On Infodumping

[The Curious Orange]

I've never been a fan of infodumping - those great big blocks of exposition dropped into the text just to explain what's going on. To me it just slams the brakes on the story.

My intent, when writing my novel, was that the characters should find things out for themselves in their own good time. But the problem I've got now is that when characters do find things out, they often just leap from left-field. I need to find a way to "signpost" or "foreshadow" information to the reader without "dumping" it on him. This is turning out to be harder that I expected, primarily as I firstly need to decide what information needs revealing in order to make the character's discoveries believeable, and what needs to be withheld in order to make them surprising.

It's OK for my characters to be utterly confused by what's going on around them, but I don't want to confuse my readers. Neither do I want to bore them with pages of "As you already know, Bob..." dialogue.

Any advice/discussion on how to walk this fine line?

[Dragonlady]

Often I find my characters refer to other characters/ places/practices etc before it is relevant or there is time for them to have a discussion about them, eg the protagonist's mentor comes up in conversation a couple of times before she visits her; the mentor doesn't get any proper description until that point but readers will be familiar with her name. Could something like that work? Subtle references will mean that the entrance of the idea etc isn't out of the blue, and avoids repetition and infodumps.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Trial and error. Each story has its own requirements, its own perfect balance, and there is no one formula or technique that works on everything. It's also a matter of style. Some writers can unload a ton of information in the exposition, and do it in such an entertaining way that it enhances the story; others do better when they keep the exposition very lean and rely on action and dialogue to get the same information across.

You just have to be prepared to do a lot rewriting until you find out what works best for the story you are telling, as well as what works best with your own particular style.