We’ve all been there – either as authors, or as readers, plowing through a long narrative of information that seems important, but drags the action to a halt. As an author, we want to make sure the reader knows everything we want them to know about a person, a place or an event that we are convinced they need to know. As a reader, we’ve been caught in these narratives wondering when the author is going to get back to the action. Even worse, is when much of all that narrative isn’t even needed. I don’t know about you, but I have a limited amount of time for reading and I’m not eager to waste it reading screeds of stuff I don’t need to know. One of my favorite authors, who wrote one of my most favorite books of all time, has turned into a huge info-dumping writer and I’ve stopped reading her 300 page stories that come packaged in 900 page books.
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So, how do we avoid this dreaded info dump?
The first question I ask myself is: “Does the reader really, really need to know this?” This might happen while I’m writing, but more often comes in my first major edit when I realize I’ve got a long narrative information dump. I review all the details revealed and start asking the relevant question about each one. If I am working on a mystery, there might be some details that the reader needs to know. But perhaps not served up on a silver platter all at once, instead of slipped in somewhere so when the mystery is finally solved, they nod their head and think, yeah, that makes sense, now.
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Same goes for any genre really. If it’s a romance, the things that make a heroine attracted to a hero are things the reader should see, but not dumped all at once up front, but again, slipped in here and there as the relationship develops. She might take notice of how he treats an old man struggling to make things happen. Or she shakes her head in amazement when she discovers him doing her dishes. Or that he calls his mother every Sunday night just to say hi. There’s nothing wrong with her admiring a healthy and attractive physique either, but that’s not enough to make a real romance happen. It’s the little things that add up as the love story unfolds.
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Ditto with an action/adventure. For instance, your hero is claustrophobic. And eventually he’s going to be stuck in a stalled elevator where he’s going to have to control his panic to get the job done. But instead of introducing this fact along with his physical description, what he does for a living, where he lives, who his friends are etc, it just needs to be dropped in along the way so the reader will suddenly feel his angst when that damned elevator stalls. On the other hand, all that info I just outlined – much of that the reader can figure out along the way or doesn’t need to know at all.
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As far as the claustrophobia goes. You could explain this critical detail by telling this story. Keith’s big brother Jay hadn’t always been such a great guy. Back when Keith was just seven, Jay thought it would be funny to lock Keith in their bedroom closet. At first it was just dark and scary, but then Jay started teasing him through the door about the spiders he’d seen earlier that week. Then had come the details about how the monsters who live under beds at night spend their days in closets so little boy’s mothers wouldn’t sweep them away with the dust when they cleaned the room. Jay had sort of relented after what felt like hours and slipped a skinny flashlight thingy his mother kept on the refrigerator under the door. Keith had welcomed the light until Jay shoved a page under the door with a story about a little kid who turned into a skeleton because he didn’t eat for days. Then the flashlight had died. And Jay had gone off, leaving Keith still trapped in the closet. It wasn’t even daytime anymore because there was no more hint of light seeping in under the door and the room outside was eerily quiet. By the time Keith’s mother found him, Keith had wet his pants, much to his shame, and he’d had nightmares for years afterward.
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What if, instead of the previous info dump, you just said:
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Keith was a Navy Seal. He’d been through hell week and survived. He’d been on assignments that would have given most men nightmares for the rest of their lives. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Well, except for small places, thanks to his big brother shutting him a closet for the fun of it. That still gave him nightmares.
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That second option tells the reader just enough to show Keith’s possible Archilles heel, but doesn’t slow the rest of the action down in the telling.
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If you’re writing a mystery where the killer is a sweet old lady who everyone agrees wouldn’t hurt a fly, it isn’t necessary to go into her current craze with visiting the local gun range and perfecting her aim with a variety of firearms, along with her prizes in competition. But you might put a small trophy on her mantle that an investigator (law enforcement, PI or just an amateur sleuth) can find and take note of later in the story when things begin to click.
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If you’re portraying the oldest sister in a big family who always felt responsible for her siblings, it’s not needed to outline the whole family and why she always felt each of her siblings needed her guidance. Instead, you can just have one of those siblings make a comment at some point along the lines of, “We grew up Sylvia. We don’t need you watching over us every minute anymore.”
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How about this passage: Suzie skipped down the sidewalk making sure not to step on any cracks. The old ditty about breaking your mother’s back repeated itself over in her head. Did stepping on a crack really break anyone’s back? She’d never heard of anyone’s mother having a broken back, and she knew plenty of kids who stepped on cracks all the time. It was all nonsense. Black cats didn’t bring bad luck and neither did walking under ladders. It was just stuff people made up to explain things they didn’t know. Besides, Old Mrs. Smith was taking forever to push that walker with the bright green tennis balls on the legs along the sidewalk which gave Suzie plenty of time to consider the whole broken back deal. Finally, out of patience, Suzie took aim and stepped down squarely on 
the next crack she saw.
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This paints a very accurate picture of a kid walking home from school, but is any of it really important to the story? It only becomes important if the old lady with the walker going at a snail’s pace ahead of Suzie suddenly collapses to the ground at the exact moment Suzie steps on that crack. If Suzie just waves to the woman and hurries past her to get home for the snack her mother always leaves out for her, then none of it was important and the same picture could have been painted simply: Suzie skipped, careful not to step on any cracks. She didn’t want to hurt her mother if the old saying was true. Old Mrs. Smith pottered along and Suzie was equally careful not to bump into her as she hurried past.
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There are som
e action writers who are clearly in love with guns of all kinds and makes and every single weapon in the story is introduced in mind-boggling detail. For readers who love guns and details about them this is fine, but for most of the rest of us, the details can get tedious and seriously slow the action down. If someone has a pistol aimed at your face, the gaping bore is all you’re going to see and worry about, not the hand packed shells, or the caliber or the manufacturer, or for that matter, if he’s close enough, not even the possible expertise of the person holding you at gunpoint.
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Clichés show up in books for a reason – not always warranted as there are often far more entertaining ways of describing something – but they do convey a known quantity. For instance, you can simply state that the German Shepherd’s ears were pricked forward and he was all business. The whole world knows what a German Shepherd looks like and that they are serious working dogs. The AKC definition of his build, looks and abilities don’t need to be enumerated. Or, the approaching storm was heralded by the ominous clouds and the sudden snapping of the flag on a nearby pole.
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So, that’s the first thing – determining which of the details are most important. In that last sentence, I could have discussed the growing bank of inky black clouds, the disappearance of the sun, the initial spatters of rain, or someone putting up an umbrella or even the weather report the character had heard the night before, or any of the many signs of an approaching storm. With this one sentence, I’ve put the reader right there in a world he or she has been in before and doesn’t need the lengthy detailed description.
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Sometimes all the details do need to be revealed - eventually. But it’s still better to reveal them one or two at a time as needed.
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Going back to Sylvia – the bossy older sister. If this is a family saga and all the family will eventually appear, then, maybe the reader does need to know that Edwin had been sickly as a kid and Sylvia always worried about him. And that John would have forgotten his head had it not been firmly attached to his shoulders. Or that Emily seemed to have the worst taste in boys, right from the time she first noticed them through three failed marriages to the piece of work she most recently brought home. But even then, not all of that needs to be dumped in one big narrative at the start of the story. Much of it can be shown (Note that word SHOWN) in actions. She could constantly be reminding John about things in dialog and he can be seen rolling his eyes every time. Edwin is a strapping 6’6” man who clearly works out in a gym, but who takes his big sister’s constant queries about his health in stride and never loses his patience. And it quickly becomes apparent that Sylvia no longer needs to worry about them, it’s just a habit. And that Emily is going to be the one the reader needs to fret over.
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Dialog, thoughts, dreams, snatches of memory are all great ways to plant details the reader needs to know without the long narrative passages. Even items, like the sharp-shooter trophy, or a diploma from Harvard on a janitor’s wall can show the reader things they will need to know before the end of the book. My best advice to new writers is to first determine which details really do need to be included and then look for unique ways to show them throughout the story, interspersing them with the action.
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Now you surely want to check out the rest of our blog hoppers to see how they handle informing their readers without the “info dump.”
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Anne Stenhouse
Connie Vines
Diane Bator
Helena Fairfax
Bob Rich
We’ve all been there – either as authors, or as readers, plowing through a long narrative of information that seems important, but drags the action to a halt. As an author, we want to make sure the reader knows everything we want them to know about a person, a place or an event that we are convinced they need to know. As a reader, we’ve been caught in these narratives wondering when the author is going to get back to the action. Even worse, is when much of all that narrative isn’t even needed. I don’t know about you, but I have a limited amount of time for reading and I’m not eager to waste it reading screeds of stuff I don’t need to know. One of my favorite authors, who wrote one of my most favorite books of all time, has turned into a huge info-dumping writer and I’ve stopped reading her 300 page stories that come packaged in 900 page books. 
Same goes for any genre really. If it’s a romance, the things that make a heroine attracted to a hero are things the reader should see, but not dumped all at once up front, but again, slipped in here and there as the relationship develops. She might take notice of how he treats an old man struggling to make things happen. Or she shakes her head in amazement when she discovers him doing her dishes. Or that he calls his mother every Sunday night just to say hi. There’s nothing wrong with her admiring a healthy and attractive physique either, but that’s not enough to make a real romance happen. It’s the little things that add up as the love story unfolds.
As far as the claustrophobia goes. You could explain this critical detail by telling this story. Keith’s big brother Jay hadn’t always been such a great guy. Back when Keith was just seven, Jay thought it would be funny to lock Keith in their bedroom closet. At first it was just dark and scary, but then Jay started teasing him through the door about the spiders he’d seen earlier that week. Then had come the details about how the monsters who live under beds at night spend their days in closets so little boy’s mothers wouldn’t sweep them away with the dust when they cleaned the room. Jay had sort of relented after what felt like hours and slipped a skinny flashlight thingy his mother kept on the refrigerator under the door. Keith had welcomed the light until Jay shoved a page under the door with a story about a little kid who turned into a skeleton because he didn’t eat for days. Then the flashlight had died. And Jay had gone off, leaving Keith still trapped in the closet. It wasn’t even daytime anymore because there was no more hint of light seeping in under the door and the room outside was eerily quiet. By the time Keith’s mother found him, Keith had wet his pants, much to his shame, and he’d had nightmares for years afterward.
What if, instead of the previous info dump, you just said:
If you’re writing a mystery where the killer is a sweet old lady who everyone agrees wouldn’t hurt a fly, it isn’t necessary to go into her current craze with visiting the local gun range and perfecting her aim with a variety of firearms, along with her prizes in competition. But you might put a small trophy on her mantle that an investigator (law enforcement, PI or just an amateur sleuth) can find and take note of later in the story when things begin to click. 
How about this passage: Suzie skipped down the sidewalk making sure not to step on any cracks. The old ditty about breaking your mother’s back repeated itself over in her head. Did stepping on a crack really break anyone’s back? She’d never heard of anyone’s mother having a broken back, and she knew plenty of kids who stepped on cracks all the time. It was all nonsense. Black cats didn’t bring bad luck and neither did walking under ladders. It was just stuff people made up to explain things they didn’t know. Besides, Old Mrs. Smith was taking forever to push that walker with the bright green tennis balls on the legs along the sidewalk which gave Suzie plenty of time to consider the whole broken back deal. Finally, out of patience, Suzie took aim and stepped down squarely on 
the next crack she saw. 
e action writers who are clearly in love with guns of all kinds and makes and every single weapon in the story is introduced in mind-boggling detail. For readers who love guns and details about them this is fine, but for most of the rest of us, the details can get tedious and seriously slow the action down. If someone has a pistol aimed at your face, the gaping bore is all you’re going to see and worry about, not the hand packed shells, or the caliber or the manufacturer, or for that matter, if he’s close enough, not even the possible expertise of the person holding you at gunpoint. 
Clichés show up in books for a reason – not always warranted as there are often far more entertaining ways of describing something – but they do convey a known quantity. For instance, you can simply state that the German Shepherd’s ears were pricked forward and he was all business. The whole world knows what a German Shepherd looks like and that they are serious working dogs. The AKC definition of his build, looks and abilities don’t need to be enumerated. Or, the approaching storm was heralded by the ominous clouds and the sudden snapping of the flag on a nearby pole. 
XX
Dialog, thoughts, dreams, snatches of memory are all great ways to plant details the reader needs to know without the long narrative passages. Even items, like the sharp-shooter trophy, or a diploma from Harvard on a janitor’s wall can show the reader things they will need to know before the end of the book. My best advice to new writers is to first determine which details really do need to be included and then look for unique ways to show them throughout the story, interspersing them with the action. 
