Tag Archives: fantasy novel

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Thinking about the information dump (#1)

As I started writing this blog, and going in one particular direction, I realized the ‘problem’ of the information dump is actually kind of big and has a lot of facets. Depending on how you’re looking at it, an info dump could be a matter of explaining how a bit of magic or technology works. Another type of information dump involves an explanation of events in the story. A cliché example is the villain monologue, but there are a lot of other examples executed in a similar manner that serve the same purpose. The real problem though is that the information dump must happen. (Insert little text frowny face here -I refuse do to it, so just pretend). Damn. How does one info-dump in a way that doesn’t make the reader sigh and close the book, because ‘a moron wrote it’? I haven’t the foggiest. As a reader though I know what I don’t like. This is the perspective that I try to keep in mind as I write. To keep things simple, I thought I’d break up my thoughts on the topic into more than one post. The first (this one), is going to cover the villain monologue type information dump.

My fourth chapter started out it’s life as almost entirely a nighttime stroll/information dump. Still is. It’s the part in the story where the main character finds himself under attack, and being thrust into a world of magic and a very old war that he is totally unfamiliar with. This is solved by adding a character who is intimately familiar with all of this stuff (fantasy cliché, I know). It’s the perfect set-up for an information dump. Something along the lines of

“Well, the reason that … is because … Oh, yes, and also … happened because ….” Which would get the response of, “What about …?”, followed up with “Well, the explanation for that is simple, it’s …”

Unfortunately, that’s an easy thing to write, but not very fun to read. Not that you can’t get away with that, because you totally can. A great example is the king’s cross scene of Book 7 of the Harry Potter series. Setting aside any bias you might have against the series, that scene is a great example of a totally unabashed info-dump that totally works. I frikin’ love that scene. She sets it up so well, by the end you want more.

In my case, it wasn’t working. So, I concluded I needed to look at all of the information I was presenting, and start peeling bits away. The first thing I tackled was the motivation of the bad-guy. In the early drafts, he did not explain himself, nor was there any explanation of what he was up to (I despise the idea of a villain monologue, and I didn’t want to fall into that trap). Turns out, you can villain monologue. I mean, after all, when you get into an argument, the first thing you want to do is establish how right you are. For this to work though, I think you need to write it so that both characters are talking in context, using flash-backs or something to conjure up enough context for the reader to follow. With all that in mind, a few well-placed sentences in earlier chapters, and the bad-guy’s motivation was not only not force-fed, it seemed a lot more natural.

The revision was good, except, it was still an unruly bit of writing with too much information, so I the next thing I did was look for any information that I could share more effectively elsewhere. There were three main approaches here. The first was to explain some of it earlier in the story. In my case I wasn’t far enough in to make that one work for me. Another approach was to simply avoid the information altogether and bring it up later. I did, in fact, have one piece in there that seemed totally relevant, but after consideration I decided that the main character wouldn’t have even thought about it, and the know-it-all character wouldn’t necessarily know about it either. So, I dropped the explanation with the decision to give it far better treatment in a later chapter (turned into a whole sub-plot in this case, but it really is that important). The third approach is a situation where the main character must to ask the question, it would be weird not to. As it turns out, the know-it-all doesn’t have to know it all, and so some of the explanation could be pushed off a later point, making the information available for discussion very limited.

Once I had addressed these two things, I was better able to deal with the information dump that I had no choice but to deal with. The real benefit of this series of revisions was it left me more space, which I’m using for the development of setting, characters, and elements of foreshadowing. Anyhow, those are my thoughts on the topic. This is a far longer post than I usually like to do, but there it is. If you have anything to offer on the topic, I’d be glad to hear it.

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Is writing a book like building a house?

When I was working on my house, I added about 1100sq. ft., about five years ago. The first parts of the project were fairly easy in terms of planning. First a contractor came in and set the foundation, then I put in the floor joists and sub-floor of the first story, rolling straight into wall framing and sheeting. After that, I took the roof off the existing structure, and put in the floor joists and sub-floor for the second story. Once that was all in place, once again, I was framing and sheeting the walls, which was followed quickly by installation of roof trusses and roof sheathing, which led immediately to shingles. Having all that done, the real work began and the strategy started to become more about preference. Living in Alaska, I opted to focus on insulation, windows followed by interior framing, and then wiring. Normally, this would have occurred in a slightly different order, but if I wanted to continue working that was how it needed to be. Now, once I got that sorted, it was really a matter of preference.

It seems to me that this is where I’m at with my story. I’ve got a few chapters near the end to move from outline to draft, the first major revision, and polish, to the subplot, and of course I still need to go through again and really get that main character nailed down. He needs to be strong and charismatic, and he’s not there yet. I feel like where I’m at in my story is analogous to the point at which I walked into my newly dry house, and looked some 28 feet up the empty stairwell into the trusses of a hollow shell of a yet-to-be dwelling. It hit me like a physical pain back then. I have so much work to do, was my thought. I’d just spent every free moment of my summer getting it to that point and it wasn’t even half-way. I was right, the struggle went on for another 18 months. I tried to tackle things in a certain order to make life easier when I got to the next part. I’d like to approach my story in the same way. My intuition is telling me to just get the whole damn thing written, and worry about the details later, but another part of me says, don’t waste your time on the end because you don’t know all of the details that got him there yet. I suppose in the example of building a house, revision really isn’t on the table. With a book it’s just the nature of things. So, with all of that rubber-ducking and reminiscing out of the way. I’m going to commit myself to drafting out the last few chapters, leave the sub-plot revision until the end, and see if the end of the story doesn’t help me get a better sense of my main character. Is this a good strategy? No idea, never done this before. Anyhow, no I’m off for a run before the night gets away from me.

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Constructed language page

Today I decided to start a page on this site to start a reference for one of my constructed languages I call Lotath. I’ll update the page from time-to-time.