I will no longer be updating this guide. I'm leaving it up in case it will continue to be helpful to anyone in the future.
People have asked me writing tips, Wattpad tips, and whatever. This is some of that advice I give them. Keep in mind most of t...
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Info dumping.
While I've gotten better at this, I am the Queen of info dumping, often times without realizing I'm doing it. My first chapters especially are guilty of this. The rough draft of Freelander might as well be all info dump at times. If you've never heard the term info dump, chances are you're guilty of it. Info dumping is when you're taking chunks of information and throwing them at the reader. It can be information that is important to the story, but also information which is useless. Fantasy and Scifi books are regularly guilty of the info dump.
But why, if the information is essential to the story, is an info dump bad? Because it can be jarring for the reader. Often times, info dump is telling rather than showing. Information should be given to the reader gradually, not dumped on their head with a bucket. There are times when info dumps aren't avoidable, but whenever possible you should kill them and kill them hard. Present that information in a more pleasing way.
Info dump can be back-story, it can be descriptions of characters, places—it's anything in which you dump a large sum of information on the reader in one swoop.
The first step to avoiding the info dump is ask yourself if that information really is crucial to the reader. If it is, ask yourself if you can break it up somehow. Can you take a small portion of the info and put it there and then move another portion to a later chapter and/or paragraph. If you can, do that. If the reader doesn't need to know all about the world dynamics in that specific chapter, break those dynamics up and give it to them bit by bit. Let the reader learn as a character in the book learns. The character doing the learning doesn't always have to be the MC, it can be support characters as well.
Here's a fairly poorly written example of info dump, but it's a dump all the same:
Hello, my name is Terrick Raythe. I'm a wood nymph from Xyriece. I have shaggy copper hair, yellow eyes, and I live with my adoptive father Issail in the village of Neeth. Long before the wood nymphs were a separate race, we all lived under the fairy moniker until one day the wood nymphs and elves decided to rise up and become their own person. Our magical views differed from that of the fairy. They preferred to use magic to control their births, ensuring they conceived only females. Men were for breeding, nothing more. My people preferred to allow the Great Mother to control ..... zzzzzz
For the record, I didn't actually do it that way in Freelander. Just thought I should point that out because it's terribly written haha.
In that info dump you know who Terrick is, you know a rough description of him, and you learn all about why he can be a male wood nymph. Why did you, as the reader, need to know all of that in a single paragraph? The answer is, you don't. Yes it's important because it explains why I, the writer, mess with the mythology that nymphs are all female, but you don't need to know it the second you meet Terrick.
The reader doesn't need to know the science or mechanics behind your world in the first chapter. I argue they don't even need it within the first five chapters. Work the information into a scene and make it relevant to that scene and that scene only. Let's say you have characters who live in a bureaucratic realm led by the evil overlord, Bezelbob. Bezelbob is an alien mechabot from planet Snorg but everyone thinks he's human. He also thinks he's human so he doesn't understand why he's never full, thus he keeps all the food to himself leaving the people to starve. Talia is the MC, she's a feisty girl from a small village that's slowly starving to death. She's going to set out on the journey to stop Bezelbob and his tyranny. That's all information that will be crucial to know during the story so how do we convey that information? Are we going to just dump it like a synopsis for the reader?
