Exposition is a necessary part of writing. It informs the reader what they can expect of the story, the world, and the characters in the world. Exposition sets our expectations of what the writer will be doing. It can also kill a story quicker than an exposed electrical wire kills a bird.
Infodump is a writing term used to describe one of the Seven Cardinal Sins of Writing. (There may be more, but right now, seven is a good number). Quite plainly, an infodump is paragraphs, pages, or entire chapters of descriptions and explanations with little to no action on the part of the characters.
This is such an insidious technique. It often sneaks up on the unwary writer, insinuating its way into the prose before anyone catches it. It disguises itself, taking the shape of other techniques and often hiding in plain sight. Various forms of infodumping include the Talking Heads Syndrome, a letter written by (or to) the protagonist, a character thinking about what a lovely town (s)he is standing in, reading a “book within a book,” and even the ever-dreaded flashback. (Note: not all flashbacks are infodump, but most of them are. More on flashbacks later.)
Don’t get me wrong. Information is crucial to a story and all stories have exposition. Exposition is a good thing. It helps express things that the characters might not know, or showcase how the POV character views his world. However, overuse of exposition (the infodump) is a bad, bad thing. Why?
Think of an infodump as a bottomless bucket of really cold water. The book is the bucket. The story exposition is the water. Your reader is one getting doused with that endless flow of (need I repeat myself?) really cold water. Now how long do you think your reader is going to stand under that water before they get annoyed, frustrated, or just plain mad at you?
Not very long. And would you be able to blame them?
The primary use of infodump is in the first draft when the author is exploring her world and figuring out what makes it tick. Everyone does it, and writers are justifiably proud of their work. Who wouldn’t want to show off their twenty pages of world-building notes so that everyone can ooh and aah in appreciation? Let’s face it, though, not everyone actually is as enamored of an author’s writing as the author herself is. Infodump can be useful, but only to the author, never to the reader, and should be chopped, removed, and sanitized before a book ever makes it to print. There is no excuse for a character to daydream for the first five pages of a novel about how her father is out at sea in the middle of a storm, and isn’t this house nice because it withstands the storm, but no one else’s house is this nice, yada, yada, yada.
I am sad to say that two of my favorite authors, Mercedes Lackey and David Weber, are frequent infodumpers. Mercedes likes to do hers right up front in her books to set up the series. David peppers his infodumps in later chapters, discussing hyperdrive history and current politics. And yet, they get away with the technique for two good reasons. 1) Just as the infodump starts to get overwhelming, they break it up with action that follows on the information the reader just received. 2) Both authors are writing continuous series in which the information relates back to previous books and gives new readers a chance to catch up.
Plus they are both good writers, and I forgive a lot of sins for good writers.
On the other hand, there are ways to avoid the infodump. For example, fellow Musling Ted Mendelssohn (in his book The Wrong Sword) wrote the following sentence:
“Ever since his hometown of Sanbruc had earned the title of “the lost village,” he had been constantly on the road, from Brittany to London to Cornwall to Paris, all thanks to the Plantagenet family’s Rampaging Knights Urban Renewal Program.”
Now, Ted could have spent pages and chapters on how the Plantagenet family destroyed Henry’s hometown and how miserable Henry is and how nasty the knights of the Plantagenet dynasty really are. But he didn’t. The first few chapters are all action and a brief mention of Henry’s “lost town” and then we get the above explanation. Brief, simple, and just enough to let us know what happened, give us a laugh, and get us on to the next scene. This is what exposition should be.
The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. Go ahead, infodump all you want. Then go back and search for it. Remember to check all the strange little corners. Infodumps can hide in unlikely places. Then clean it all out. These are your notes to yourself. If you want to share them with the reader, parcel them out in smaller lumps, break them up into action and consequences. And above all, remember that not everything actually has to be shared with the reader. Some things you actually can keep to yourself without ruining the story.
