Contemplating Infodumps

From the quote you gave as example, it depends on what you're doing.

1. If you want to emphasise the disorientation and the pain, then what you have is perfectly fine. This is not the only paragraph on the matter of her being in pain/confused/hospitalised - you'll have another page or so to expand. There's no need to give the reader EVERYTHING in the first sentence. You need to know when to give what sort of detail, that's the trick to not info-dumping. For disorientation, what you have is probably particularly good - if you're confused, things come to you slowly, so you should also give your details slowly.

2. If you didn't want to emphasise only the disorientation and the pain, then you might consider deleting one piece of detail from said paragraph and adding an alternative detail. For example, if my entire paragraph was on how something LOOKED, then I might want to delete at least one of those details and replace it with a different detail, perhaps a detail on how something smelled. That's not "adding" detail - I had 3 pieces of detail before and I still have 3 pieces of detail after the edit, I haven't got "more" detail than before in that sense. I just have a different piece of detail. In your case, if you wanted something more, I'd encourage this approach.

3. Depends on the depth of the detail - and this concerns the genre and tone that you want. For what you're writing, what you have is just fine. On your critique thread, JayG I think gave you a thoroughly different rewrite that changed the tone completely but that also offered more detail than yours originally did. But if that's not the tone and atmosphere you want in that scene, then keep what you have. Description is there to serve the atmosphere - only give enough to create the mood you desire. If I highlight the butterfly curtains rather than the coffee stains on the carpet, even if they were both in the same room, the feeling I give the reader would vary quite a bit.

My best tip is: FEEL your writing. Read it - does it make you feel the right way? If your reader feels what you want them to feel, they will visualise the scene for themselves and put in the detail that they feel are right for this scene. Basically, that makes your writing more effective. As with horror, the reader's imagination can scare them much better than you ever could, because everyone's fears are different. Same case here. Guide your reader just enough to put them on the right road, and let them fill in the real details that would create, for them, a truly XYZ scene. (XYZ being whatever you were aiming to achieve)

And remember, what kind of description you give and how much depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve. If you're confused, you're really not going to notice that this stranger's eyes are as blue as sparkling sapphires bathing in the sun, or some such nonsense. If you're in love and gazing into the man's eyes, however, you just might. What is your character going to notice in the state that he/she is in? What are you trying to achieve? Give the best details that would serve/convey that.

 

• 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."

Can't you say the same thing by having the character close her eyes and rub her forehead, then, in response to the other character's, "Headache?" say, "... The worst." ?

The easy way to tell if you're overdoing it is to ask yourself if you're explaining, as against making the reader feel as the protagonist does.

 

I still have this problem from time to time. Oddly, one of the most helpful things for cutting down on my verbosity was something that annoyed the hell out of me at the time and that was my English 101 teacher putting down set-in-stone page/word count limits for essays. I always used to have trouble meeting the page count for essays but after some years of writing, I wound up with the opposite problem. That class was really good practice for starting with something long and being able to cut it down to something more concise.
In some cases it was funny, though. The first day of the class, the gal sitting next to me was horrified by the prospect of having to write 700 words - "How could anyone possibly write that much about one boring thing?" - and I couldn't help laughing and saying "Hon, I write forum posts longer than that. I don't want to hear it."

 

Her eyes are closed, she feels paralyzed, and there's nobody else around...

 

I am writing a puzzle-crime story. A body has been found in a lake, wrapped in a chain (probably to keep it down)

My MC had a chain stolen twelve years ago, the chain was slightly damaged, it would be recognised by my MC. Also, twelve years ago a young woman that lived close to the lake disappeared.

My MC is now visiting the police officer S, to identify the chain.
(of course it’s his chain, otherwise there wouldn't be any story)

Besides the obvious identification of the chain this scene needs to transfer information between my MC and the police. MC gets to know what the police investigation found twelve years ago and S gets background information about the victim from MC.


I have never written anything like this. Would there be any best practise?
I see four (maybe more) ways of doing this infodump.


Pure dialogue, we get the whole conversation between MC and S .

Pure narration.

After identifying the chain MC and S sat down and MC said ... and S said.

Internal dialogue.

MC sat in his car driving home. He thought about what S had said about ...
As he turned left he remembered how interested S had been when he told him about...


Retelling (through dialogue)

(the puzzle is actually solved by MC and his wife(F))

As MC stepped into the the kitchen F looked at MC and asked.
- What did S say, what did you tell him, was i your chain?.


I never thought it would be so tricky to do this. Probably you need to use a mix of all four ways to do it.

But I see problems. There is one thing that the reader gets the information but another that our characters gets the info.

My MCs thoughts will only be seen by himself and the reader.
We can assume that MC and F has the same background of the victim, no need to have MC tell F about that.
...

Any general tips?

 

It certainly has to be scattered in the ways you have already mentioned. Don't place too much information into dialogue. Of course there needs to be dialogue in order for your MC or S to attain information, but don't forget to also use flashbacks. When long pieces of vital information are stored inside of someone's memory, he or she will try to replay the whole event in his/her mind. It's only natural. There must be some info that your MC or S or even the MC's wife have, but maybe don't think of it as vital in the beginning. It is somewhere in their memory, but since not all dots are connected from the beginning, it escapes gravity. Things build up.

Are you writing in third limited or omniscient? Or first person perhaps?

 

Apart from the story mechanics, I would point out that police tend to be very careful in interviews. They avoid giving out information, hoping the perpetrator will inadvertently reveal himself or herself by saying something not known to anyone but the investigators and someone present during the crime. If they are inquiring about the chain, you're a suspect, or at least a person of interest.

 

Flashbacks, I will remember that.
I have a few just now but they are not giving new information. They help the reader to remember but can of course supply new info.


Maybe I have started to do something that is too difficult for me to do!
It's beginning to look like a puzzle itself how to write this.

I have never done anything but 3:d person rather close, one POV.
I asked the forum a few days ago how to handle two POV's. Both MC and F will do their separate investigations where I need to have their POV but i was troubled what to do when they are both in the scene. I got good help about that.

It's the first thing I write that has a plan. I know exactly what happened twelve years ago.
I have planned roughly 25 scenes. These I sort of discovery write. I have already made the mistake to use information in a scene that actually is found out later. Sometimes it's bad to know what will happen.

 

This is of course a very valid observation.

I have no real knowledge about police procedure but I know my police would be a very bad investigator. He will talk about their findings with my amateurdetectives. But it's the wife F that by talking with school friends, neighbors and observations from the boat shed will know what happened. It was an accident, and the "killer" hung himself only a few weeks after.


To me it's more of an exercise in writing a puzzle story. It also turns out to be an exercise in writing two POVs and doing non discovery writing.
I have great fun and what I learn could maybe be used in a type mystery story.

 

Yes, it's difficult. It's not so much the POV or the flashbacks. Moreso, the trick is to preplan everything before you start the actual writing and also figure out the most favorable line of steps (turn of events in the investigation) that lead to the final solution. (Meaning the storys' timeline presentation of events). This really makes a difference suspense-wise. A thing I learned the very hard way myself, but yes... writing a mystery is a collage. Rearranging even after writing is expected. My suggestion is to write a very imperfect draft, very rough at the edges and then take it from there. This helps you gain a clearer perspective upon your story and also unblocks you in parts where you might stumble. It's also a major time saver.

When writing 2 different POV's you choose which one is the most important (usually it's the MC that's also the protagonist that takes most of the narration time) and when you switch, you either do it by changing chapter or by leaving some space between the two POV's (some authors also place stars ********* in between the space) in the same chapter. Since POV's give me a headache (although I know that most crime-mystery novels are written in 3rd limited or first person and I understand why this works), I usually choose to go with 3rd omniscient. This gives me the space to also introduce some events that my MC is unaware of, at least in the beginning.

One thing that I despise in stories (novels or films, the media doesn't matter) is infodumping everything in a dialogue. The never ending monologue of a character that explains everything. I hate it! Just don't do that and everything is going to be fine.

 

Can you generate some kind of secondary tension that takes center stage? Like the reader is getting all this info dump while the MC is in this tit for tat with the head cop and trying to figure out if he’s a suspect?

 

This is a good trick. Now that you say it I have managed, by pure luck, to have such a scene.
Ok, it is a very low intensity conflict between F and one of the persons that she needs to get info from. But the conflict can somewhat hide the infodump aspect of the infodump.

As usual, a little conflict is never wrong.

Maybe "infodump" is the wrong word, usually I think of that in fantasy worldbuilding.
But from the answers I get here it looks like you understand my usage of it.

 

The body has been 12 years in the lake. I hope we have som skeleton left. I need a once broken bone to finally identify the poor girl.

This would be in the north of Sweden. There would be ice on the lake 4 months during winter. There would be a lot of fish in the lake.

Thanks for your interest!

It started as a 400 word first part of first chapter of a crime novella that i wrote as an example to encourage my writing friend that lives way upp north. She should write something like that rather than romantic YA stuff(she could make it a little exotic, it's way up north). But she didn't take the bait.

It was never my idea that I should write it. But then my children gave me a creative writing course for my 65th birday (I wanted a laser-spirit-level). Everyone else that attends has a "project" so i thought I'd give it a try.

A catchy 400 first words is easy, but this will be, as it looks now, maybe a 15-20K novella. It will take me maybe a month to finish. But it’s a good exercise.

 

I have written two pages of pure dialogue. F is having lunch with S that was a friend of the victim. During the conversation a lot of information is revealed. But it is hard to read it. Even if F is asking questions it's mostly a monologue from S. It's an awful way to write that some of you advised against.

I must break this into smaller pieces but how? There is no action involved at all, two persons sitting and talking for forty minutes. I can have one of them getting coffee, and F can take some notes in her pad.

But trying to add action is silly. And I can not create any tension between F and S.

So what I have planned is to look at all information given in the dialogue to find what parts could be moved into narration, as dialogue tend to be wordy. The narration could then be moved into flashbacks/inner thoughts as she is driving home from the meeting.

But... some of the information must be retold by F to her husband as he needs to know. (That passing of information could also be done either with narration or dialogue). But some information could be given in a more “show” way with conversation rather than narration.

So now I have this heavy block of info dialogue, say fifteen info bits. For each bit I need to find out:

can I use it in a “show” way?
can I narrate it later?
how do I not have to repeat it when giving it to the husband?


This looks more like construction than writing.

Can it be done without spending two hours writing (I have already done that) the dialogue and than smashing it to pieces (and making sure that the reader understands that there were more conversation than reported)

Any other tips/tricks?

 

Cannot? I'm wondering why.
Do F and S have an established relationship of mutual trust? Or is it natural for S to mistrust F? If the latter, tension.

Was S so close to the victim that F talking about the case is causing her pain? Tension.

Did S have a relationship with the victim that included some secrets (that may or may not be related to the case) that she doesn't want to get out? Tension.

Mistrust, secrets, pain - lots of reasons S could have one or all of these in her head, and they all can be used to create tension.

 

Do you mean that for some reason you're not allowed to, or you've tried and failed?

Could you skip that conversation almost entirely?

Joe looked up and muted the game. "So what did he say?"
I looked at him, debating whether to lie. But after a moment, I shrugged, I sat, and I told him. I left out the part about the candy, and wrapped the description of his daughter's activities in a nice diplomatic package--but he got the point. By the time I was finished, the game was over and my least favorite weatherman was gesturing at a map.
And Joe was just blinking at me.
I got up. "Drink?"
Joe said, "God, yes."​

You could similarly skip over bits of the conversation, revealing them from the notes when they become relevant.

Marchpane? Who the hell was.... wait. Wait. Maybe it wasn't a surname? I pulled out my notebook and flipped pages. There it was, in the list of candy. "Joe, what's marchpane?"
"Its the British word for marzipan."
"That almond stuff I hate? Could you wrap that around something? I mean, for smuggling?"​