Information dump

One of the things fellow authors and prospective agents have warned me about is an information dump, that is when I include a lot of background information in one place. A fellow author says I should have no more than three paragraphs of such information at a time.

As I have been working on the final draft of "Death at the Jungle-bunny Journal," information dumps have been a particular focus of mine. In the current issue of Writers Digest magazine, Rachelle Garnder writes, "One of the biggest problems is the 'information dump' in the first few pages, where the author is trying to tell us everything we supposedly need to know to understand the story. Gettiing to know characters in a story is like getting to know people in real life. You find out their personality and details of their life over time."

This is the sort of information I need to know as a writer. In my first novel,"Fighting Chaos," there is a three-page section in what originally was the second chapter that was all information dump. It was interesting detail and well-written. But it was more than a reader would want to see all at once.

In Jungle-bunny, there was less of that. However, it is a good point to be aware of.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.