The Dreaded Infodump (And How to Avoid It)

Not everything needs to be revealed on the first page.

Photo by Martin LONGIN on Unsplash

Somewhere near the beginning of many stories, there is a section where so much information is provided it sounds like a textbook or dissertation rather than a natural piece of a compelling story. And textbooks and dissertations are not known for being compelling reading.

Infodumps exist because the writer wants to make sure that the reader knows a few relevant facts, going into the story. It isn’t necessarily a bad impulse, but more a matter of calibration. The writer so often thinks the reader needs more than either the story or the reader want.

I write fantasy, sometimes. And that means building up a vast fantasy world, with nations and languages and a history. Well, it does to me.

I recently posted about the fictional nation of Agali, for example. I know aspects of Agali’s history, of great and ancient magicks, and more recent (and more powerful) magicks that enabled a new group to install themselves as Agali’s rulers, and to call themselves “emperors”.

The story is serialized, with new episodes written every week or two (or so).

When the characters arrived in Agali, I did not list the exploits of these conquerors, or outline broad strokes of history. I’ve hardly mentioned any history anywhere in the narrative. It hasn’t come up. What’s come up is how the ridge the characters walked past, now covered in swanky mansions and villas, used to be full of windmills, presumably for grinding grain. It came up because they walked past it.

The story hasn’t yet needed me to tell much history. But part of this bigger history will become necessary. And after I have a sense of when it needs to be revealed, I’ll start sprinkling in some references as clues and foreshadowings.

Within the story, I did not outline the development of the language, or the foundation myth, or the deities of the local pantheon. These things may exist in my notes, but they don’t (yet) need to exist within the story.

This is how it is when you visit a new place. You aren’t handed a textbook at the city limits. You don’t have to recite the place’s Wikipedia page before you’re allowed entry. You go somewhere that you’ve maybe heard of, because you’re curious about it, or because you have specific business there.

In the real world, you often arrive in a new place at an airport, and then get a taxi to a specific hotel where you have booked a room. Maybe there is a particular tourist attraction you want to visit, but you don’t know that it is in contested territory of two rival gangs, at least, not until you mention it to your taxi driver or concierge, and they quickly try to talk you out of it.

Think about it. This is how to deliver vital information in the story. Not as a truckload delivered all at once like a cord of firewood just dumped in your driveway, but as a pile of logs stacked carefully one piece at a time, as drips and drops of information learned by direct observation, or revealed by the characters your hero talks to.

Think of somewhere you know very well. Your hometown. The subject of your dissertation. Some favourite locale that you are a total expert on. You know, in exhaustive detail, every facet of the place’s history, every safe/dangerous spot, every famous resident, the significance of the street names, and all kinds of minutiae. Now, think about how you think when you are in that place. Think about what goes through your mind.

It isn’t a constant carousel of factoids. It isn’t a litany of stunning depositions on this street’s residents, or that house’s builders. Not unless the residents or the builders are integral to the story you want to tell.

When you are in familiar territory, you don’t detail all the little things. You aren’t constantly thinking about all the things you know about this or that. You can call them up at a moment’s notice, sure, but you don’t unless you need to.

If you are returning to a place you used to call home or used to be familiar with, that’s a different vibe. I’ve stood outside the house I left decades before, soaking in strange emotions. I’ve seen the fenced-off forest where I used to roam freely as a child. I’ve seen the rubble of the demolished mansion whose glorious ruin I used to play in. And I’ve stood, flabbergasted, at a new street, built some time during my absence, that should, by rights, be yet another field.

When you go home after a long time away, you see all the differences, and you notice all the old things as if they were new again. If I stood on my old street right now, I’d think about the people who used to live in each house, and maybe some of the things that happened in each house, or on this bit of street, or in that particular garden.

When I go outside of my current home for a few minutes, do I even stop to look at the house? It looks the same as it did this morning, or yesterday, or last week, unless there’s a dragon perched on my chimney and loose bricks are falling onto the lawn. If this is a normal day, I have no trigger to be standing outside my house and noticing things or reminiscing about things. If a taxi is coming to take me away from it forever, then I would have some memories playing across my mind, or I’d be deliberately noting each detail in case it was the last time I would see them.

When the reader is faced with a character having a normal day, the most authentic or realistic way for the character to interact with their surroundings is in a minimal or automatic way.

The sheer normalcy of this kind of minimalism is what makes a story engaging for me. I become immersed in the story because of the dismissive or automatic actions the character is taking. These automatic mundane actions act as a hook when they differ from my own life or experiences, and build a sense of camaraderie in me when they resonate with my life or experiences.

On a normal day, I go out into the garage in just a T-shirt and my underwear. January or July, humidex or windchill, it’s irrelevant. In the garage, dirty clothes await me, covered in various stains, which I put on with subconscious efficiency, without paying much attention to them. The last things are wellies (rubber boots), caked in mud and worse things than mud. When I’m ready, I step outside, and reach for the large gate covered in hardware cloth, which encloses one end of a carport.

I don’t think about how or when I made the gate. I think only about the mundane action of opening the gate.

I step inside. I am surrounded by hungry chickens eager for me to tip the food I’ve brought with me into the empty bowls scattered here and there on the dirty ground. I don’t think about each chicken, when they were hatched, or what their parentage is. I don’t think about what the previous owner of the house used the carport for, or how he must be rolling in his grave at what I use it for.

I just feed the chickens, look for eggs, make sure there is water, and open up their access to the run. And I will leave them to their own devices for some hours before I need to go check on them again.

On a normal day I don’t think about how the first chickens were unwilling and unwitting therapy chickens, and how I used to sit and unload all my troubles on their uncomprehending little minds. On a normal day I don’t think about how my prize rooster was carried off by a hunting dog, or how I followed its tracks hundreds of meters up the road to a neighbour’s house, finding piles of all-too-familiar feathers here and there, or choking back tears of rage and impotence and indignation at the end of my neighbour’s long driveway along which the pawprints led, the snow like the ashes of my flock breeding dreams.

On a normal day, I just do what needs to be done and leave.

If your character is experiencing a normal day, focus on what makes the character’s version of “normal” interesting. Give only what is needed, nothing more.

If your character is experiencing an abnormal day, keep in mind how you process reminiscences and memories, and try to keep any explanation to a minimum. Not everything needs to be revealed on the first page.

The amount that you do reveal will imply how normal a day this is.

Thanks for reading!