I'm going to add my voice to the people who are questioning whether you really need the explanation and the people who appreciate figuring things out alongside the characters.
I agree with all the reasons given for not including an infodump so far, but I do also want to give another. If you do end up including the information scene, there's a good chance it won't be just artificial, but forced. Force something and there's one of two things going on: whatever you've forced into the story really doesn't belong in it or some part of the story is majorly flawed and needs some severe revisions. It's usually the former, in my experience.
If some of the information is really, really necessary, look into dispersing it rather than writing one long infodump for readers to slog through. Exposition can be done well, but nine times out of ten all it accomplishes is bogging your story down. By dispersing the information into much smaller chunks the story keeps moving, readers get a chance to figure it out on their own and you reduce the chance of said readers skimming or skipping parts of your novel significantly.
Chances are, you've already been doing the information-dispersing. All those scenes you describe here, they all have pieces of the puzzle that makes up your world. If you really, desperately need some information/explaining done, would having Fox think on all she's seen and showing her figuring it out on her own be an option? (With the added bonus that, written right, you'll reaffirm the reader's belief that Fox is a smart woman, capable of thinking on her own. Unless of course she isn't then that idea is useless, but hopefully you see what I mean. ^-^)
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Date: 2009-11-24 10:30 pm (UTC)I agree with all the reasons given for not including an infodump so far, but I do also want to give another. If you do end up including the information scene, there's a good chance it won't be just artificial, but forced. Force something and there's one of two things going on: whatever you've forced into the story really doesn't belong in it or some part of the story is majorly flawed and needs some severe revisions. It's usually the former, in my experience.
If some of the information is really, really necessary, look into dispersing it rather than writing one long infodump for readers to slog through. Exposition can be done well, but nine times out of ten all it accomplishes is bogging your story down. By dispersing the information into much smaller chunks the story keeps moving, readers get a chance to figure it out on their own and you reduce the chance of said readers skimming or skipping parts of your novel significantly.
Chances are, you've already been doing the information-dispersing. All those scenes you describe here, they all have pieces of the puzzle that makes up your world. If you really, desperately need some information/explaining done, would having Fox think on all she's seen and showing her figuring it out on her own be an option? (With the added bonus that, written right, you'll reaffirm the reader's belief that Fox is a smart woman, capable of thinking on her own. Unless of course she isn't then that idea is useless, but hopefully you see what I mean. ^-^)