Info-dumping

[Alex-Jay]

Something like a family tree I'd be wild enough to say just draw it out as a family tree and show it in the book. Blorin son of Blord, son of Blargle son of ..... yeah it might be informative but there are better ways to show it where the info actually sinks in rather than just washes over the reader in a haze.

Actually I really like this idea. Wouldn't quite work for my intergalactic war setting, but it sounds like a great idea. Especially if there needs to be a reveal about family lines, and discovering the family tree is how something is shown.

I've been edging towards something like this with progressive maps, where they're inserted at certain moments after key battles to show how the war is shaping up.

 

[tinkerdan]

This is an excellent point:

think into-dumps in sci-fi are fine, as long as they’ve been earned. Early on, when we are meeting the characters, and first getting a feel for your writing, you haven’t earned them yet. We don’t need to understand the differences between you species and humans yet, either. If we do, in some particular way for some particular scene, well perfect: there is your opportunity to call attention to that specific difference. It raises intrigue and doesn’t break the flow. The rest really can wait until you have everyone hooked.

::However there is a place where it could backfire.

In an instance where the character does or uses something that requires a skill or a tool that has not shown up until he needs it and it saves his life; can create a disruptive moment for the reader and pull him out of the story trying to figure out when we found out about that.

For quick and ridiculous examples. Lets say midway through the book with no previous mention.

It's a good thing Derk wore his prescription lenses that day or he'd be minus one eye. And those Deja Fu martial arts lessons came in really handy up till that point when his back hit the ground and the size 11 boots on the 300lb assailant landed on his chest and his Kevlar vest wasn't really helping there; however that extra armored brace he'd put on was. It's a good thing the ground was soft and he could shift his position just enough to escape and it was Deja Fu all over again.


On the other hand you might get a pass on this one, if you started your book with those lines.

 

[Boneman]

Once you have your reader hooked, well and truly, with great characters, great plotlines, great exposition and great worldbuilding, you can infodump to your heart's content. Do it before they're hooked and they'll give up reading...

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Info dumps are easily seen with ebook readers that show just a few paragraphs or less, and can be skimmed right over, that way you can still read the story without getting bogged down.

 

[LukeLee]

Thanks for all the input. I’m busy at work so on a hiatus at the moment, but I’ve given this some thought and actually, in this case, I think it would fit very well as a prologue as @Cathbad first suggested. I’ll pick it up in the rewrite.

 

[Josh K]

From my experience describing other races, focus on defining features that make them different (claws, tail, ears, face shape/makeup, size, etc). Pick a couple and mention them, then move on. The reader can fill in the rest with their imagination. Of course, it's probably good to ground the reader in the race first (so a more detailed description), but I'd only do that once. Otherwise, it gets repetitive fast and adds little to nothing to the story.

As far as info dumps - spread them out. Don't do it all at once. Info dumps should typically be in context of the story, so in someone is using magic and the reader learns about magic from what they do, a person runs into a race and learns about them from the interaction, a person runs into an ancient artifact or someone who has one and is told about it and it's backstory. Things like that. You want to avoid passively uumping information if you can.

 

[Max Egorov]

I’ve struggled with this myself, frequently. Because I apparently like torturing myself most of my MCs are non-human and oh how fun it is to try to get their appearance across sometimes. The less human they are the more of a challenge it is. However I have found a few ways to work around it.

The first is simple. If you have a non human character whose anatomy allows them to do something a human can’t do them have them do it and describe how they’re doing it. This isn’t easy in the first person unless you have a narrator who thinks about doing the things that comes naturally or makes snide remarks to themselves about how they can do things others can’t.

The second way works if you’re writing from the perspective of a character wha’s encountering the non-human character. Basically describe the things that make that character stand out from the others of its species like you would with a human. For example I have a character who is a giant semi-humanoid space spider and an old warrior so I’ll say how two of her four legs are mechanical or three of her eight eyes are bionic. This both gives the reader an idea of what this species looks like and informs them about the unique physical traits of the character.