Get On With It! How To Avoid Info Dumps in Your Fiction
Why they happen — and how to get rid of them
You’ve done all that research and planning, and now you’re determined the reader will find out all about the world of the book you’ve created and the full backstories of your main characters. Only probably is — now they’re falling asleep!
The info dump is what happens in a piece of fiction when the desire to share information about the world of the book is allowed to dominate the priority of moving the story on. It’s a form of extended showing over telling, where expository material starts to intrude into the fabric of the narrative, which unless, you’re careful, can quickly grind to a halt.
3 kinds of info dump
The info that’s dumped can be of many different kinds:
Emotional or psychological: This is where you feel the need to fill in lots of past details about a character’s life, or explain why a present happening is so important/difficult/satisfying for her because of her past experiences. Bad sample:
She wanted to believe Dave when he said things like that, she really did. But there had been so many Daves before, so many promises turned sour, so many times she’d thought the search for a real partner was over. He couldn’t know all…
