Max word count for infodumps

[Guardian]

I would be curious, is there any "invisible" max. word count for infodumps? I'm asking this, because in my beta tests two parts were considered as info dumps in the beginning (One of them is 222 words, the second is 393 words), yet as I just checked the opening of few novels, i.e. the opening of Harry Potter... the first three paragraphs, which is a similar infodump with 261 words are seems to be correct (And the first few pages of HP is full with similar, but even longer infodumps.).

So my question is, what is making an infodump to a true infodump and is there any true rules regarding it, max word count and anything else what I should keep in my mind?

[Margo]

For me, what usually makes something look like an info-dump is providing backstory before it's necessary, just because it has to get shoved in there somewhere. I've found a single paragraph of it (maybe 75 or 100 words) can be enough to pull me right out of the story, because everything pauses for the dump. It might not have been noticable had it been slipped in one sentence at a time over the course of a page or two, especially had it been:

-pertinent to what was
-currently happening in the
-main story and something the character was
-currently feeling.

Sorry to go over the top with the emphasis, but this is something that takes a good head-pounding to get through most of the time, for me as well. Also, try telling someone not to put ANY backstory into the first 30-50 pages of a novel, and they either look at you funny or put it all in a prologue.

Edit: I should note that, yes, I am aware that info-dump does not always include backstory, but it frequently does, and the same rules apply. Only what is necessary, only when it is necessary, a sentence or two at a time, if possible. It's fine - no, it's preferable - to raise more questions than we answer until it's time to wrap it up for the climax. If 'question' becomes 'confusion' then it's time for the info.

[Guardian]

Actually thanks for those highlighted points, because I already know how to modify those parts.

Also, try telling someone not to put ANY backstory into the first 30-50 pages of a novel, and they either look at you funny or put it all in a prologue.

Now this is going to be a bit harder as the world building is a constant and present element all over the story. The world is quite different then any others and it has it's own rules, what the reader also must understand to have a chance to understand everything. Because of this, in my WIP the reader must get a very clear picture about that world, which is also playing a great role in the entire story as I gave a key role to the world too. Here, the world itself also has an essence and I'm glad that all the betas said without exception, and I'm really proud for this; the world building in this WIP is excellent and very unique. The world itself and it's history sounds so realistic and some of the readers even missed these descriptions in later chapters when I reduced their numbers (So one goal was achieved as the readers got their interactive world, but along with this, the mentioned infodumps are also present in the early chapters.). So I just need to find a proper balance in this case, but with those points what you told here, I believe I already know how to solve this problem.

Thank you for your help.

[Margo]

Now this is going to be a bit harder as the world building is a constant and present element all over the story.

I think it's hardest for fantasy and sci-fi writers. So much world-building to convey and that iffy balance between what the reader needs to know and what only the author needs to know. There's very good reason why so many sf-fantasy heroes are young people just going out and experiencing the world. Their voyage of discovery becomes a mechanism for informing the reader.

I'm glad some of the points gave you ideas. For the world-building, I would suggest trying to illustrate (showing) as much as possible, to avoid the info-dumps (telling). For complex details, this might not be possible.

[Guardian]

For the world-building, I would suggest trying to illustrate (showing) as much as possible

I'll have to present them... well, maybe via dialogues instead of descriptions. On that way they would be part of the story and also would give some flow. Maybe that's going to work...

For complex details, this might not be possible.

Nothing is impossible. :) The question is, do I have the skill to do that or not. :D

[Sommer Leigh]

I personally believe that anything that feels like an info dump, no matter its length, should be avoided and usually only readers can tell you when and where they feel they are being overwhelmed by info. It is my experience that writers are not good at noticing the info dump in their own work because it all feels important. Readers know when they feel like they are receiving a history lesson.

And it probably is very important information, but readers are very good at inferring and imagining information given in context. They will pick up the rules of the world based on how your characters live and act within them. I know it can be very hard to not prep the reader early on so they will "get" everything else, but if you've got readers telling you there are spots that feel like they are being info dumped on, it is probably a good indication that the info needs to be weaved in differently and less obviously.

I don't know why some seem to work and others don't - or whether none of them work but get published anyway - or if the audience the book is designed for affects how the information can be delivered (e.g. Harry Potter is written to a middle grade audience) but I believe that a strong effort to hide back story can only help stories.

Off the top of my head I can think of one particular book series that seems to do an outstanding job of masking back story without using info dumps and that's Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series. I can't tell you exactly what tricks he employs to bring us up to speed fairly quickly on the need-to-know of his world, but it works extremely well. He managed to weave in world history, a new world setting, and a new form of society and somehow I always felt like I always knew the information, as if it were my own history. I do know that he doled out the information slowly. I seemed to understand bits about the world only when I really needed to know it and I never felt like I was confused or lost at any point.

[Guardian]

Thanks Sommer. I'm going to check Uglies' out.

I don't know why some seem to work and others don't - or whether none of them work but get published anyway - or if the audience the book is designed for affects how the information can be delivered (e.g. Harry Potter is written to a middle grade audience) but I believe that a strong effort to hide back story can only help stories.

Maybe because of the tone. One half of my infodumps where I use a different tone is loved by the readers (Those ones are usually between 90-120 words, but sometimes even quite longer), while the other infodumps (250-420 words) are considered as true infodumps. Maybe that's the true problem what Margo mentioned, as these last ones are also pausing the story instead of playing a part in it, while the rest, at least few of them are presented via a POV.

I checked HP again, but there, I don't know how, this is accepted by the readers, while the first few pages are actually background infodumps about a family, a street and some events (Well, maybe this is why J.K. Rowling is J.K. Rowling. She knew how to solve this. :) ).

[Sommer Leigh]

Thanks Sommer. I'm going to check Uglies' out.

I don't know why some seem to work and others don't - or whether none of them work but get published anyway - or if the audience the book is designed for affects how the information can be delivered (e.g. Harry Potter is written to a middle grade audience) but I believe that a strong effort to hide back story can only help stories.

Maybe because of the tone. One half of my infodumps where I use a different tone is loved by the readers (Those ones are usually between 90-120 words, but sometimes even quite longer), while the other infodumps (250-420 words) are considered as true infodumps. Maybe that's the true problem what Margo mentioned, as these last ones are also pausing the story instead of playing a part in it, while the rest, at least few of them are presented via a POV.

I checked HP again, but there, I don't know how, this is accepted by the readers, while the first few pages are actually background infodumps about a family, a street and some events (Well, maybe this is why J.K. Rowling is J.K. Rowling. She knew how to solve this. :) ).

Welcome!

I think maybe it is better in Harry Potter because it is directed at an audience of middle grade readers. I don't write middle grade or read much of it, but I can see how the younger audience might need more directness and less subtly than YA or adult. But it has been ages since I read the first HP so I don't know for sure. I also agree with you about how tone can change things. I think it is hard to quantify that exactly.

[Watcher55]

I agree 100% with Margo. Pertinent information has to be "currently" relevant to the setting and point in the story. The trick is making it not look like an infodump. As for word count - no more than necessary and even then -

[polymath]

I'm a strong believer in the premise that any writing term with negative connotations is a poison pill of contempt. Infodump rates high on my scale of inappropriate terminology alongside newbie, point of view violation, aspiring writer, nitpicker, and slush, and so on.

Those kinds of terms build a mindset that rely on quick and dirty convenient catchwords for expressing complex concepts that too often mean one thing to one writer and another entirely different meaning to another. They're shorthand non sequiturs that propagate misconceptions based on some supposed standard by which all writers must abide. The so-called rules. Worst of all, they often stand for intricate concepts as empty placeholder tokens that have no ready or easily accessible or shareable meaning.

For example, a writer who has mastered the intricacies of the Show Don't Tell platitude cannot expect that uttering those three words to a writer struggling with it will help him get a handle on it. It's a poison pill of condemnation. Worse, a critiquer who thinks he knows a tell when he sees it, but doesn't understand why, who utters those three words in response to a project in progress has bypassed understanding the writer's intent and hyperfocused instead on notional supposed faults without investigating whether they are, in fact, faults. The precisely same sentence diction and syntax and punctuation in one context can be a tell yet in another context be a show.

Let's unpack the anatomy of a so-called infodump. Information dump. Scratch dump. It's a negative valence term in any regard and automatically, imperatively condemns. Why not infodumb instead? Duh-huh dumb information. An oxymoron? Never mind. Information deposit then. Information a writer wants readers to know, perhaps need to know to understand the action that's just occurred or the action to come, information deposited in a reader's mental savings account to accrue interest and/or prepositioned for a rainy-day later time.

Information is detail essential for readers to understand what's going on. In that sense an entire narrative is an information deposit. Some critically and/or popularly acclaimed novels are entirely or in large part or small of the deprecated kind of information deposit, yet they've stood up and passed muster.

Backstory is a form of background information deposit provided so readers may understand what's led up to the unfolding action of the present action. Backstory traditionally was provided in the opening chapter or prologue or prelude or other prefatory chapter of a novel. Because backstory traditionally opened a narrative it came to be labeled exposition because it typically is given in an opening act.

Exposition is a writing mode detailing information so readers may understand what's going on. Detail is the key in that sense. Exposition is also a narrative mode for entering a narrative's meaning space in openings of any dramatic unit, novel, chapter, subchapter, section, paragraph, and in a sense a sentence level dramatic unit. Exposition is the outset, the setup, the introduction of a dramatic unit or the transition from one dramatic unit to another. Exposition is also the opening act of a two, three, four, or five act narrative structure in the traditional sense.

Providing information from a narrator's viewpoint is often indicted as being unnecessary or disruptive exposition, the dreaded kind of information deposit. That's a key. From a narrator's viewpoint. Narrative distance is more remote through a narrator's viewpoint than through a viewpoint character's viewpoint. Narrator provided information interjected in the middle of evolving viewpoint character action can abruptly disrupt the action, often does though not universally. Narrator interjections in openings and endings of dramatic units can be less disruptive but no less remote in narrative distance. That's another key. Remote narrative distance.

Providing information through a somewhat overt narrator, a disembodied persona mediating between writer and narrative and narratee and reader, distances readers from the focal time, place, and persons of a narrative, thus opens narrative distance. An overt narrator who's not also a viewpoint character is an involved yet invisible observing and reporting bystander passing judgment and expressing commentary.

A more covert narrator merely reports the action without passing judgment or expressing commentary. In that circumstance, ideally information is provided through viewpoint characters' discovery of it, though no matter how covert a narrator is, the narrator is still mediating as reporter-observer of viewpoint characters' perceptions and cognitions, sensations and thoughts, actions and reactions, and causes and effects. However, mediating from viewpoint characters' meaning space closes narrative distance.

In the sense that a narrator recites information deposits, other keys to understanding them besides narrative distance and narrator viewpoint are who reports to whom about who or what. Narrator directly reporting information to readers? Recitation opening narrative distance. Narrator indirectly reporting viewpoint characters' evolving actions? Imitation closing narrative distance.

It's no happenstance chance I cite the Show Don't Tell example above. A lengthy information deposit is plain and simple a narrator reciting necessary information. A tell, recitation, diegesis. Whereas a show is imitation, mimesis. Entire chapters of popularly and critically acclaimed novel openings open with tells. The latest Jonathan Franzen novel, Freedom, for example, it's opening chapter is reported in exposition, backstory, and recitation. Its narrative distance is at first remote, but the novel closes narrative distance soon enough. The purpose of introducing a narrator's standing to a novel, like in Freedom, in an opening is so readers know the narrative point of view and are not jarred when viewpoints switch between characters. In the case of Freedom, there are five viewpoints, the narrator's, Patty Berglund's, Walter Berglund's, Richard Katz', and Joey Berglund's.

So no, I don't think there's a maximum or minimum limit to how lengthy an information deposit can be and still pass muster or not. I do believe there are critiquers who are too quick to pass judgment and condemn them outright out of hand though.

[Guardian]

Thanks for your input Polymath. I love your explanations. :)

Information a writer wants readers to know, perhaps need to know to understand the action that's just occurred or the action to come, information deposited in a reader's mental savings account to accrue interest and/or prepositioned for a rainy-day later time.

That's true, but I can't say to the readers... sorry, but why can't you understand it's necessary there. In this case, as I'm the writer, I must change this as I can't watch over every reader when they're reading and tell them... wait, don't skim that part, that's a meaningful element, aaaaaaaaand that's also a necessary element... and wait, that's also a significant element.

I do believe there are critiquers who are too quick to pass judgment and condemn them outright out of hand though.

I agree, but yet, they're writing the critiques.

Show Don't Tell

That's usually sounds great, but how would you present something, where the well known elements, such as traditional four seasons are not existing (That's one of my infodumps with 447 words)? How would you present the difference between the traditional world and the fictive world without telling it? Or how would you explain the meaning of elements, such as colors and their meaning without telling it? These ones cannot be really presented via showing it as these are "tell" elements. These ones cannot be really presented with actions (Well, they can be presented, but in that case the other side of the readers would come to surface; why I can't take them seriously and why I consider them as dumb whose cannot understand anything.). Remember, readers are very-very impatient. If you explain something, that's the problem. If you don't explain it, that's the problem. So now I'm trying to find a balance here to avoid the readers' execution squad. :)

[steve]

So my question is, what is making an infodump to a true infodump and is there any true rules regarding it, max word count and anything else what I should keep in my mind?

Logorrhoea is an affliction; readers will notice it.

I'm a big fan of Steven Millhauser's short stories, but loathed his "Martin Dressler" novel that won the Pulitzer. It read like lists, and I don't want to read lists in a novel.

Say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

[Guardian]

Say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

That's a good advice. Thanks Steve. But if the description is beautiful and charming, or even hot, that's not helping. This is why I need help, some advice, because right now these descriptions are considered as beautiful, charming, even interesting... but some of them, even with these traits, are still considered as infodumps, which is bothering some readers. So chess-mate.

[polymath]

Show Don't Tell

That's usually sounds great, but how would you present something, where the well known elements, such as traditional four seasons are not existing (That's one of my infodumps with 447 words)? How would you present the difference between the traditional world and the fictive world without telling it? Or how would you explain the meaning of elements, such as colors and their meaning without telling it? These ones cannot be really presented via showing it as these are "tell" elements. These ones cannot be really presented with actions (Well, they can be presented, but in that case the other side of the readers would come to surface; why I can't take them seriously and why I consider them as dumb whose cannot understand anything.). Remember, readers are very-very impatient. If you explain something, that's the problem. If you don't explain it, that's the problem. So now I'm trying to find a balance here to avoid the readers' execution squad. :)

I'd have to do an in-depth reading and developmental editing project to answer your questions satisfactorily. And that's expensive, $0.35 to $1.00 per word. The best advice I can freely offer is to investigate how other writers successfully negotiate the shoals of tell versus show and reader-critiquer inconsistencies over whichaway is what. One factor I suggest keeping in mind is target age group and reading skill faculties. Younger, less skilled readers prefer Steve's "hot" action and process a comparatively limited number of viewpoints. Maturer and more skilled readers don't mind quiet openings so much and are able to process more viewpoints. Up to seven. Frankly, from what I've seen of your writing, I think the purpose and the target don't quite match up as might best be desired.

[steve]

Say what you've got to say, and say it hot.

That's a good advice. Thanks Steve.

Not mine; DH Lawrence said it. He was right about most everything.