I'm at the part in my story where my MC is learning about her abilities and how to control it. She goes off in search of her clan. She finds them, and the elder is teaching her about her clan and the abilities the clan possess. He then begins to teach her to control it ... I dont want it to be an information dump, but so far, thats how its coming off. Dialogue/explanation... I'm trying to figure out a way to write it without it coming off that way. Any suggestions?
Intersperse her training with her day-to-day life, and the mistakes she makes as she explores her powers/
I know your hardship! Writing a new universe and trying not to info-dump. Can you pause with some action/event and then continue the introduction? Maybe skip the idea of training altogether? Just give a quick intro to her clan/basics then make something happen that forces the story onward, and introduce her to her powers as you go?
When world-building, ultimately some active exposition will be necessary and unavoidable. Just try to find a way to make it feel natural. In this case, members have suggested interspersing it with physical training and action. That's a good start! Every novel will have exposition, narration, info-dumps of some sort on some level. All these rules like "never tell, you're never allowed to exposit, everything has to be implied and your writers have to intuit all this information!" and even grammatical stuff stuff like "never end a sentence with a preposition" or "never split an infinitive" or "never start a sentence with a conjunction" or whatever are all stressed way too much. These are archaic, and persist from when English was immediately derived from Latin, but since then every legitimate writers knows them to be bunkum. I'm not saying to do whatever you want, but I'm saying do what you're comfortable with. The "rules" are standards, but not commandments. If your story absolutely calls for a little bit of exposition, do it. Don't stress over pretentious rules if you're comfortable in saying you have a reason your writing doesn't abide. If you like it when you do it, chances are much higher your audience will too.
Personally, I've found many times the information in info-dumps to be completely pointless to the story, and therefore irritating to read. They come across as the author's creative indulgence and cutting them out doesn't detract from understanding the plot at all. I've read a few great sci-fi novels where they never info-dump, they just refer to the world as if you should already know and by the time you get to the end you've pieced it all together and feel like you know everything. The writer needs to know their world inside and out. The reader doesn't. The reader doesn't need to know how to control the power or this and that. So don't try and explain everything. Think of it like visiting a foreign country. Do you get an info-dump at the start explaining everything, or do you travel around, discover, see, ask, and then still leave not even knowing half of the history and culture and stuff, and because of that you're hungry to come back and learn more? THAT is how you world build. (IMHO)
I know your pain. For me, it's always trial and error. That's why it helps when you can get feedback. Because "too much" is rather subjective and can depend on the presentation. I think what helps is writing exactly how you intend and then "sleeping on it" so to speak.
Yep. The first part is to write it all down. The second is to cut it all out. The trace elements will remain and enhance the story.
I have built, for my sci-fi/fantasy world, a complex system of gods, goddesses, mages, nature spirits, colossal Aspects of primordial eternal concepts, and a series of organizations and governments that binds them together in complex and not-entirely-understood ways. Of course, my MC isn't a mage, so they don't care about any of the magic rules I've made, and my MC isn't a politician, so until it directly affects him, he doesn't care how the different political bodies interact, and he's not a priest, so he doesn't interact with the priesthood. Therefore, the reader never gets to see any of the work I've put into this. Still, I had to give some information; so what I did was I had a parade for the gods, and had my MC explain it to his daughter. Of course, that only helps for the first eight or so gods; everybody else I have has to get mentioned when people swear by them. It really saddens me that all the work I've put in isn't going to be 'important' because i keep having non-mage, non-priest MCs.
But the big, and harsh, question is always: do I need it? If it has no use then you don't need it. And there's no point using stuff or making a need for it just because you have it. It might be fun creating a complex system, but if you have no need for it in the story it's just that, fun, and should be left out. Often world builders keep this stuff aside because further works may need it, and then you have it ready. or you may discover a use or need for it while writing. It's great to have it, but it's a burden if you feel obligated to use it. Not all the lore of Middle Earth was in the Hobbit. Or even LOTR. Not even close. Even though much of it existed. JRRT was intelligent enough to leave out most of what he had created behind the scenes, which only came to be published after his death in The Silmarillion. And even then it wasn't everything.
That's much my point; I created these things with the intent of having them be pieces moving in the shadowy background of the first book, intending the second novel to focus on a priest or mage who actually needed those things to be there. Now, the MC of the second novel is a normie who doesn't even have a patron god, but I've got all these systems and orders set up and nobody with a POV chapter who cares.
If it were me, I'd say try telling the story without ANY infodumps at all. Just tell it the way your characters would be experiencing it at that moment. If the newbie magic user visits the mage to learn to use a particular type of magic, just get right into that scene, right away. Forget the backstory. I think, if you take this approach, you'll find it works. As long as you orient your reader at the start as to who your POV character is (on that day, in that world) I reckon you're good to go. Start small and build. I know we keep going back to LOTR, but it's a story most of us are familiar with, and it's a series of books many of us have read. Remember how those books (not the movie) began? With 'hobbits,' one of whom was about to have a 111th birthday party. Their homes were interesting, but didn't need a lot of backstory about how and why they were built into the ground, etc. Just enough information was given about hobbits themselves to get us started. Then we were right in to Bilbo hiding from the Sackville Bagginses, etc. The first infodump in LOTR came later, with Gandalf telling Frodo about the Ring Lore, and telling him that the magic ring Frodo had inherited from Bilbo was much more important to the world of Middle Earth than any of them had suspected ...but by that time there was a sense of danger, and we readers were just as eager to learn what was going on as Frodo was. And it was Gandalf telling the story to Frodo, not 'Tolkien' telling it to the reader. So there was character interchange and personality included in the infodump as well. As stories go, there was lots of infodumping in LOTR. BUT...and this is the key ...by the time we got to these infodumps we, too, wanted to know. So I like @Selbbin 's advice to 'save it for later,' and pretend this is a new country you're visiting. Impressions of the place are usually enough. Tell as much of the story as you can, from a 'here and now' perspective, and save the history lessons for when they are REALLY needed. By then, the reader will also want to know. And having one character tell another character information (in conversational bits) will add the benefit of personality development as well—as long as it's information new to the character receiving it.
I'm already 120 pages in... my MC has already experienced the incident that sends on her on her adventure: she finds out that her mother was from a desert clan of mystics that specialize in the dead. she also realizes that the "imaginary friend" that shes had all her life is a spirit that has attached itself to her and has gotten stronger over the years. She journeys to the desert to find this clan to learn about spirits, particularly, how to get rid of the one thats attached itself to her. I feel like the information is important, because it comes up later. The elder she is learning from, he can enslave souls and sends them out to keep watch over the desert. as he says "i have eyes everywhere." he can banish them. he can tell if someone has died by searching or their souls. he explains why this is dangerous and why she should never attempt any of this. people in this clan learn very young how to control this power and the strongest of them have learned over a lifetime, but because she was not raised among them, he fears that she is too weak and her mind will shatter. my MC wants to know how to call souls to her, but she leaves before she finishes learning about it, something comes up and she has to leave. this comes up much later when her friend is captured and she believes him dead, and attempts to call his souls to her and it goes wrong. He does teach her how to break the bond between herself and the spirit who has attached itself to her. This is very important to the end of the story. I want to write these things into the story but in a way that seems natural and not just one big mass of information. I've never read LOTRs. But i'm pretty sure I've read something where it explains the rules of the lands but doesnt just info dump it. I'm just having a hard time remembering which books those were. I keep thinking about Avatar The Last Airbender where Aang trained with Guru Pathik and how he explained chakras to Aang. If you cut out all the visuals and read only a transcript of that scene, it was all explanation.... but it works for that scene...
This'll probably betray my own personal favourite on the situation, but I think a great movie that highlights this is The Empire Strikes Back. Yoda trains Luke in the force, and makes a good third of the film an information dump about the force and explaining it. Yet, it's the most popular, critically acclaimed, and technically crafted of all the Star Wars films. Why? Because if you watch it, Lucas breaks up the info into small bite-sized chunks that are edible, interspersed with the secondary story going on (Han, Chewie and Leia). Not only that, but the chunks are each meaningful in their own way, and are trimmed down to perfection. Most importantly of all, far, far, far more importantly of all - every single piece of it is relevant to the final fight with Vader. If it wasn't? If Luke had been training about things that weren't shown, or the final fight showed things that the training earlier had nothing to do with? The final fight would feel shallow, and less dramatic. A good example is Midichlorians (if you dont know, the little bacteria that determines if you're strong in the force or not). People bemoan their inclusion in Star Wars Phantom Menace because it brings science to what should be left as mystery, and I wholeheartedly agree. But the point is, for all we know, George Lucas had already made it that way in his head, prior to Empire Strikes Back. Why doesn't Yoda mention it once to Luke in Empire Strikes Back? Because even if Lucas -had- already thought of Midichlorians, it was not relevant nor needed for the audience at the time.
While I agree with that, some fantasy novels -- especially those with high-concept magic or magic systems inexorably connected to the "essence" of the world -- sometimes exposition is okay and may be necessary. Especially necessary story bits which are entirely abstract and can't really be "shown" in a way that is helpful to the audience.
I think Isaac and me have highlighted the dilemma, . Eventually, it will come down to the personal preference of your reader at some stage. You will never please everyone, so don't try. At best, just try to keep in mind the two extremes, flow and action to overly Lore-bloated, and find the middle ground that -you- are happy with.
In one of my stories I a huge amount of infodump on the histories of the two countries and how they came about. In the second draft I cut 90% out. The whole sections I saved and will be included as extras after the end of the story. That way if the reader wants to know more they can read it, if not, they don't. I have a real problem with wanting to explain too much. For me, I have to set a 'it's on a need to know basis and you don't need to know' for myself. If it's not relevant to the immediate story or not something in character for them to talk about, it doesn't go in.
But how will you know what the reader prefers? The issue I generally have is that it becomes less about the personal preference of the reader and more the preference of the writer. I don't mean to be argumentative especially that we've pretty much resolved the dilemma and clearly expressed opinions. I agree too that confusion is just as bad as info-dumps. As long as people can find out the relevant information in an interesting way, you get the best of both sides. Yes, you can't please everyone, and in the end you need to write the story you want to write, and if that includes lots of extra detail, then so be it. But considering most here are already wary, reluctant, and seeking advice on info-dumps, clearly it's something most would prefer to avoid as both a reader and writer.
I understand this very much. But think of it this way: If a reader isn't interested, then they will experience 0% of your world. If they are interested, they will at least experience some of your world.
Some smaller information dumps I think would be good with some down time in between, with events relevant to said info dump. As always, not too much at one time.
Jack Vance, one of my favourite golden age authors, often started his novels with an info-dump. If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me.
