Quick Tips to Avoid the Dreaded Info Dump

In this week's quick tips, we're taking a deep dive into the info dump.

What's that, you ask?

An info dump happens with the author writes everything they know about a character, setting, or their worldbuilding into a single stretch of prose. It's really common, especially for newer writers who  feel like they need to explain everything for the reader.

TL:DR - You don't.

But how can you avoid it?

Tip #1: Beware the prologue. Readers don't care about the world until they care about the characters, which is why many will skip the prologue anyway. If you're going to write one, keep it short, sweet, and in the action.

Tip #2: We like the broken glass metaphor. Imagine you write it all down on a single pane of glass, then drop the glass. Pick up the pieces and insert the shards of information only where necessary.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Author Wheel podcast.
I'm Megan Haskell,award-winning fantasy author of
the Signari Chronicles and theRise of Lilith series.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I'm Greta Boris, usa Today bestselling author of
the Mortician Murders and thesoon-to-be-released Almost True
Crime series.
Together, we are the AuthorWheel.
Our goal is to help youovercome your writing roadblocks
so you can keep your storiesrolling.
Today, we're gonna cover acommon problem for fiction
writers the dreaded info dump.

(00:29):
First of all, what is an infodump and why do they lead to
pacing death?
Megan?

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Pacing death.
I love it.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
All right, Dun dun dun, which is not a good kind of
death, like the deaths in mybooks.
I just want to point that out.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, arguably even the deaths in your books aren't
good deaths, they're just Anyway.
Okay, we're going to.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
We've already gone down a rabbit hole and we
haven't even started.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Oh man, all right.
Well, so an info dump happenswhen the author, who you know.
We spend a ton of timedeveloping the world, the
history of the world, thecharacters you know, the
character descriptions, right,the setting, all of that.
So an info dump is when you putall of that information,
everything you know, onto thepage into a single stretch of

(01:22):
prose.
Really common for new writersto do this, especially, I think,
in fantasy, because there's somuch world building that has to
happen before you know weactually start writing the story
.
And then, because they have allthat information, they want to
make sure that the reader knowsit all, that the reader has all
the information they need toreally understand what's going

(01:43):
on and what's happening with thecharacters and all that.
So that leads me into tipnumber one, because the way a
lot of these authors do that isthrough the prologue and you
have to really be careful with aprologue.
There are ways to write a goodprologue.
I've written prologues.

(02:03):
I think I've done it well.
I've tried.
There are good ways to do it.
But to do a prologue well, itcan't be an info dump.
Readers just skip over those.
So the way the not way to do it.
The way to not do a prologue isto use it to introduce all the

(02:26):
history of the world.
So the worst you know that thatdrive me nuts is when they go
into all the different kingdoms,all the political factions, the
lineage of.
You know the characters and, uh, you know every little detail
about the magic or how the magicworks.
Right, like these prologues.

(02:46):
They're, they're heavy.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah.
And they slow everything downwhat's like an encyclopedia of
an of a fictional world, andit's like I don't even know if I
want to know yet.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Exactly exactly.
And so I think and that's theproblem it's like when you have
all this politics and geographyand development, readers don't
care.
Yet they don't care about theworld until they care about the
characters that exist in thatworld and, as a result, a lot of
readers skip that prologue,right?

(03:18):
They just, they just don't wantto read that stuff.
They'll maybe come back to it,maybe if they feel like there's
something that you know theyaren't understanding, but it
feels like a textbook, it feelslike boring history rather than
part of the actual story,because, quite honestly, that's
what it is.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yes, and also on an extra Tip, one plus 1.5.
If you are pitching agents,prologues are almost always like
they won't even read them.
Yeah, and considering they onlywant the first 10 pages of your
manuscript most of the time, Imean even that's being generous

(03:55):
If they even want 10 pages ofyour manuscript.
The last thing you want to sendthem is your encyclopedic
history of your world, right?
Because it doesn't really tellthem anything about the story.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
So now let's talk about quickly how a prologue can
be done well, and I thinkprologues do work when it's a
brief, action-based ordialogue-based scene from maybe
a different point of viewcharacter, or a flashback,
something like that that justgives a little bit of insight
into the story that's about tobe told.

(04:29):
But it's even.
But then you know it's short,it's quick, it's it drives the
plot forward, it gives it, it'salmost like a teaser trailer,
you know, in a way, and so thatcan be very effective as a
prologue.
But you also have to realizethat some readers are still
going to skip it because theysee the word prologue and they
go nope and they just turn tochapter one.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, and the other thing about it, too, that you
can do with a prologue is toleave a question that really
makes a reader want to turn thepage.
To leave a question that reallymakes a reader want to turn the
page.
So so, like in the book thatI'm just going to be turning in
to my publisher this week, thefirst chapter, it could be

(05:11):
called chapter one.
It could be called a prologuebecause it is from a point of
view character, we never, eversee again a woman walking her
dog in a park early, early inthe morning and, um, she thinks
she's being followed, getsnervous, goes to sit next to a
person who's sleeping on a parkbench because she feels like any

(05:31):
person is safer than thisperson following her, and then,
when the sun completely comes up, she realizes the person on the
bench is dead and then it goesinto the book.
So something like that, likewhere there's a lot of tension,
a lot of excitement.
And then immediately you're likeoh, and to make it worse, the

(05:52):
body doesn't have a head orhands.
So to make it worse, how didshe not?
Notice that it didn't have ahead, because there's a book,
the book.
There was a book.
Like she thought it was a bookcovering the woman's face Like
she fell asleep reading, butactually the book was not on the
woman's face and she wasn'tlooking too closely, to be
honest, and it was darkish.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Yeah, but anyway Anyway.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, point being, that kind of thing can work well
because it's like, oh wow, andthen you never get back to that
dead body for several, for acouple of chapters, but it makes
the reader want to go forwardto find out.
Well, who was that, how'd theydie, what happened?
You know all that.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
So yeah, so, greta, how do you introduce information
in a exciting way?

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yes, because I was going to say another problem,
another info.
Dumpy problem happens with.
I can happen, I'm sure, infantasy, but it also happens a
lot in like psychologicalsuspense or probably romance.
I'm not a big romance reader soI can't say for sure.
But other types of stories is,you know, you're told you want

(07:02):
your characters to have abackstory.
So that backstory is kind oflike fantasy writers, world
building right.
It's like why is my character soneurotic that she's going out
with this guy, or why you knowyou have to have this reason and
it's this childhood thing orwhatever.
And so, even though you may, asa writer, you may write that

(07:25):
backstory as if it's almost itsown story, because it happens
before the plot, before theaction.
You need to know what it is andall that.
And then the temptation is tomaybe start the book, get a
chapter in and then go oh, now Ihave to explain my character.

(07:47):
They know her, they've knownher for a month, for a chapter,
and then you leave the mainworld and plop in this whole
story about her terriblechildhood and people get bored
and or lost.
Like, well, what is this about?
Is this about you know thismystery, or this suspense or
this romance, or is this aboutyou know her terrible childhood

(08:10):
and so the way to fix?
That is what we call the brokenglass metaphor, and I honestly
do not remember where I learnedthis, but it was a big aha
moment for me and I.
So, once you have that backstoryof your character and say
you've written it out, imaginethat you've written it on a

(08:34):
mirror or a pane of glass, andthen you pick it up and drop it
and you take shards and youinsert them into your story as
you go.
So you literally are putting ina paragraph or two, maybe a
reference to something about thecharacter's backstory, and
you're feeding it to the readerspiece by piece by piece by

(08:58):
piece.
It makes it more compelling,more interesting the flow of the
story, like putting in thishuge boom backstory, and it
actually builds tension ratherthan kills it, because now
you've got another mystery,another reason for them to turn

(09:19):
the page.
Like, oh, you know, she hadthis person who she's scared of.
And then you learn that she'sscared of him because he did
something when she was a childand he did it in this place.
But you don't know what it isand you might not know what that
experience is that she wentthrough when she was a child,

(09:43):
until you're all the way likefive chapters from the end of
the book.
So it's another mystery thatcan keep those readers turning
pages, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
And that's a huge tip too.
I love that imagery of thebroken glass and inserting the
pieces, the clues, here andthere, because it does add layer
and add depth rather thanslowing things down.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
So anyway, Yep, yep, yep.
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(10:27):
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(10:50):
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