CHAPTER 4
Don’t be an information dumper
You have two choices. Write in the “here and now” or dump information. I’ll tell you right now that editors and agents want you to write in the “here and now.”
Unpublished writers often present information dumps, sometimes in the form of backstories, in their manuscripts. How do you recognize one? Generally, in the midst of an information dump, your characters don’t do, they think. They think as they drive a car. As they sit in their office. As they ride an elevator. Nothing of interest happens in real time. If your critique partner tells you your story actually starts on page seven, she’s saying that the first six pages are an information dump, and the live action starts on page seven. Those six pages generally include information you think the reader needs in order to understand your characters, but the way it’s organized makes the reading process a dull experience.
Remember the story about Barbara Stevens in the introduction? Her whole first chapter was an information dump. It opened as the main character sat at her office computer trying to decide if she wanted to answer the email of an ex-girlfriend who had stolen her boyfriend two years before. As we’re locked into her mind through POV, we’re exposed to the whole sordid story that took place then. What is the only live action in that twenty-six page chapter? Well, our character thinks at her computer, walks out to her car, drives home, and enters her apartment. That’s it.
However, a lot of exciting things happened to Barbara’s character two years earlier. Heart-rending, tear-jerking things. But we weren’t shown them. We were only told about them—two years later. At my suggestion, Barbara rewrote that chapter, putting those past events into real time. The result was a snappy start that’s so full of action the reader can’t help but want to read more.
Your own novel will be much more interesting if you show, instead of tell. In fact, editors who do read past your manuscript’s first paragraph stop reading when they’re told too much and don’t see enough action. Unfortunately, many writers who hear the “show-don’t-tell” advice don’t really understand what it means.
When writers tell instead of show, they’re generally making the mistake of writing the story from the author’s POV, and not the characters’.
Let me give you a before-and-after example from my own work years ago. The first version, written in the author’s POV, read like this:
But the site itself had been inhabited for much longer. The previous day she and Mike had jogged along an old path which edged the Knob, and she spotted the stark, vertical rock chimney of a burned-out cabin. It jutted from a weathered rock foundation which was now covered with thick vines and forest debris. The cabin had been built near the Knob’s edge, which plummeted almost two thousand feet to the valley floor. When that one-room cabin was built, its owner had probably cleared trees away to open the valley up for a spectacular view.
Notice that the author is telling about the discovery, just as one tells ghost stories around a family campfire. There is no action. There was action yesterday, but that doesn’t count as action today.
I thought that excerpt was fine writing until an old writing pro pointed out the problem. I read it again, and—by gosh, she was right. What follows is the passage as I rewrote it to put the scene into a character’s POV and show the action, instead of leaving it in the author’s POV and telling about it:
Mike stepped aside and she saw a clearing. Grass, kept at bay in the deep woods they’d passed through, covered an area the size of an average yard.
“This is it?” she asked.
“Yep. The original cabin site. See if you can find it.”
She saw nothing but the trees and grass. Blue sky appeared over a huge, waist-high stone outcropping at her left.
“Why, we’re right at the bluff’s edge,” she said.
“That’s right. Jump off that rock, and you’ll fall almost two thousand feet.”
And then she saw the vertical stone chimney. She’d overlooked it before, since it resembled the surrounding tall trees. She stepped tentatively toward it. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the stone foundation of a long-gone, one-room cabin. Its chimney rose from one corner, its hearth opening toward the center. Slanting rays filtering through the treetops brought the chimney and foundation to life.
She turned to Mike. “Look at that—it’s just like a shrine. Why, I feel like I’ve just stepped out of a time machine.”
The secret is to always write in real time. Use backstory information only as needed, where needed, and in context. Don’t tell what happened in the past, but show it as part of the action now. You’ll find that, although it can be useful research for the writer, most of the backstory information is not needed in the final story.
Bad, better, and best
As you write fiction or edit what you’ve already written, think of the information you present as being at one of three levels: bad, better, or best. Then upgrade that information as best you can.
The “bad” level has information told from the author’s POV, as in the first example above. The revealed events happened in the past. There is no action today. There is little or no dialogue. Here’s another example:
After she ate her sandwich, Mary left the dance without answering Brad’s questions about the Pekinese.
See? No action, no dialogue. The author is telling us about something that happened in the past. A scene or chapter written at this level could have a bored editor flinging a submitted manuscript across the room.
The “better” information level—and it’s not really much better—at least presents thoughts from the POV of a live human being. Here’s an example:
Jane started her Mazda and pulled out into the traffic. That Mary, she thought with disgust. She ate her sandwich and simply left the dance. She should have at least answered Brad’s questions about the Pekinese.
This is hardly polished writing, but at least we have human involvement. Although the information Jane’s thinking is still dead and has no action, we do see Jane. In small, well-placed doses, using such internal dialogue is an acceptable way to pass information. Unfortunately, some authors use this approach for pages and pages, and the only live action we have is the heroine doing the equivalent of driving that car. It’s easy to see why so many manuscripts are rejected.
Okay, we’ve discussed the “bad” and the (not much) “better” ways to present information. Now, let’s look at the “best.”
When you start a new book, there’s certain information you may feel you must reveal. Rather than have the author tell us about it, or have a character think about it, have the heroine confide the information to a sidekick in real time, perhaps like this:
Jane set her margarita on the bar and turned to Amy, who stared at her pocket mirror as she adjusted her hair. “Did you see that?”
Amy looked up. “See what?”
“Mary. She just ate her sandwich and left.”
Amy glanced at the lit ballroom exit, past entwined couples dancing cheek to cheek on the dimly lit dance floor. “Wow. Well, did she answer Brad’s questions about the Pekinese?”
“I don’t think so.”
Jane frowned, and retrieved her drink. She brought it to her lips and tasted the bitter salt, looked around, and paused. Standing by a small table, lit only by its flickering candle, was Brad, staring at the entrance.
“She should have, you know?” Jane sipped again, and set her drink down. “After all, Brad was kind enough to have the Pekinese fixed.”
I’ll admit I got carried away with that last example, but I did so with purpose. Didn’t you feel like you were there, watching this scene play out? Didn’t you catch the action—Amy primping, Jane sipping and tasting, dancers dancing, and perhaps even Brad frowning? Didn’t you get the feeling that all this is happening now, and that you are on hand watching the scene unfold? This give-and-take is important. It keeps readers engaged. If you write in this mode, they’ll continue to read your novel.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT
Okay, now it’s time to identify your deadly tell writing so you can change it to show writing. Ready?
With your word processor’s highlighter, highlight every “author’s POV” passage in your first chapter. If you have difficulty recognizing the problem in your own work, ask a writer friend to read the “Don’t be an information dumper” chapter you’re reading now, then read your writing and identify areas that need work. Be sure to tell her not to critique the work, but to only identify what’s there (the exercise will probably improve her writing, too).
Later we’ll do something about those author-POV passages you identify.