confident writers Archives - Lisa Hall-Wilson

No one likes reading an info dump, but we writers justify their existence because we’re sure the reader needs all this background information here, right now. Info dumps kill the pace and tension in your story and readers may just put down your book and walk away forever.

What Is An Info Dump?

“An info dump is a very large amount of information, usually backstory, supplied all at once in a narrative.” Backstory is important and vital to any character and story, but the reader doesn’t necessarily need to know all of what you know or have created. As any good introvert knows, people have to earn the trust to be told your entire lifestory, you don’t just verbally vomit on a stranger. It’s rude. *smile*

Concerning Hobbits…

In an omniscient point of view, the kind of worldbuilding Tolkien used in The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit is acceptable. Omniscient point of view though is largely out of favor with modern readers and acquisition editors.

It’s hard to ground the reader in time and place without frontloading a work with all the ways that world is different from our own world/reality/time/place. Whether you’re writing Steampunk, Space Opera, Edwardian romance, spec fic, etc etc — the key is to avoid large deposits of information and let the world unfold for the reader as the character sees it. If everyone in your story world is green with large antennae, construct an organic scenario that would cause your character to notice it — because we don’t often think/comment on things that seem every day or ordinary.

An Info Dump: Cassandra kept her claws rounded and painted which showed her pride in her appearance. The green-skinned passersby didn’t give her any notice. They kept their long antennae gleaming and straight. Her people were fastidious and prided themselves on their appearances. Not being noticed was a good thing.

Organic Worldbuilding: Cassandra examined the filed ends of her claws. Perfect. Her antennae twitched and she turned to find Steve behind her.
His left antennae was bent and hung limp. Sickly splotches of purple marred his green skin. Everyone gave him a wide berth, covering their gills as they passed by. Would she be contaminated by association? She took a step back. “What happened to you? Are you contagious?”

Add Backstory In Phrases

Jami Gold has a great technique (and I’m sure she doesn’t use it exclusively) of adding backstory through phrases. Not paragraphs, not even whole sentences, but in phrases. Check out this excerpt from Jami Gold’s novel Stone-Cold Heart about the first time we meet the hero, a gargoyle named Garrett. (read Jami’s post on info dumps on page 1 here.)

Warmth crept through Garrett’s chest and spread into his limbs. Tingles followed, racing along his nerves, stirring sensations in his body.

For the first time in countless years, he awoke from stone-death. The human female curled between his limbs explained why. She must have focused enough trust toward him to help him regain full consciousness.

About blasted time. Although these circumstances weren’t the situation he wanted to encounter when he awoke. Of all the things he’d seen during his stone-death, he hadn’t seen the one thing he’d expected. None of his regiment had brought a human female he could use to awaken—or had even come by to check on him.

All those years in his vulnerable form, where his prison of stone could have shattered—ending his life. Years without word, without reports from the field, without conversations with his regiment. Years left alone. Abandoned.

Jami has bolded all the phrases that give backstory bits. Readers are drawn into this story world through the eyes of a gargoyle and what he’s concerned with RIGHT NOW. We know he’s just waking up after countless years asleep, that he needs a female to wake him up, he’s been forgotten, and that things aren’t right in his world. That’s all we really need at this point to cheer for Garrett.

An info dump would have seen Garrett reflecting on his past years as a gargoyle before he was turned into stone, perhaps the history of why he’d been abandoned by his gargoyle friends, blah blah blah. These would all be things he already knows but wouldn’t think about without a reason to bring up all that history. Instead, keep the reader rooted in the right now and what would organically come to the character’s mind.

Backstory should answer one question for the reader and leave them with two more.

Backstory And Deep Point Of View

If you’re writing your entire novel in deep point of view (as opposed to just using this technique for emphasis in key scenes), backstory and worldview info dumps whether through narrative, internal dialogue or spoken dialogue are easily avoided by asking yourself these questions:

What is the character worried about/interested in/working towards RIGHT NOW?
What information does the reader NEED to know RIGHT NOW in order for the story to make sense. How can I answer their most pressing question but leave them asking even more questions?
Which bits of backstory are so compelling that readers will be cheering for my character? (Look at Jami’s excerpt – Garrett’s been forgotten, a soldier left behind-vulnerable, and now someone’s woken him up. I’m already cheering for him.)
Why do I think the reader needs this information now? Is it just to prove I’ve thought of it? (You, as the writer, need to keep yourself out of the story.)

Remember, in deep point of view, the reader is restricted to only what the point of view character (POVC) knows, sees, hears, feels, touches, etc. But it’s also a very intimate and immediate style of writing, so just as we often reflect on the past, the memories are triggered by something in the here and now — a smell, a sound.

Answer The Why

With any bit of backstory or worldbuilding info you include, ask yourself why you’re putting that there, in that scene, right now. Is there an organic reason for the character to think of it? Otherwise it turns into what I call I-have-a-puppy syndrome. I’ve been a teacher in a variety of formal capacities, and it never fails that in a group of young children someone feels left out and interrupts the conversation by bouncing up and down, their hand shooting up in the air, to say, “I have a puppy!”

That’s what it feels like to the reader to be jerked out of the character’s head and sent on a bunny trail that neither feels organic to the moment or the character.

So, ask why you want to include that information in that place of the story. Ask why your readers need that information. Often, the reader needs only a fraction of what we think they need, but be sure and offer context for the character and the setting. Giving the reader too little information is as bad as too much.

Finally, ask whether the character really would be thinking or talking about that bit of backstory or worldbuilding. Because we rarely explain things to ourselves that we already know.

There’s Bob with Cindy, his third girlfriend this year.

There’s Bob. Is it Cindy? No, that was the second one. Mindy? I don’t remember.

Do you struggle to identify info dumps in your work? What’s your achilles heel – what kind of info dumps are you most prone to committing without realizing it?

Make sure you check out my book Method Acting for Writers: Learn Deep Point Of View Using Emotional Layering.

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Artists of all stripes seem riddled with self-doubt. Part of that is because we so closely identify with our work that a rejection of our work is felt as a personal rejection. Learning to be a confident writer, not even all of the time but at least some of the time, requires a shift in how we think of ourselves and our work.

Your Confidence Doesn’t Have To Correlate With “Success”

Being confident in your ability to write doesn’t have to directly correlate to financial success. Confidence is easier when our skills are recognized by awards or achievements, but they don’t have to be. Define for yourself what financial success looks like. Do you need to make seven figures off your writing to find confidence?

Here’s the honest truth. When your personal confidence about your writing, your art, is defined by an outside circumstance or situation you have no control over — you’re fighting a losing battle. You can’t control if people will buy your book. You can write the best book possible, learn marketing, and do everything right. Does that feed your confidence or do you need to make it onto a bestseller list to be confident? Really think that through.

Our Work Is A Reflection Of The Artist But Our Work Doesn’t Define Us

Whether you’re writing, performing, painting, dancing, acting — we must bring so much of ourselves to the art that it can feel as though we are one with our art. We become our characters, we see things as they do and feel as they do — there’s no other way to be authentic. But when we step away from the laptop, we have to separate our self-worth from how others perceive the work we’ve created.

I grew up in a rural township with a small soccer league. At a certain age, I couldn’t play with the boys or afford to travel to a city to play in a girl’s league, so I became a referee. I refereed small children, teenagers, house league, competitive, and even men’s league games. I got yelled at a lot because it seems yelling at the ref is just what you do.

You can’t cry. You can’t stop the game and insist they apologize because their remark was unkind, unfair, or point out they don’t know the rules. And the next day when you run into that player or the parents at the post office, everyone would nod and smile and “how’s school” or “how’s work” and it was like the game never happened. It wasn’t personal.

Are you able to receive criticism about your work (whether it’s kind or unkind) without spiraling into a bucket of ice cream? Will it sting? Of course. The comment might linger, if there’s truth to it consider it, but you have to learn to shake it off and get back to writing.

Give yourself permission to produce something that stinks every once in a while. I had an editor send back a piece I’d written as not good enough. He shrugged it off. “Not everything can be top drawer. You wouldn’t be human if it was.” I reworked it and he loved it and published it. Stay humble.

Keep Learning

Part of what I love about writing is that I’ve never learned it all. There is always more to learn. Even with my deep point of view course, each time I run it I often include new info I’ve learned because I’m always striving to be better. Do I cringe when I read my early work? Yeah, sometimes. But it’s part of learning. Don’t ever become so arrogant that you stop reading craft books or blogs, or interviews with other authors. Read – everything. We’re all learning from one another and helping one another to get where we want to be. Be teachable. Having the confidence of knowing that if something isn’t working but you can figure it out is art-changing (instead of life-changing – get it bahahaha. K – so it wasn’t that funny.)

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

This requires a bit of humility because you often can’t learn what your weaknesses or strengths are without soliciting feedback. And sometimes that feedback can sting. But instead of letting it crush you, learn from it. My personal weakness is description. I write very sparse. My beta readers are constantly telling me they can’t picture a setting or a character. That’s something I have to actively work on getting better at. Every writer is weak at something. Know what it is and work on it. Your weakness may shift or change the longer you write and the more you study to fix another weakness. This isn’t a one and done kind of career — it’s a learning arc with pain points along the way you have to work through.

Take Care Of Your Health

Confidence is directly tied to your personal health. If you are always working in the fringe hours of the day, chances are good that you’re tired. Take time to rest and refresh. Fiction is an imitation of real life, so make sure you go out and experience some life so you can write about it. Get out of the writing cave often and live. Be mindful of your back and neck, your elbows and wrists. It’s really hard to write well if you’re in pain and I have so much respect for those who write through injury or long-term illness.

Routine And Creativity

Your mileage with this advice may vary, but learn when your best creative hours are. Are you more alert and creative in the morning or evening? Guard your creative hours. Guard your creative mind space. Maybe that means you have to write in a coffee shop to get some peace from your kids, or you put a lock on your office door for a couple of hours a day. Maybe you turn off your phone or wifi and remove the temptation to surf the internet when you should be writing.

How does this play into confidence? I’ve found that when I do this (the steps above) I can get into my creative zone faster and maintain it longer. There’s no lost time staring at a screen. Also, my confidence rises because I know I get into that head space when I need to. There’s no writer’s block, there’s simply writing time. Experts say you only have about six hours of creative time in a day. Guard how you use those six hours.

Doubt Will Creep In

Even the most confident writers have seasons when doubt creeps in. That makes you human, don’t beat yourself up over it. Being a confident writer doesn’t mean you’re confident ALL THE TIME. My problem is that I know if I just set that manuscript aside for a bit, I’d know so much more than I do now. I hate closing the final page on a book because I’m never convinced it’s my best work. Is that perfectionism? Maybe. Whatever aspect of doubt that creeps in for you, push through it. Keep writing even if you’re convinced the work is terrible. First drafts are allowed to be terrible. No one publishes their first draft (or at least, they probably shouldn’t).

Your turn. How do you push the doubts and fears aside and keep writing anyway?

Want to learn more about deep point of view? Heard about it and don’t know what it’s really about? Been told readers struggle to connect with your characters emotionally? Know about deep point of view, but stumped trying to find intermediate-level resources? Registration is now open for Method Acting For Writers: Learn To Write In Deep Point Of View. Class begins May 7 and the cost is $165CDN (approx $130USD).