3 Simple Ways To Avoid Info Dumping in Your Story

There are few things more frustrating as a reader than the dreaded info dump. You're just getting stuck into the narrative, engaging with the characters and the world, and then the author jerks up on the hand brake in order to give you a miniature lecture on how hyper drives function, or the political history of the Sisterhood of The Seven-Fold Veil, or to go on at length about orc biology to the point that you just want to close the book and pick up something that feels less like a textbook and more like a novel.

If you've found yourself prone to info dumping in your work, and you're looking for a way to stop, I'd recommend trying some of the following solutions. They aren't perfect, but I've had pretty solid results following these guidelines over the past several years.

Open your mouths, it's all coming your way!

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Method #1: Provide Context Clues Instead of a Lecture

"They did what? To who? Oh... oh no."

Readers are able to intuit a lot of information from context clues in a story. Everything from the reluctance someone has to talk about a subject, to the reaction the protagonist has to the sight of a space ship engine or a display of super strength fills your audience in on the world. Even a quip like, "You remember back when guys had to wear body armor to be bullet proof?" said by a detective engaged in a firefight with a metahuman bank robber fills the reader in on a lot of information; metahumans are relatively common now, this happened within the memory of a single cop, and it's become normal enough that it's a frustration rather than something to leave them in awe over.

Little clues like this, peppered throughout your narrative, can paint a picture for your audience. While it might be tempting to present them a full timeline of when the first metahumans emerged, explaining who they were and the powers they possessed, and then talking about legislation, normalization, cultural backlash and adjustment, etc., don't do that. Instead, just clue your readers in through observing how the world functions, what people say, and how they act. Trust them to fill in the blanks without taking them aside to explain the full history of this world they find themselves in.

This has the added benefit that readers will be interested to know more, and you can peel back the curtain slowly to maintain engagement... much like we see with the world building in the film John Wick, for those who want a concrete example of this tip in action.

Method #2: Work It Into (Natural) Conversation

"Oh dear... come take a look at this. Let me tell you what it means."

Originally I was just going to leave this tip as Work It Into Conversation, but an info dump with quotation marks around it is still an info dump. Having the barkeep or detective vocalize the necessary information out loud doesn't inherently make it less of a dump... you need to have context for the conversation so that it slides naturally and organically into the narrative.

For example, say you want to clue your audience in on certain incidents that happened between Mars and Earth. If you just so happen to have a Martian marine present who was there, you could have them talk about what they saw, and what they did during the war in question. Maybe the context is that they're doing a weapons check or armor and suit maintenance, and another character wants to know just how serious this basic task really is. So the marine starts listing off death toll numbers from the Void Reach conflict, talking about how many died on each side... and how often it was improperly-maintained suits rather than actual enemy fire that lead to death tolls. This provides some of the hard facts you want your readers to have, but it also leads to context clues regarding character habits and personalities, as well as why there may still be bad blood between particular factions.

You may not be able to fit every detail you want into a conversation, but if you flex your mental muscles you can fit a surprising amount of relevant information into scenes where characters are doing something else, but talking at the same time.

Method #3: Ask If The Audience Needs To Know

You know... they probably don't, now that I think about it.

Info dumping, in general, comes out of a need to gush about something in the story you're telling. Maybe it's just cool background stuff that you're really proud of, or you did a lot of research to understand a particular aspect of law enforcement, military tactics, medical examination, or astrophysics, and you don't want to just let that sit in the background.

However, consider how much information your audience needs to have in order to understand your story. Not only that, but how much of that information do they need right now in order for the ride to continue on down the tracks? Because contrary to the way a lot of us feel, your audience doesn't need to know everything up front in order to get stuck in. And if they do, you should restructure it so that they don't have to chew through an entire dump of information in order to actually get to the story. Because the background is just that... background. People like worldbuilding, but that's the sauce on the sandwich. Just enough really pulls it together, but most of us don't want a mouthful of mayo with a bacon garnish on the side.

As such, evaluate what information your audience needs to have. Once you know what they need to know, figure out how to spread it throughout your narrative. Work it into conversations and observations, show the audience these things in action, or just make simple statements that fill in a gap without going on and on about it for half the chapter. Most importantly, let things go if they aren't helping your story. Because while the mythology of the ancient elves or the inner workings of dragon engines might fascinate you, if you're putting a stop to everything to tell your audience about them, there's a lot of people who are just going to get off the ride.

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