There’s nothing more distracting than reading a book and finding that there are information dumps, which interrupt the flow of the story. Instead of the plot sweeping you along, you find yourself confronted with a three-page description of the character’s hometown. Then there are several paragraphs, detailing her college crush.
The problem is: Information dumps are easy to drop into a story. They can consist of several pages or paragraphs of information of character backstory, setting, or world-building. They might take the form of an overly long prologue or a long-winded conversation. They might go into too much detail about a place or wax lyrical about a character’s tragic past, listing events that made them who they are.
Information Dumps – Guilty!
Information dumps can slow the pace of your story or feel like you’re padding the word count just for the sake of it (even if you’re not), and you run the risk of boring your reader from the start, which is something we authors dread!
I have been guilty of incorporating information dumps into my own writing, such as several paragraphs on page three about my protagonist—what she looks like, her working history, and even some lines about her parents. Once my editor pointed this out to me and I re-read it again, I could see that the backstory was disrupting the start of the novel and interfering with the initial flow.
I can still fall into that trap at times. But once my editor made me aware of it, I find I’m less inclined to do it now and am more aware of when I might be on the verge!
So, in order to tackle the problem, you have to be able to identify information dumps in your own writing, which is not easy to do.
They can appear in stilted, unnatural observations, where the writer appears to have crowbarred facts, descriptions, and research. They can be contained in lengthy descriptions of a character’s appearance.
They can literally appear anywhere.
You want to entertain your reader and keep them hooked. By having information dumps, you are risking your reader skimming large chunks of description, or heaven forbid, abandoning your book entirely.
They can slow pace, drag the reader’s attention away, and create an unbelievable angle to your characters and plot, which can leave your readers frustrated and irritated.
So, what can you do to try and mitigate the amount of information dumping in your stories? Some will inevitably creep in from time to time, but by rethinking the way you are introducing your characters, their motivations, conversations, and setting, you’ll produce writing that is much tighter and moves at a faster pace. Once you are more aware of when you might be guilty of information dumps, where and why, you’ll find you are far less likely to introduce them in your books, or they will at least be much less frequent.
To sum up, here are common places to look for info dumps:
- Prologues
- Beginning of your story or novel
- A character’s introduction
Tips and Tricks
Of course you want to provide details for your reader, so they can imagine what your characters look like and what type of background they come from, but you don’t want to bore your readers with every fact, description, and detail within a short space of time. Follow these tips:
Drip and Thread
What you can aim to do is essentially “drip” information about your characters, so that the descriptions don’t overwhelm the plot. To make your characters pop from the page, you want to make them real and that includes their personalities, traits, motivations, and careers.
The drip, drip, drip technique of supplying description and information to the reader can establish your characters. So, what do we mean by that?
Essentially, you are threading the information throughout your story in subtle ways, rather than with vast chunks of detail, to achieve a smoother story. You want to weave this information throughout the story, delicately threading it, so that the reader picks up more information in a subtle way, as the plot develops.
For example, your main character has blue eyes and blonde hair. What you could write is: “Annie blinked her navy blue eyes in consternation.” You keep the story flowing, conveying Annie’s feelings, and you also tell the reader the shade of Annie’s eyes.
Then in another part of the story, you could write, “Annie pushed a strand of her corn blonde hair behind one ear.” Again, you are creating pictures for your reader of what Annie looks like by subtly describing the color of her hair. This is gentle description being employed.
Research Nuggets
Research is, of course, important for crafting a believable story and for bringing your writing to life. But, for example, dropping reams of information about how to arrange a vase of flowers can zap the energy from the story.
You want to create pictures in your reader’s mind and trigger their imagination.
Research can definitely show the reader that you have looked into a career and history of an object or profession, for example, this doesn’t mean that you have to drop endless paragraphs of what you’ve learned into your story. Reams of technical jargon won’t mean anything to your reader and will raise questions in their mind about what you are trying to convey—and you can no doubt annoy them as well!
Like the descriptions of what your characters look like, you want to slip these research nuggets into your story.
“Laura arranged her flowers just as she’d been taught during her floristry course, in tiers and a large glass bowl, so that the flowers appeared fuller and with the stems cut at an angle, so they absorb water more easily.”
In these few lines, you’ve let the reader know that Laura studied floristry. You’ve also shown that you have researched how to arrange flowers to their full advantage, and Laura knows what she’s doing! You don’t need to add anything else at this point about what other techniques Laura is employing from her floristry studies.
There’s no need to drop reams of information to stress the point.
Let’s Talk
You can also use a conversation, where one character is asking another character a question, to give details about a character’s actions, details of something that happened, or background of a situation. Perhaps someone asks your hero a specific question and that triggers a memory from their past or a fear of being discovered for something that they’ve done.
However, don’t fall into the trap of creating artificial sounding character reflections on an event. For example; “Do you remember, Fred, when you ran into that burning building and developed a fear of enclosed spaces?”
Instead, you could write, “I think I know why you don’t like enclosed spaces, Fred. Is it because of what happened with that fire?” You’re still supplying background to Fred’s trauma, but you’re leaving room for more emotional exploration rather than making a statement that doesn’t sound like normal speech. The first example will jump off the page for all the wrong reasons.
Down Memory Lane
Implementing description about a past occurrence can also be a trap for an information dump, but not if you use a special time of year, birthday, or anniversary as a device to explain a character’s motivation or give a hint to their back story. Maybe something happened on a relative’s birthday or at Christmas? Is that why your character detests that time of year or acts a certain way in your story? Use the holiday to discuss trauma with another character instead of an information dump. For example, “I watched Fred flinch when I mentioned Christmas. Of course he would. His mother passed away around the holiday last year. ‘Sorry, Fred.’ I sighed.”
Items
Objects or items are another great way to introduce some backstory or hint at a previous situation, by triggering sentimentality, issues, or memories. A character finding a long-lost piece of jewelry or a vase could be a great way of describing something or someone that has a direct link to your character.
It’s all about nuggets of conversation, description, backstory, and motivation. Tease the reader. Give them glimpses. Let them look into your character’s soul and see something there, what they are like as a person, or what or whom they love. But don’t drop paragraphs or pages of information when characters find a photo of someone they loved, for example, so that the readers then feel overwhelmed—or worse, underwhelmed.
For example, “Susan gazed at the picture of her late grandma. She used to live next door and worked as a seamstress.” These two sentences give details of Susan’s late grandma and an insight into where she lived and what she did as a job without going into endless background detail.
Hard Work Pays Off!
It is often said that information dumping tends to be used by new writers or lazy writers. It’s an easy way to impart information rather than threading it through the story and using your creative prowess. Don’t be viewed as a lazy writer.
Use your skills and your love of your story and characters to pull the reader in, keep them entertained, and ask questions of the characters as they read through. Reveal details in drips and threads of what your characters are like as people and why they are who they are without pushing so much information at your reader in one go that they become bemused and then disinterested.
***
Julie Shackman is a feel-good romance author from Scotland and is published with the HarperCollins imprint One More Chapter. Her eleventh novel, A Scottish Island Summer, is out in e-book and paperback on 30 January. Visit her website: julieshackman.co.uk. Connect with her on social media: X @G13Julie, Instagram @juliegeorginashackman, and Facebook @julie.shackman.
