World Building...

[lonewolfwanderer]

What's the best way to implement your world building? Or is this where you'd use the infamous info-dumping?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Through the characters' eyes and experiences with as little info-dumping as possible. Where you do info dump, try to make it part of the scene. Get readers who'll review it and check you have enough and are still keeping it engaging. Good luck, it can be hard to get right.

 

[Brian G Turner]

As springs said. World building is only important to the story where it directly affects the POV characters. And then it's recommended these days to drip the information in. After all, you have an entire book to do it - so if you try and push too much information early on, not only can you potentially slow the story and bore the reader, but you also remove all sense of mystery and interest from your characters. Drip fed, you can encourage the latter.

 

[Colbey Frost]

What you think is important may not be for the reader. Some things they simply don't need to know. And another way of looking at it (a different idea to the above) is try to think of your world, your city, your mountains, as characters themselves. Characters are there for a reason and they help drive the story, so if your world building is adding to the cast, you're doing well. I hope that makes sense.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If the characters go to a new place, you might want to describe it through their eyes (but not at tedious length), especially if it is as exotic to them as it will be to the readers. But if you can link it to action, that's always best. Say that someone bumps into your character in the marketplace: As he was crossing the market someone shoved him aside. Corin caught a brief glimpse of a dark face with the ritual scars of a warrior seamed white across the skin.

OK, so that was off the top of my head, and perhaps a little stiff. But from that we can infer that the people there have dark skin and that warriors are inclined to be arrogant. We also learn that they scar their faces deliberately in some distinctive way. It may or may not be significant, but it has movement, sets the scene, and it's less obviously info-dumpy than: He saw warriors in the marketplace. Like all the warriors he had seen in that country they had white scars across their dark faces and they looked arrogant.

You can disguise infodump in conversation, but you can get carried away there and go on too long so that it still looks like info-dump, or it will look like infodump if the conversation is too stilted and too obviously contrived to get the info across: "So, Corin, what impressed you most when you visited the marketplace?" "The warriors here look so fierce! As you know, Zorin, a man scars his face after his first battle so that everyone will know he's a warrior. We don't have that custom at home. I also noticed that everyone has dark skin."

One of the best ways to get information into a conversation without it sounding too contrived is during an argument (if the argument is really part of the story and you didn't just invent it so that characters could exchange information). Because in real life we really do remind each other of things we both already know when we are having an argument. "The only way to recover the ruby is to break into the fortress. I should be the one to go." "That is madness Vorin. If you are seen the scars on your face will give you away. The last time they caught one of our warriors--" "Bah! Do you think I will break under torture as that coward did?" "But we cannot afford to lose you. You are our finest warrior." Again, a little clumsy, but I hope you see what I mean.

Otherwise, as others say, you drip it in but in such a way that it doesn't look like you just dropped it in. It has to relate to the scene and the moment in some way. To what is happening, or what a character is worrying about, etc. Even one sentence can be infodump if it stands out as not belonging where it is. But if you handle it correctly, you can get away with whole paragraphs.




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[tinkerdan]

Most can be done on a need to know basis- such as when your character needs to know something it might come out in observation of surroundings or dialogue- but be careful about specific things that characters do need to know and that the reader has a heads-up about because it is rather jarring to discover a the moment of critical need that your character has xray vision.

There are some things that will have to be smoothed into the narrative at a convenient time to make sure the reader doesn't think we're doing deus ex machina in their faces.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

If you've spotted in your WIP that you're writing an info-dump, you're doing it wrong. As Teresa says, through the eyes of the characters is the best way - some would say the only way.

 

[tinkerdan]

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

Info-dump is exactly what it is; no matter how you dress it up or trickle it into the story. A person who has been made aware of info-dump, in general, will always find it.

The writer's best defense is to write the best that they can around what info-dump shows up and make the story interesting enough that the info-dump flies by too fast to be a hindrance.

So when you spot it, not if, you have to look all around it a decide if you are pushing the story and reader along fast enough that they won't trip on that on the way out or into the scene.

I honestly can't name one fiction novel I have ever read that didn't have info-dump of some sort in it. Usually it is interesting enough that it doesn't matter that it's there and when done well it can travel across pages, although I would advise the drip method over the creatively disguised large elephant in the room.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Wow, awesome stuff...a tutorial on world building; this is all great to read, thank you from someone who might one day attempt to tell a story.

 

[n-c]

I'm not really qualified to suggest, so maybe I should phrase it as a question.

If you have a desire to info-dump, could writing it with the intention of not including it in the actual finished material be useful as an exercise? Just info-dump onto one side and see if you can pick and interesting bits to carefully drip back into the story. That way you are free to use contrived devices and cliches without harming the story. Take a subsection of the info you need to dump. Put the same info in the form of conversation, a news article, a pensieve, poems, songs, snippets from a late night radio documentary, history books, arguments between Chirstopher Hitchens and Emmanuel Kant.

Do you think that might lead anywhere?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think that can work. Most my first drafts are, by definition, info dumps while I tell myself the story. After, I work it closer to the character's experience.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If you have a desire to info-dump, could writing it with the intention of not including it in the actual finished material be useful as an exercise?

Absolutely. A lot of writers use tons of infodump in their first drafts, because they don't necessarily know yet what is going to be important enough to keep, or the exact right place for the information to go. In the second draft, they start to eliminate, shorten, or move things around.

 

[Brian G Turner]

But if you can link it to action, that's always best. Say that someone bumps into your character in the marketplace: As he was crossing the market someone shoved him aside. Corin caught a brief glimpse of a dark face with the ritual scars of a warrior seamed white across the skin.

...

It may or may not be significant, but it has movement, sets the scene, and it's less obviously info-dumpy than: He saw warriors in the marketplace. Like all the warriors he had seen in that country they had white scars across their dark faces and they looked arrogant.
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Ooh - I do like that example - the first is clearly more immediate and active, and therefore engaging, than the second, which remains distant.

 

[alchemate]

I think info-dumping and world building sets the tone of the book, neither is right or wrong. It just depends on the story. With that said, you always have to exercise restraint and good timing when using either.

 

[BenSt]

Some great tips and suggestions so far, especially from Teresa, and I agree with the general consensus that info-dumping is just a bit clumsy and needs to be well timed. Thing with world-building, something I struggle with a lot, is that it can become too complex and if you try to place it all into the book will come across as a hodge podge.

My suggestion: Use worldbuilding for your own enjoyment and to work out details. Look at prolific worlbuilders like JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, and George RR Martin (any writer that an RR in their name) and see how they use the details they create. Lord only knows good old Tolkien and Martin have laid out their worlds to such detail, but in their works, it is usually progressive (that is details add up over time) and only used in context (Martin rarely just lists random geneologies unless brought up in conversation)

I would also suggest, look at the world today and see how our world affects people in it. Characters can act a certain way or do certain things without a stated reason, especially background characters, as long as things are consistent and that you know the background.

For example, if a certain type of weapon is being used by a group, we don't need to know the history of why that weapon is being used... but we do need to make it consistent. Do we need to know that the group's founder 500 years before forged the weapon in a lake of molten rock? It might be interesting to bring up a story like that while characters are cleaning or tending to their weapons, as an aside to build rapport.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

There's a scene in my most recent 'first draft' where one of the main characters shows one of the other main characters (a 12-yr-old) a few facts about her world via a pop-up book, which he goes through section by section. To my mind, that doesn't count as an info-dump, as it's character based. Generally getting info across to the reader is fine.

The key phrase NEVER to use when characters are speaking to one another is, "As you know..."

 

[BenSt]

There's a scene in my most recent 'first draft' where one of the main characters shows one of the other main characters (a 12-yr-old) a few facts about her world via a pop-up book, which he goes through section by section. To my mind, that doesn't count as an info-dump, as it's character based. Generally getting info across to the reader is fine.

The key phrase NEVER to use when characters are speaking to one another is, "As you know..."

That's an interesting way of doing it. I've seen also examples of Professors or teachers lecturing and characters having side conversations, interspersed with segments of the lecture too.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Could work well!

 

[The Storyteller]

On the note of conversations and teachers, one of my WIPs gives a lot of information this way, as the mc if very unlearned and suddenly thrust out of her world. She doesn't know a lot about the 'rest' of the world, so she is often asking questions and other characters are able to give some of the information that needs to be included through their answers. Likewise, in a WIP where the mc develops magic and needs to train, her mentor gives her basic lessons. Again, this allows the information to be given in the form of conversation, and not in the "as you know" style because the character clearly does not know, or they would not need the lesson! (Or even if there are aspects of it they know, teachers frequently summarize past lessons or common knowledge when it is directly related to the topic to ensure their students all have a correct understanding or because that information is needed to explain the next bit.)

Personally in the books I read I like it best when information is given through conversation, provided it isn't stiff dialogue that is clearly their for your benefit and not for the characters!

 

[tinkerdan]

This is good and I've employed it, but I think there are some things to consider while employing it.

On the note of conversations and teachers, one of my WIPs gives a lot of information this way, as the mc if very unlearned and suddenly thrust out of her world. She doesn't know a lot about the 'rest' of the world, so she is often asking questions and other characters are able to give some of the information that needs to be included through their answers. Likewise, in a WIP where the mc develops magic and needs to train, her mentor gives her basic lessons. Again, this allows the information to be given in the form of conversation, and not in the "as you know" style because the character clearly does not know, or they would not need the lesson! (Or even if there are aspects of it they know, teachers frequently summarize past lessons or common knowledge when it is directly related to the topic to ensure their students all have a correct understanding or because that information is needed to explain the next bit.)

Personally in the books I read I like it best when information is given through conversation, provided it isn't stiff dialogue that is clearly their for your benefit and not for the characters!

In the first case in which I used this I often ended up with conversations that were too long and I'm pretty sure most readers reached a point where it was like a warm glass of milk just before they nodded off.

You have to be able to portion it out in small chunks that either spread out across many scenes or are at least interrupted by something interesting happening between. This can be a bit of a challenge to attempt to avoid the large dump that is trying to squeeze out and then trying to make the smaller chunks become smooth pieces that fit together. Once you come up with a good formula to blend it all it can be quite entertaining.