Info Dumps

Yesterday I mentioned a twist to the heroine’s back story in BEAR. I came upon this twist because I needed an excuse to reveal a truth about the world in BEAR. I’d begun to think that this particular truth would end up being one of those little world-building tidbits that the writer knows, but which ends up on the cutting room floor, and I hated that. Not because this part of their world is wonderful or fantastic–quite the opposite. I think this tidbit could effectively show the dark side of their society and would hopefully make the reader begin to question why everyone (the hero especially) accepts the status quo.

So while this truth may not be essential to the plot, I feel it would be a subtle, effective way to mark the beginning of the end. The problem with tidbits like that is how easy they become info dumps (blocks of information that the writer needs to convey, but which is lumped into paragraphs or pages and not layered into the story). The best visual reference I can give for an info dump is an early John Wayne movie I saw recently, Texas Terror. (Personally, I have no idea where that title came from. I guess they must have been in Texas, but I didn’t see any terror.)

When the heroine first arrives on the scene–dressed, by the way, in stylish ’30’s fashion that kind of stands out in a western–she looks directly at the camera under the guise of speaking to the driver and says, “I’ll be awfully glad to get home. You see, I’m Bess Mathews, and I own the Lazy-M Ranch. There must be thousands of cattle and at least a hundred cowboys. And just think–I’m going to be boss!” This is, naturally, followed by the lines, “Oh! Look at those wildflowers,” which she then wanders off to go pick.

This, my friends, is an info dump, rightly inheriting an eye roll and groan of disbelief. Yes, okay–the movie was only 50 minutes long, so the whole thing was peppered with scenes like this, but it’s not the way to write a book. All writers spit out info dumps now and then. The trick is to recognize them and filter them out before they hit the public. Hopefully, I’ll manage to avoid any such mishaps in BEAR.