Today was my first day to blog at InkSpot—the blog for Midnight Ink writers.
The topic I wrote on was “Information Dumps”—you know, when you dump a whole bunch of information, usually backstory and character description, on a reader at one time.
Hope you’ll pop over to InkSpot and visit me there.
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4 comments:
It is a great article and great point, Elizabeth! I also find having a character 'change something' gives you an opportunity. In my opening chapter the main female 'had highlighted her mousy hair with copper and gold' to reward herself--giving both personality and physical description. I definitely had a lot more 'telling' than reads well in my first draft though.
Thanks!
Great idea...making a change in your appearance. I've done something like that in my current WIP: had a character grow a mustache that he fancied would make him look like Tom Selleck, but which made him look more like Captain Kangaroo. But I didn't think about the fact that that's what I did to slip in description. Hmm. You've given me some new ideas along those lines. Thanks.
Elizabeth
Great topic to write. I think there needs to be a mystery surrounding main characters and releasing too much info about them all at once deflates the anticipation of unwrapping the shroud hides their personality traits and even dark secrets. I like this information to be revealed at crucial intervals throughout the story. Also helps in weaving twists and turns in the plot
Since I have a number of main supporting characters, some are revealed much more so than others in the first installment of my trilogy, while others will be unwrapped during the second and third books.
Thanks for the post.
- Steve Tremp
http://www.stephentremp.blogspot.com/
Great post Elizabeth on a very important topic! I think sometimes when the reader gets overwhelmed with information for the sake of information (that doesn't move the story forward) they tend to glaze over and may stop reading altogether to skip ahead and miss something that was important.
Great post!
Nancy, from Just a Thought…
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