The Simplest Trick for Avoiding Info Dumps

Sometimes authors are faced with the necessity of avoiding info dumps while feeding the reader large chunks of information via internal narrative. The problem, of course, is that, faced with pages of straight narrative in solid blocks of text, readers often grow restless. Vital as the information may be, readers want to get back to the action and dialogue.

Remember back in school when your teachers were insisting you needed to listen to their lengthy lectures on thermal dynamics because they guaranteed this information would come in handy later on? Whether you believed their guarantee or not, you were probably just wishing they’d get on with it. That’s how we risk making our readers feel if we don’t exercise a little cleverness.

Unlike high school teachers, authors can play a few tricks on readers to keep them interested in the midst of important but lengthy narrative. One of these tricks for avoiding info dumps is to intersperse action and dialogue within the narrative.

The Outstretched Shadow (affiliate link)

In their fantasy The Outstretched Shadow, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory utilized this trick to break up half a chapter’s worth of narrative. Instead of just having their teenage hero sit at a window and mull about his backstory, these authors crafted a scene in which the character and his tutor argue about the importance of his lessons and his refusal to pay attention.

By interspersing their informative narrative throughout the scene’s frame of conflict and by using dialogue and action beats to break up the big chunks of text, Lackey and Mallory were able to keep readers’ attention from wandering.

If you find your characters sitting around “thinking” for pages upon pages, give them something to do or someone to talk to while they’re thinking. Your potentially tedious scene will instantly gain an extra dimension.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! What’s your go-to trick for avoiding info dumps? Tell me in the comments!