Kill Your Darlings: The Art of Revision — 8. Information Dumps

Eighth element in this series: Kill Your Darlings: The Art of Revision
(Please read the Introduction, if you haven’t already.)

INFORMATION DUMPS Reader feeder

This typically occurs in dialogue when one character tells another character things that other character already knows, or should know. The author inserts these details to “feed” information (exposition) to the reader. But it makes for unnatural, even unbelievable, dialogue between characters.

For example, Jill says:

“One set of print...