Info dump

An info dump is a passage that stops the story to deliver background — history, mechanics, lore or biography — in a block, before the reader has any reason to want it.

The Fantasy Fiction Formula names the underlying impulse exactly: the worst mistake inexperienced fantasy writers make is the desire to teach readers about their world, their magic system and their imagination. Story first. The information is not the problem — the timing is.

An info dump has a recognisable shape. The scene pauses, a narrator who was not previously present begins explaining, and when the explanation ends the scene resumes exactly where it stood. Nothing was decided in between. The same material becomes invisible when it is motivated exposition: given at a moment when a character needs it, resents it, or is getting it wrong.

Character description dumps the same way. A paragraph cataloguing height, hair, eyes and wardrobe at the moment of introduction halts the narrative and is not remembered anyway. Two or three unusual details, spread across the scene and chosen by what the viewpoint character would actually notice, survive far better.

The revision instinct that helps most is trusting the reader. Give them every fact they need and let them join it up themselves — an audience that has done the arithmetic feels clever, and an audience that has been handed the answer feels lectured.