There's a difference between giving information, or dumping information. If information is given in a manner that will hold the reader's interest, it's not an info dump. If the author is unable to give information in this manner, the result will often be an info dump. In that sense, info dumps are the mark of the mediocre writer.
Sounds like most of us are on the same page then. Reassuring I suppose, although conflicting views are sometimes more productive. Not that I would ever encourage conflict or anything . . . One bit about tangents and infodumps being "completely different things". That would imply no overlap, which obviously is incorrect. Of course sections that often add information not totally relevant or crucial to the plot can be called infodumps(sometimes correctly) while also being tangents. The two terms are 100% not mutually exclusive as anyone with a working knowledge of both mathematics(probability term) and english can see. However they are not one in the same either, and I will give you the benefit of the doubt that that is what you meant. So no need to dwell on it then. P.S. And of course the quality of the writing matters. It goes without saying for the most part, although pretty sure I said it just to be clear.
Hi I didn't realise what info dumping was, until reading the Eragon series where an entire sub plot was dumped within a speech, interesting though it was it could have been done better, either through a dragons story, or hints and clues through the book. boring lazy and not thinking about the audience. But learned from him, and he is a great master in that sense.
I think the plot and backstory for Eragon was so generic that it makes it worse to infodumb. If the information is more interesting, it can be easier to get through. In general, though, I'm fairly tolerant of infodumping since I like to hear about lore and that type of information, but usually when it is because there is just so much information to get through, not because the author was too lazy to spread it out throughout the book or something like that (which I'm not accusing anyone in particular of doing.)
Eoin Colfer sometimes takes the "slide information in bits and pieces" thing a little too far, and often goes of on little detours(who the heck cares that Artemis' phone can hack into a millitary complex, or the exact circumstances of Trouble Kelp acquiring his unfortunate name? They have no relevance to the plot, unless a military complex pops up in Book 8 or something, in which case, excellent foreshadowing).
I've actually recently read two books each of which is at opposite sides of this. Pretty much the polar opposites. One is Tower of Ravens by Kate Forsythe. I had to force myself through this book. The first half is info dump, and it's not short. The actual story doesn't start until three quarters of the way through. This is bad infodumping. Lots and lots of text that explains the world, but has no relevance. For example, there is literally no need for me to know that the main character stuffed her vagina with pine needles to stop her herd from noticing she was having her second period. The other book, is The Final Empire, by Brandon Sanderson. This is, as I've already said, the polar opposite. I don't think there's anything in that book that would even constitute an infodump. You learn everything you need to know about the world and there's not an unnecessary word, let alone an unnecessary paragraph. Brandon Sanderson is proof that you can do it without a huge block of text. You don't necessarily get the information straight away, but you do get it. All of it. I personally think you should aspire to avoid infodumping. True, as some have said, there are people who aren't fazed by it. But is that because they're okay with it, or because they're conditioned to read it? Information is necessary, but you don't need to assault the reader with it all at once.
I'm pretty new here, but I think a significant part of the problem might also be that a lot of what is posted for review here is first chapters. Unless absolutely necessary for your chapter to make sense, giving readers extra information about how your world works in chapter one is almost always a mistake (with the usual caveats for people whose writing style makes it work). Chapter one is for getting a reader hooked on your story, you've got the rest of the book to build the world for your reader. It took me ages to realize this because my instinct was to build the world and backstory in chapter one then move on to the body of the story. It's easy to forget how comfortable readers are with not really understanding how x and y work, at least for a while. As a reader I'm generally happy to suspend my confusion on the assumption that things will be explained in more detail at a later point. Yet as a writer I automatically want to avoid making my readers do this (instead bogging them down in dry exposition). As a result, when I review, I tend to harp on about infodumping in the hopes that whoever I'm reviewing can shortcut past the 10,000 chapter one rewrites I end up doing...
I totally agree with Warde, also I dont at all mind the phrase info dump, I found it so helpful in learning about writing, along with the words show dont tell and active voice, are all phrases that I would have loved to hear at age 15, when this information wasn't available our English teachers just didn't teach it, they are just words but words that enable so much learning.
I think it is terrible especially for beginners, because they end up judging other writing by it (thinking that excellent writing is bad because it breaks the "rule") and because it potentially spoils their own writing for life. As fas as I can tell, the original version of the rule was Flannery O’Conner's observation that “Fiction is very seldom a matter of saying things, it is a matter of showing things”. That is sensible, but it's a very far cry from "show, don't tell".
This is exactly right, and it is also important to remember that they are writing humorous stories, and presenting this sort of thing with the dry wit that characterizes their humor is entirely different from presenting large dumps of information in a work that is not meant to be humorous.
My own writing at 15 was bad, really bad, and my sister in law's writing is at that level now. She doesn't know the rules. While I understand and I am opening my mind a little to digitigs point of view, to leave someone without knowledge, on the basis that they will self improve, I dont know.
I don't believe that people should be left "without knowledge, on the basis that they will self improve". I just wish the "knowledge" they were given were accurate. All of the standard taboos that are fed to novice writers -- telling, adverbs, passive voice and so on -- are in the language for a reason. Novices shouldn't be taught never to use them: they should be taught to recognise the effects that they have (positive as well as negative), and when they are or are not the right tool for the job. And that involves teaching them more, not less: you'll miss the most important uses of passive voice unless you at least have a feeling for the end-weight and information flow principles (you don't have to be able to name them!) which are rarely taught on creative writing courses but which are pretty basic stuff to linguists.
hi digitig "you'll miss the most important uses of passive voice unless you at least have a feeling for the end-weight and information flow principlesy" thankyou, that sounds interesting, I see where I lack knowledge on that area, can you elaborate more, or direct me towards a book or a website?
They are not complicated. There are three main principles that decide the normal order of information in a sentence: Active voice: the subject of the sentence is the agent performing any action; End weight: the subject is usually a simple phrase (any long, complicated phrases get pushed to the end of the sentence); and Information flow: the start of a sentence is usually something the reader/listener already knows about (or a dummy "it"). New information comes at the end othe sentence. Any of those principles can be violated, and the effect will be to emphasise the thing that is out of place. The trouble is, those principles can contradict each other in ordinary, everyday sentences. For example, in the common example of passive voice: The bill was paid by an anonymous benefactor.That goes against rule 1 (the bill isn't doing anything but it's the subject -- passive voice). It's in accordance with rule 2 but there's hardly anything in it ("the bill" is slightly simpler than "an anonymous benefactor" because it doesn't include an adjective). It is definitely in accordance with rule 3 because the listener (presumably) already knows about the bill but doesn't know before this sentence who paid it. You can reverse all of those with the active voice: An anonymous benefactor paid the bill.Now we're good on rule 1, bad on rule 3, and rule 2 still doesn't have much to say. The upshot of all of that is: the first version is slightly clearer (because of the information flow) and puts a bit of emphasis on the bill (because it's out of place according to rule 1); and the second version is slightly more dynamic (because of the active voice) and puts a bit of emphasis on the anonymous benefactor (because he/she is out of place according to rule 3). This is a case where I would say the active and passive versions are equally good but have slightly different effects. Try the same thing on the example Strunk and White give to warn against the passive: My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.That fails all three principles. It's not (just) the passive that makes that a bad sentence: the information flow is wrong and the weight is at the beginning instead of the end. Try some of Strunk and White's actual writing (I'm not sure which of them it was, but I suspect it was White): The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.Fails on 1 (passive voice). Succeeds on 2 (because they've done the right thing and broken their rule to "keep related words together" and have moved "that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place" away from "the adjective" and have placed it after the verb). And it succeeds on 3 because the reader already knows about adjectives; the fact that a particular type hasn't been built -- the new information -- is at the end. I think the information flow is the important thing for the writer here, because the likely alternative would be "Nobody has built the adjective that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place" which is still fine on principle 2. The author has broken three of his rules (passive voice, related words not together and the statement not being in a positive form) in order to get the information flow he wanted. And that's a good thing, because it was to get the effect he wanted. I'm not suggesting that writers should analyse every sentence in this way (I had to, to pass exams!) but if a writer is worried about a passive in something they have written then I think it can certainly help to be aware that it's not the only "rule" in play.
thanks for that its so amazing, why am I so thick. plucking up the courage to do a course its £150 a lot of money (plus its full of young people doing a-levels), she says in a Julie walters accent. I have cut and pasted your post int its own document so I can re read and re read it and get my head around as its new learning so it needs to sink in a while.
I feel that since we are all aspiring to write above average pieces of literature, we tend to blow certain rules or guidelines out of proportion. Yes, telling and not showing is generally a bad thing. I mean, if you really really overtly TELL and not show, sure, that's bad. But there are ways to tell that work. Also, I think a lot in terms of stream of consciousness whenever I tell and not show. It's my character's thought processing that is doing the telling, and through this process, you learn something about the character, or experience his/her unique voice... Am I making sense?
No it isn't. If you only (or mainly) do that then it's bad, but every half-way decent work upwards has a mix of showing and telling.
Instead of these horrid things called 'info-dumps', why not just let your character think about things, say, the world and various things in it. During this time, the work of an info-dump could be done in a far more interesting and characterising manner. And yes, as said a few posts above, many rules are made in the context of a master teaching the student. Such rules appear absolute only because it's easier than trying to explain what the master believes only experience, instinct or talent can teach. I did design at university and the same 'rules' were taught there too.
This would still be an infodump. It would just be an infodump in your character's mind instead of in your own words. Infodumps can occur anywhere, including dialogue. It doesn't matter whose voice is used to deliver the infodump; it only matters that the information is presented in a big dull wad of story-stopping text. But, as I said above, good writers can get away with shortish infodumps so long as they're not boring the reader. And the intelligent reader has a reasonably high tolerance for this sort of thing, if it's made interesting enough. So, unless you're writing an entire 10,000 word chapter at the beginning of your novel that's nothing but the history of your universe before your main character is even introduced, I wouldn't worry too much about it. As I've said, I think people on this forum are far too oversensitive to what they call "infodumps".
Yes, that's right, so I was getting at making these 'info dumps' (though I hate that term because to me, info is something I can never get enough of!) part of characterization and the characters journey, which is the story. Of course, it does mean that were the character to suddenly know a lot that he or she probably wouldn't actually know, or inexplicably start obsessing about dates or chemical formulas, it would be highly unnatural. Yet if he or she was sitting on a train for reasons pertinent to the story, and watched the news on one of the monitors, and had thoughts on a particular relevant story, I think the dump would be a lot more interesting. It's the difference between an editorial and a report, in a way. It's at least a lesser evil, the greater evil being entire sections of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, 2010 and 2061 which I skipped.
Infodump, Schminfodump. As long as it's got a good beat and you can dance to it who cares? All flippancy aside, I'm not joking. In other words, this: And sign me up for the rule-wary team, too. Show-don't-tell, Infodump... they're often applied to a text in knee-jerk fashion without consideration to what the writer is actually trying to accomplish. The writing may not be successful and may need considerable revision, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the approach is wrong.
As for me, I always took infodump to mean something that bears down a story. In this way, infodumping is always bad, no exception. Let me qualify that: If two pages of straight information is entertaining, fitting, and relevant, it isn't infodumping because it doesn't bear down the story. If two paragraphs are unneeded, boring, and off in left field, it is infodumping because it worsens the story. Just my personal take on the word. I like this advice. Often, a writer will take a rule to mean never do it under threat of amateurism. The writer will then review every single tiny word to make sure he or she hasn't violated the rule. This takes all the fun away from writing if all you ever do is monitor yourself through a checklist of forty or fifty rules. Sometimes we should just let our writing go on autopilot and review a rule when a little flag goes up in our heads. In this case, if you come up against a passive sentence, review it. If not, don't sweat it.
The question is precisely as the topic title says. Like in my first draft, my MC was talking about having a splitting headache like: "It feels like my head is splitting in half, and there's all this pressure between my eyes, and my brain is pulsing, and blah, blah, blah." when really (and this is how it ended up in the final edit) "I have a splitting headache" would have sufficed just as well.
