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Does this experience sound familiar?

You start reading a book that immediately pulls you in. The protagonist is compelling, the plot is intriguing, and the setting is immersive and vibrant. But then, as you’re reading, you come across a passage that just totally disrupts the entire experience. Now, you’re not even sure if you want to keep reading the story.

As a writer, this is the reading experience you want to avoid creating at all costs. But there's one extremely common mistake that can lead to readers DNFing your book. It's something you probably think that you're successfully avoiding, but you might not actually be.

It's info dumping.

I'm going to walk through the four ways that info dumping is probably creeping into your manuscript without you even realizing it and talk through how to fix it with real info dumping examples. You're going to walk away from this post with an eagle eye for info dumping so you can turn back to your manuscript and get rid of all of those passages that might lead a reader to DNF. And make sure you read all the way through to the end because the last info dumping mechanism is one of the hardest to spot.

What is Info Dumping?

First, let's lay the groundwork. What is info dumping, and why is it so bad? Why is it one of the mistakes that leads me personally to put a book down?

Info dumping, by design, is when you are pausing or halting the action of the scene to provide the reader what you feel is necessary background context or exposition. It becomes a dump when you're diving into this exposition or backstory for a prolonged period of time, typically a paragraph or more. You're doing this because you want to orient the reader in your novel's world, but you end up overwhelming them with information all at once and leading them to disengage with the story.

Here's why info dumping just doesn't work and why you want to avoid info dumping in your writing:

It’s ineffective. First, it doesn't actually allow the reader to latch on to the information that you're trying to give them because they're naturally going to skim over it and not digest what you are trying to tell them. Their eyes may even glaze over it in particularly lengthy passages.
It slows the pace. It also slows down your narrative momentum and gets in the way of your hook.
It can cause the reader to lose interest. Info dumping often happens in the first chapters or scenes of your book because this is when you are trying to catch the reader up to speed on all the rules and regulations of your world. But this is also the most dangerous time to info dump because the reader's engagement is fickle, and at any point, they could put your book down. So, if a big info dump happens early on in the story, you might lose that reader.
It’s weak writing. Finally, info dumping can strike the reader as just, frankly, weak writing, and it could erode their trust in you as the storyteller.

Now, I am not saying you should never provide exposition or backstory. In fact, these are two critical elements to every successful story, and you need to provide some amount of exposition and character backstory to help the reader get immersed in your character's circumstances and environment. I'm not trying to scare you away from providing exposition, but I want you to provide exposition without info dumping. That is the key difference here.

So now let's go through the four key ways that info dumping creeps into your story without you even realizing it.

Prologues or Prefaces

First is in prologues or prefaces. This mechanism of info dumping is especially prevalent in sci-fi or fantasy novels, where you want to lay the groundwork for the history surrounding your novel's world and get the reader caught up on all of it before the plot even begins. Often, this prologue or preface passage will not be attached to your main POV character but come from a more omniscient tone.

Let's look at an example:

In the year 2101, a series of eruptions across every active volcano on Earth led to near-complete destruction of the global food supply and, over the course of three weeks, 90% of all life had perished. This is what came to be known as the Great Collapse.
The surviving humans congregated in what was formerly known as Australia, the landmass least destroyed by the eruptions. After fighting among citizens led to rampant violence and hostility, a governing body led by a former robotics professor named Jacob Marshall emerged. Marshall instituted mandatory curfews and food rationing and tasked a team of scientists to create surveillance drones to ensure law and order.

Do you see how this is operating as an info dump, just giving us a ton of information about how this world came to be and the situation that the characters are presently in? It would be so much more effective for us to learn about this world's history and these specific details as we see the characters take action.

Beginning the story with a passage like this just, frankly, isn't that engaging because we have no specific character to latch on to, and we have no sense of what the main conflict of the novel is actually going to be. So, I instead recommend getting us right into the heart of the story and weaving in these pieces of information as they become relevant. I'm not saying here that prologues are always off-limits; there are valid reasons for including prologues, but info dumping is not one of them.

Lengthy Expository Passages

Here's the next way info dumping creeps into your story: via lengthy expository passages. Look out in your manuscript for paragraphs or sections of text that don't actually materially progress the plot forward but are really just standing to provide background information. These types of passages are especially common in your opening scenes because, again, you're trying to lay the groundwork for the reader. But remember that you don't need to tell us everything about this world all at once and all up front in the story. It's okay for readers to learn things as we go and as the story's action progresses.

A trick I like to use is looking for passages that can stand alone, meaning that a reader could interpret them completely separate from the book and the story you're trying to tell. If they can understand the passage without the context of the scene that it is situated within, then that's a sign you're probably info dumping here.

Like I mentioned with the prologue or preface issue, often these passages will adopt a more omniscient tone, detached from the POV character that you have established. Basically, what you're doing here is halting the flow and action of the scene to then provide a bunch of background details before restarting the action again, which disrupts the reader's experience and severs our connection from our POV character.

So let's look at an example:

Amy finished her journal entry, placed the notebook on her nightstand, and checked the time. It was nearly midnight, which meant she only had fifteen minutes to claim her rations before the Depot closed.
The Depot was established five years ago, and it was where citizens lined up to receive their daily rations of food. It wasn’t the most sanitary establishment — rats and cockroaches outnumbered the humans. Depending on a citizen’s ranking in the city, they might receive bread and canned corn or fresh fruits and vegetables.

So here, we see the scene of Amy putting away her notebook and then realizing she needs to go to the depot, and then there's a huge pause where we get this passage describing what the depot is. Again, we are severing the connection from Amy's POV, and we adopt a more omniscient tone to receive this information.

Instead, that exposition should be filtered through Amy's particular experience and blended into the scene action more organically.

So let's look at how this could be revised:

Amy finished her journal entry, placed the notebook on her nightstand, and checked the time. It was nearly midnight, which meant she only had fifteen minutes to claim her rations before the Depot closed.
She sighed. The Depot was Amy’s least favorite place in the entire city. Jast last week, as she had accepted her meager portions of bread and canned corn, a rat had scurried across her feet. The attendant hadn’t batted an eye and had shoved her on her way, only to offer the man behind her a bountiful selection of fresh vegetables and fruit.

Do you see how we're getting the exact same information in this passage, but it feels so much more organic to the story and keeps us engaged? We learn about the infestation of rats, about the different rations based on a person's ranking in the city, and we learn what those rations are. But instead of an omniscient narrator just giving us all of that information, we're learning about it through this brief memory that Amy recalls. You're still pausing the scene action briefly to give us this information, but because we're still attached to Amy, it feels so much more warranted, and it flows much more naturally.

Unnatural Dialogue

Okay, this next one is probably my least favorite instance of info dumping. It happens via unnatural dialogue. You might think it's impossible to info dump via dialogue, but this is actually one of the most common places that you will find info dumping in your story, and these can be some of the most distracting and pesky instances of info dumps. This happens when characters engage in unrealistic or stilted conversations that are relaying information for the reader's benefit rather than something they would be talking about of their own accord. They're bringing up things that they both already know, but because the reader doesn't know them, we are seeing them talk about it aloud, which just ends up feeling totally unrealistic.

Let's look at an example:

“Do you remember learning in school about the Great Collapse of 2101, when the government instituted mandatory curfews and surveillance drones?” Jeremy asked.
“Yeah — my grandparents lost everything they had,” Amy shook her head. “With the food rationing and blackouts we have now, it’s hard to imagine what life was like back then.”

Does this dialogue strike you as natural? It feels a bit unbelievable, right? Because obviously, Jeremy and Amy already understand the circumstances of their world and the history that has informed their present situation, so rehashing it in this way just feels totally inorganic. And the reader immediately understands that the writer put this here for our own benefit.

There are ways to effectively relay expository information via dialogue, but you want to do so while maintaining the integrity of those conversations and ensuring that they sound realistic.

Consider reading your dialogue aloud to make sure that it sounds natural to how these characters and real people would speak. And make sure your dialogue is serving a purpose other than providing the reader this information; it should either be developing the character's relationships or advancing the plot in some way.

Here's an example of how we might revise the previous passage:

“I found an old photo of the city before the Collapse. It’s unrecognizable,” Jeremy said.
“Shh! Are you crazy? The drones could be picking this conversation up,” Amy whispered. The few photos she’d seen of the city pre-Collapse had only been in textbooks, and none included people.
Jeremy looked over his shoulder and handed it to her. A healthy, middle-aged man stood proudly in front of a large barn. The sky was blue and completely clear, not speckled with drones. Amy recognized something familiar in his eyes.
The lights flickered. Another blackout. “I need to get back before curfew to pick up our rations. And I'm not getting caught with this contraband,” she said, putting the photo down.

Do you see how we get a lot of the same information about the blackouts and the rations from the previous passage, but this is a much more interesting and engaging conversation? There's also a plot development here because we see the discovery of this photo and Amy's recognition of the man, which will presumably come back into the story in some way. Overall, this dialogue sounds much more true to how these two characters would interact.

Forced Character Reflections

The final way info dumping creeps into your manuscript is via forced character reflections. Showing moments of narrative reflection is critical to helping the reader understand what your characters are thinking and feeling. This is what's known as their interiority, and it is critical to successful, effective fiction. But sometimes writers will use characters' reflections as a means of info dumping, which again feels disruptive to the flow of the story and stands out as unnatural.

Similar to the previous point about info dumping via dialogue, make sure that your character's reflections are true to what they would actually be thinking about in that moment and that the information is not just being conveyed for the reader's benefit. It should advance our understanding of that character or advance the plot in some way.

Here’s an example:

As Amy walked among the ruins that once were the grand Sydney Opera House, she couldn’t help but think about how everything had changed since the Collapse. She imagined the grand skyscrapers and impressive theaters that once attracted people from all over the world. Now, the new regime ruled with an iron fist, enforcing strict curfews and rations that barely provided enough to survive. Not to mention the drones constantly surveilling them from above, ready to issue a ticket — or worse — if they stepped out of line.

During the scene of Amy walking through the ruins, we are hit with these reflections that she's having about her broader society, which don't necessarily feel that natural. The text itself reads almost more like a history book than a person's internal train of thought.

Instead, we want to make sure that those reflections are actually pertinent to what that character is thinking about and feeling in that given moment and that their reflections relate to the scene action that we're seeing.

Let's look at a revised passage:

As Amy walked among the ruins that once were the grand Sydney Opera House, she heard the familiar hum of a drone directly overhead. Why do they always follow me? She’d never been issued a ticket, like most of her friends had in their teenage years, yet she could never go on a walk without one accompanying her.

Do you see how Amy's reflections in this revised passage are much more tied to the exact moment that she is experiencing in the scene? We're still given the same information about drones issuing tickets, but it comes much more naturally through what Amy would be thinking about in that moment rather than adopting a textbook-like or academic tone to give us a broad-scope view of the world's history.

So, those are the four key ways info dumping probably creeps into your story without you even realizing it: in prologues or prefaces, via lengthy expository passages, in unnatural dialogue, and via forced character reflections. Now you have all the tools you need to go back through your manuscript and catch those pesky info-dumps. Thank you so much for reading, and happy writing!