Background Info How Sprinkle in your WIP

Background Info How Sprinkle in your WIP - credit

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once upon a time I wrote a post on how to avoid writing discharge information, and while I was discussing the importance of information sprinkling gradually during a MS, I really am not cover how to the extent that the distribution of such information goes.

So here we are.

Revealing the history and / or information in your WIP can be tricky- if you reveal too much at once, it is a dump info, but if you do reveal enough, readers may be left with a lot issues, or the world of your novel can come off as flat and unfinished. The right amount is somewhere in between, and often it takes a little tweaking to get there.

The good news is that there are several methods you can use to sprinkle the information you need to convey without dumping all at once:

• dialogue. This one is pretty easy. Your characters have a conversation, and all background information you are trying to convey arrives. Perhaps a bit of world history, or information about any of the characters (or other character), or anything else. Whatever you choose, just make sure that it seems natural that your character should not start spouting off pages and pages of world history in mid-conversation regardless of relevance. The key here is to use as little as possible to convey what you need.


• Thoughts. Similar to the dialogue, all require your character POV think about background information you want to convey. Of course, this only works if your character POV know background information. But even if he / she does not know, this could be a way to start making your readers questioned said information by having your character POV think.


• Relate to the current scene. If you write in the first person, then it most likely will happen in the thoughts of your character's POV. Third person, however, it can sometimes function as a kind of bound side. For example, when describing a certain building, you can, if necessary, to mention a little more about the history behind the building or area, or some aspect of a building (such as a statue or architectural aesthetics). Again, brevity is your friend here.


• Flashbacks. Flashbacks are often a favorite, but they should be used with caution. While they are absolutely wonderful to show us some of the background information of your character without dumping, flashbacks can sometimes be jarring to the reader. The key here is to choose the right place to put them, and not the too often use. Some flashbacks agree twenty-one in WIP are not recommended.

So these are just a few methods to sprinkle some basic information in MS, but now I want to hear yourself what methods do you know for revealing information background gradually?

Twitter sized bites:

Struggling to reveal background information without info-dumping? Writer @Ava_Jae shares some advice. (Click for tweeter)

Writer @Ava_Jae shares four methods to reveal background information without info-dumping. Did you use these? (Click for tweeter)