I still consider myself an amateur writer to some degree. Yes, I’ve been published a few times and have completed some novels. But right now I’m not on the verge of making the New York Times Bestseller List or anything. I’m small potatoes. Small potatoes who is seriously wanting to be a bigger potato, but knows that the bag of potatoes is very large indeed…and how do I know *I’ll* ever be the next big potato?

Enough starch metaphors and onto the point of this post.

Over the years, I’ve learned some important lessons about writing and getting to that next level. Sometimes the advice is killer and right on the nose, other times, I’m not so sure…Especially when I read a book that is by some big name or medium name author, and they seem to get away with breaking certain ‘rules.’

However, info dumping is one that I really cannot stand.

What is an ‘info dump’ you say?

Info dump is when you pick up a book, read that first chapter, and you learn all about a character’s history in long paragraphs of description. You get nothing of the current situation or anything about the true plot of the book.  Many times authors will tack on prologues that are really info dump in disguise. Either they don’t trust you will figure out how great their character is without this dump or they don’t have the writing chops to let you know who their character is through other methods…action and dialogue.

Refraining from the info dump is really hard. I still do it in my first drafts, but I try my best to get rid of it in the editing process. Sometimes you just have to get that background out of your head so that you can move your character forward in the scene. Most of the time, you really don’t need that background info to make your story work or your character more interesting.

So, I have my own unwritten rule…when writing a longer novel, no back story allowed for anyone in the first three chapters. It really helps me to work on the actual story rather than worry about those details at the very beginning. It can be hard to not tell *something* about your characters’ backgrounds. But it’s easy to excise, if you can’t help it in the first draft.

Do you have any tried and true writing rules that you stick to?  What do you think of the info dump?

Kris