Writing is the art of not losing the reader: period.
Whether it’s world building nerds who just want to info dump their world, prose enthusiasts who can’t shake the pull to poetry, or plot buffs who have the right thing happen precisely at the right time; writing is the art of convincing the reader to read the next word. This often put’s writers in conflict with themselves, with what they want to do, versus what they can afford to do. Let’s get into it.
Every ‘thing’ a writer does on a page has an ‘expense’. The easiest example of this is with an exclamation point. A very occasional exclamation point makes for great emphasis, but seeing one on every page is tiring and causes them to lose their impact/purpose, in that way exclamation marks can be thought of as expensive! Inversely, let’s take the dialogue tag ‘X said’. Readers breeze right past that, they hardly notice. Many great authors prefer simple ‘said’s to more colorful dialogue tags as they slow down the reader. A ‘said’ tag is only slightly more expensive than a grammatical feature like a period or a comma. In this way, ‘X said’ can be thought of as being very cheap. So not only do all ‘things’ have an expense, but the cost can vary greatly.
This is of the top most importance as an author. Some things that you would like to do in a given moment you simply cannot afford. Or as for the upswing of that statement, somethings out there are super cheap for authors to do, and are low hanging fruit for sprucing up a previously dry section of your work.
So, what’s the point of this menu, why am I listing this? My point here is that, unless you’re some big name author who’s already made it (which hell, you just might be, thanks for the read), you can’t afford to just do whatever you want, whenever you want. Much like the real world, you are free to do anything you’d like… as long as you can afford it. Not only will ‘things’ lose their luster when over used, you will be shocked at how quickly a reader will put your book down and give up on it all together. Have you ever face checked a sci-fi with such a thick world dump info building drop at the beginning that you just put it back on the shelf? Perhaps you’ve read through a scene with 10 characters at a table bogged down with colorful dialogue tags to try to help you keep everyone talking straight, but you only end getting fatigued and give up on the piece. You get my point.
Additionally, just like real world items, items don’t only have costs, the have utility/impact/reward. When I buy the better coffee at the grocery store (that’s a lie, I only drink cheap sludge) not only is my cost higher, but my utility is higher: my impact. An exclamation point, when used sparingly and ‘right’, has one hell of an impact. Or perhaps lets take the Rolls Royce expensive info dump. Most books do this once (or maybe twice) for a few paragraphs when they reach the inevitable new city/social circle/etc where their story will take place (Caitlyn arriving at King’s Landing for example). There’s more to all this, not all info dumps are built equally! (And most should not be built at all.) But – you take my point.
The grime crunched under his boots. A wet warm liquid dripped down his forehead. A dizzy pull tugged at him as his pounding head throbbed. – You don’t even know what I’m talking about here, hell, neither do I, but it hardly matters. This is cool. Readers can only keep so much straight in their heads, but when you start one-for-one telling them sensations that they can imagine themselves feeling, things that can directly help them imagine that they’re in that characters place, now you have their attention. My point – this is cheap.
He hated this place, more than anything or anyone. As if he could actually afford any of this? As if the clothes his date wore were supposed to impress him? Not simply remind him of the extent to which they let him starve. – Again, cheap. Just like sensations, internalizations are something normal people do constantly. As a reader, I don’t need to know much about what the queen’s dress looked like, I need to know how our main character feels about it. Hell, as an actual living breathing human. I can’t remember most of the meals I’ve eaten, but I remember how I feel about a specific restaurant once I’ve been to it. This is cheap. Just be careful not to conflate it with description, as it can be tempting to funnel descriptions into an internalization moment so that your character has grounds to internalize more and describe more. While this is fine, that’s not what this menu item is, that’s something else.
She wanted that dagger so damned bad. It was the only way, the only way she’d see Daniel again. – Boom, powerful, strong. Here is just a very quick, ‘in case you forgot’. Readers need progression and direction, if you aren’t constantly slapping them across the face with it, they’ll get bored surprisingly quick. – The one notable exception to this is if you’re already a famous author, because then they will trust you with their time and effort since, outside of the context of this current book/work, you’ve already proven to them that it all adds up in the end. But for us plebians, yes, don’t be annoying but always stay vigilant that they’re aware.
He wore a boiled leather black vest, padded cloth knickers, and had a sword by his side the size of a mountain. – This is fine, and it’s often necessary. But readers can only keep so much straight in there head. Once multiple characters enter a new room that needs describing together, once a character is multiple chapters in and outfits later, this image fades. At some point you just have to be okay with readers conjuring up their own visuals of things. This rule likewise applies for ‘non visual’ things, for example, taking a brief aside to describe a caste system. Sometimes it truly is just easier for the reader for you to step aside as an author and directly tell them something real quick, but those moments are more moderate to rare, so be careful.
”How provincial,” she bellowed as she speared a cut of steak onto her fork, plopped it into her mouth. – This can be good, I’ve picked a purposefully gnarly one here on purpose. Floating dialogue is super in vogue these days where no tags are given at all. There’s two things going on in this snippet I’ve provided, two aspects to this point. First is the actual word I picked instead of ‘said’, which I personally find quite horrendous right here. Then there’s all of the action after it. As for the former. Readers are so accustomed to the “X said” tags, that they usually breeze past them as if they were just a comma of a period. Many new authors think this will make them seem boring or unoriginal, but it generally has the opposite affect of keeping friction out of your writing and letting the actual dialogue do the speaking (if the ‘said’ tag is even needed at all). These altered tags tend to be good for emphasis or to hang a lantern on something though, so they have their moments as well. As for the later point on the accompanying action. Do I really need to know the nitty gritty of her eating? They’re at a dinning table, food was served, enough said. This point in particular is highly subjective to tastes and authors, so pick your own poison – but among that spectrum even the ones that fancy it the most know to avoid ‘too much’ of this. I tend to find the occasional accompanying action grounding and to give me a bit more of a sense of place, but I’m sure as hell not putting it after every dialogue said. I’ve seen this point rear its head in particular when many people are in a scene and the author wants to keep them distinct for the reader, so they just describe in grave detail what everyone is doing always. Yeah, that’s not how that works for the reader. They get tired and exhausted, they spend so much time reading the accompanying actions that the actual impact of the dialogue being said is muddled, and the characters (and their voices) that you have in the scene become less distinct and sort of lost. (In those scenarios, I’ve found making the third person ‘tight’ perspective more tight, and adding more grounding language, and to make sure characters have distinct voices, to truly remedy the issue). Anyways, this is good, I try to mix in some of it every few lines of dialogue, but not more, go ahead and feel it out for yourself though.
Fuck. - Enough said. But when you use italics to much, they simply lose their impact. The exception being for a document, book, or letter, in-lined in your work that a character is reading. See? That whole long italics lost its impact there.
A lot of authors think themselves quite clever when they realize that if they can make a contrived reason to have one character explain something to another in dialogue, and that then they can infodump their world and character background as on the nose as they’d like. An initiate who needs things explained to them, an ignorant out of towner, etc. And cool, this does have mileage… just not infinitely so. It actually goes quite short these days, what can I say, gas prices are high? A brief racist or religious epitaph from one character to another is awesome, a few sentences of back and fourth on how the new king is ruining the local economy and that this port used to be more lively is great, but it’s shine fades quickly. Readers expect progression, or at least, a character fighting tooth and nail to make that happen. If this isn’t immediately and visually happening ‘on screen’, readers lose interest fast. So, just be sparing in doing this. Just because you’ve made a context for one character to explain your world to another, does not buy you multiple pages of time to now vomit out a thinly guised info dump.
”What was that?”, “Believe me, you don’t want to know.” – Occasionally, hanging a lantern on an unknown is awesome. It keeps readers suspecting more is coming down the pipe, that you’ve thought things out. Too much though, and readers get disinterested. Reading a book that refuses to tell you things all the time until the very end can be pretty taxing. A character who never gives straight answers and becomes more of a roadblock than a wheel on the progress of the reader’s comprehension of the story is in danger of derailing the entire project all together.
This is a subsect of a flavor of ‘info dump’ and ‘world building’, but it’s an important enough specific topic to require some attention. Often times on the first page of a book, certainly in the first chapter, readers need to know why they care about a character, they need to know them. There’s some more graceful ways and less graceful ones. ‘Saving a cat’ is the industry common example (probably worth reading Save The Cat if you don’t get the reference). Regardless, there comes a time when an author wants to shove in a few brief lines about a character’s background. This can be done fine. It can be the quick start kindling on a fire for the rest of the story to come… but just be careful. Outside of the rare usage of this, of doing so briefly and only when absolutely needed, you will start getting a ton of feedback on ‘showing not telling’. Inversely though, if our character is a thief in disguise, and a merchant is trying to sell them a ‘super secure’ new lock, having a character infuse their own background into their internalization when they think about how pickable that lock actually is – that’s great, that’s contextually relevant.
She was one of those chosen, a long lineage with those same fire red eyes, that same strength. – You can see very easily the dangers you run here. Some things simply will not be conveyed to a reader unless you tell them. Your main character’s grandfather’s best friend’s dog’s appetite for human flesh? Yeah, you’ll probably need to massage that one in rather directly (it better be relevant!). It’s almost hard for me to think of an example here as it’s almost always possible to ‘show don’t tell’ this stuff instead. But, not always. And hell, sometimes a brief one or two sentences instead of 50 pages at dropping hints at something can just be a better experience for the reader.
Authors beware, do at your own peril! Long story short, you get one, maybe two of these in an entire book (if even). And they can be done quite well! Caitlyn Stark arriving in King’s Landing for example. Or, in frankly most modern books with a modern story structure, the main character arriving at their new place, whether its Hogwarts, Going To An Arena To Fight For Your Life, Leaving The Shire, or just viewing your own place in a new light now that you’re a meth distributor instead of a teacher in the seedy underworld of the city you’d once taken for granted. These big moments can be reason for a good few paragraphs of info dump, but that’s really all you get. AND – that info dump better be strongly grounded in your character’s perspective, whatever that may be.
I’m just highlighting this here because it is the one ingredient/’thing’ that I’ve found that truly has no place in a good story. Readers bounce off of this so fast. If it’s not clear what your character is working towards, both in a given specific scene and as a broad goal through the story, readers lose interest near immediately. Fifty pages of amazing content can be completely ruined by one or two pages of ‘feeling lost’. Whatever you do, this would be the only true pitfall I would tell you to truly avoid all together!
In conclusion. I won’t tell you what to do. No proper author offering advice should. But what I can tell you is how readers have reacted to the ingredients that I put in my works, and how I have reacted to other’s who I’m critiquing. In short, I can’t tell you how to bake a cake, but I sure as hell feel confident enough to say that 3 cups of salt is way too damned much.
Enjoy!