, that can be answered rather specifically. I’ll phrase them in question form and then answer them:

What Point of View should I write my series in?

Generally speaking, anything longer than a trilogy is written in third person. This isn’t a rule, but a realization that you’ll stumble upon when writing series longer than three books: one person isn’t enough. When your plot is that big, the perspective of one person can’t possibly contain it all.

That’s not to say you HAVE to write in third person. I’d love to see more first person series out there with more than three books. But, for the most part, third person results in a more expansive story. It lets you create and explore subplots that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

Should every book end in a cliffhanger?

No.

Don’t do it.

Here’s why: your reader doesn’t want to have to read your second book.

I know, that sounds weird, but it’s true. A reader needs the freedom to walk away. If you “force” them to keep reading by ending your book with a “tune in next time” scene, your reader will feel dissatisfied. Especially if they didn’t like your book.

Instead of ending with a cliffhanger, write a story worth reading more about. If your story doesn’t compel me to keep reading, a cliffhanger isn’t going to help. I need to read on because I want to read on. Not because I feel incomplete if I don’t.

I’m not saying each book has to resolve perfectly. Not at all. In fact, if your book resolves perfectly, that means it’s time to stop at the end of that book and not continue.

Rather, you need to end in such a way that says “you can stop here if you don’t like it, but please read more because you’ll love it”. It’s hard to describe what that means, so let me give you an example of a book series that does this well:

The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling are a series. A series of seven, to be exact. They all feature overarching characters and setting, with a basic goal underlying the whole series. Each book ties into the previous, but each book is distinct from the last and the next.

If you read the first book, it ends in a “satisfactory” way, without solving all the conflicts. It tells us “if you don’t like this, you can stop, but we promise there are even better things to come if you keep reading”.

[SPOILER ALERT]

One of the best examples of a well-written “cliffhanger” ending in this series is The Goblet of Fire. In this book, He Who Must Not Be Named comes back. We see him, we’re terrified of him, and then we’re whisked away as the book resolves itself. We’re left wondering what in the world just happened, and what comes next. We don’t know if Voldemort is going to win, or what his plans are, but we do know this: Dumbledore and Harry will be there to stop him.

And, as the book ends, we feel content. Even as we race to find the next book, we could walk away from the series and not drive ourselves crazy with wondering. But we’re already so engrossed that we couldn’t walk away anyway, because we don’t want to.

That is how you finish a good story.

[END OF SPOILER ALERT]

A book series has the potential to become one of the most beloved collections of books in the history of books.

It also has the potential to crash and burn and be forgotten or made fun of for the rest of time.

In reality, the way the potential slides is left to you: the writer.

It’s scary, but it’s also worth it. Because that potential of changing lives and making people fall in love with your story and characters is too amazing to just let go.

Related Posts:

Sagas and Simpletons

Sequels and Threequels

Extending the Conflict

Solving Impossible Conflicts

Plots, Part 4 – The Weaving of Arcs

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Avoiding Lucky Heroes (Brandon) 

Backstory, Part 1 – Why You Need It

Let me tell you two little story beginnings:

A fifteen-year-old street thief runs away from his gang leader and boards a ship setting sail for an island far, far away. He’s running because his gang leader wanted him to kill. Again.

So the boy runs. He runs and runs and finds himself running to things far worse than what he’d fled from.

A twenty-nine-year-old noblewoman schemes just as much as the rest, but deep down she hates her position, a position her dead mother put her in. Then, when she’s kidnapped and held for ransom, she realizes how much that scheming had defined her. Perhaps the secrets she holds about her mother shaped her more than she thought.

Characters.

Aren’t they wonderful little creatures?

They step into a story you’ve so carefully prepared for them and they- well, they tend to mess everything up and create disaster wherever they go, but in theory they’re supposed to create a lasting impression and emotionally-packed story.

But… what happens before the story? What do your characters do and think and act like? Where did their gain their skills, their fears, their dreams?

It’s an important aspect of storytelling; good stories don’t start at the beginning, but a beginning. They start up at a logical point and continue on. Good stories create a sense of continuity with the past. They pick up characters where they’re at and sweep them off on an adventure.

Because of the import of a character’s past (also known as backstory), I’ve concocted a four-part series on Backstory, in which I shall do a great deal of talking, in the hopes that you’ll learn something, I’ll learn something, and we can have at least a bit of discussion. We’ll see.

Backstory, to be concise, is life. 

Because concise is not always specific, let me be specific: backstory is the life your character lived before the “real” story begins. This can include where they were born, where they grew up, what their parents did for a living, your characters dreams and hopes and fears and failures and achievements. Backstory can be complex and lengthy, or it can be simple and short.

The big question I hope to answer today is thus: “Why do we need Backstory?”

A Proposition

The idea of backstory is not so “controversial” (I use this term loosely and void of real conflict) as the idea that worldbuilding is not only important but vital to your story. There are very, very few writers who would claim that backstory is unnecessary.

For those few of you who might be wondering why it is important, this post is for you. I am suggesting what many people already believe, plus a tad more (because if you’re going to argue in favor of one side of an argument, you may as well take a strong stance).

My proposition is thus: all strong characters have a strong backstory. In addition, a story where there is no backstory is a weak story.

And there it is. Simple enough, yes?

Let me divulge a bit more to clarify (again, conciseness is not always specific).

“Strong Backstory” makes “Strong Characters”

A strong backstory is not a detailed one, necessarily. Your character’s backstory can be very simple and summed up in no more than a paragraph or two, yet still be strong. In reverse, you can write a whole novel about a character’s backstory despite its obvious weaknesses and holes.

Strength does not come from length or in number (this is not military strategy). Strength is created by a few simple ideas:

-Uniqueness

-Conflict

-Reality

Each backstory in your novel needs to be unique. Unless you story is about a bunch of clones and/or time-traveling doppelgängers, there is no such thing as two people living the exact same life. If all your characters have the same fear, the same social status, and the same childhood, the backstory is weak. In addition, backstory should be unique from those outside your novel.

If a cliché slips into the backstory, it’s not the end of the world. Clichés are cliché because they started out as a powerful storytelling device that became overused. So if your character is an orphan because the villain killed her parents, don’t sweat too much. Yes, it’s horribly clichéd and it immediately makes me think of half-a-dozen other stories. But that does not make the backstory weak. It simply makes it cliché. What you do with the cliché is what makes it weak or strong.

If you use the cliché to make your story powerful, then it’s not weak.

Nothing worthwhile happens in a tale without conflict. It’s not worth reading about if there is no conflict. It becomes like a textbook on herbs and the drying thereof. Not only will it smell like herbs, but it will be just as dry as said herbs.

Conflict takes all shapes and forms (not just violence, thank you) and is a key component in every story. It extends into the future (what sort of conflict is there after the story) and into the past (what sort of conflict is there before the story).

If nothing bad ever happens in the backstory, it’s a boring backstory. This is not to say you must have violence and vileness and darkness dripping through the backstory (that is often a sign of a weak backstory; a topic for another day), but it is to say that your character cannot lead a perfect life before their story begins.

Finally, reality plays an important role in the creation of a backstory. If the backstory is unrealistic, it’s hard to believe. If your character starts out as a poor beggar, yet has a college-level education, things get a bit suspicious. Unless you provide a reason for that education and the level of poverty your character experiences (think Crime and Punishment), the backstory will be weak, because it is unrealistic.

There is no “Story” without “Backstory”

This is the part of this post which may be considered the least “settling”. Few people will dispute the idea that backstory is important. They might, however, protest the vitality I suggest.

If there is no backstory, there is no story.

Sure, you have it all plotted out, and all written down, and all the characters take part, but you’re missing a key component if there is no backstory. A key component summed up in a simple question.

Why?

Why does your story happen?

Your wanting it to happen does not suffice in any version of this universe.

A story needs to be a consequence. It must stem from conflicts and emotions embedded deep in the past.

If there is no backstory, there can be no reason for the conflict that drives your story. That is the simplest way to put it. Backstory fuels the conflict, which fuels the story, which fuels emotion, which makes your novel good.

The Diversity of Backstory

I guess I just like that word, don’t I?

It’s a nice word, when used correctly.

Ahem.

Backstory has this tendency to hang out around characters and anywhere else it associates is often ignored. It is not, however, stuck in a tiny little clique I call the “Character Clique”. Backstory is a Roving Robert, so to speak. It skips around from clique to clique without caring much for social stigma.

It extends to all areas of story: character, plot (the conflict clique), and setting (the capstone clique). Everything in your story has to have a backstory.

The magical stones in your fantasy, the scientific evolution in your sci-fi, the relationships in your romance, the angst in your YA coming-of-age story (which I must inform you I do not condone as a genre in general), and the strange happenings of your contemporary psychological horror all require backstory.

As I’ve said, backstory is what happens before the novel begins. We often think of this exclusively as a character trait people have.

But your plot has a backstory. The events in your novel are the culmination (or should be) of months or years or decades of preceding conflict. Plots don’t pop into existence from nothing, much a good meal doesn’t pop into existence from nowhere.

Plots (and good meals) are woven into a masterpiece that has a beginning far before the story begins and an ending that might not even be reached fully by the end of the book (which is a topic for another time).

And setting. Setting is often the backstory of other things. It creates a backdrop from which the plot’s backstory emerges. It provides scenery for your characters as they grow into the people your reader first meet them as. But it needs a backstory, too. Your sci-fi world needs to come from somewhere. Your haunted house in your horror novel needs to come from somewhere.

All good stories have backstory.

But backstory isn’t just a stagnant and static creature hulking the background. It’s active and vibrant. It makes us wonder what around the corner, what our beloved characters are hiding.

Backstory provides a reason for that boy I mentioned earlier to run. It provides a reason for that woman to wish she’d never been put in the position to scheme, yet depend so much on that scheming.

It provides a foundation to build on.

Story needs a foundation.

Shall we explore that foundation further?

What do you think? How important is backstory to YOUR novel? Leave a comment and share!

Related posts:

Plots - Bringing it All Together

World Blip – Education

For the Sake of Diversity…

Last Blip:

Prose Blip - Descriptions of People

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Heroic Introductions, Part 1 - Externals (Brandon)