How can i avoid info- dumps? : That is the question. Writing dialogue isn't easy. It sometimes gets really difficult to avoid the 'information dumping' beast, especially when you feel you need to get to the point quickly and quit dragging yourself through the exposition. How does one do that? Avoid blatant info-dumps which most sci-fi movies find themselves soaked in. {{"Look up there," she said, and pointed to the sky. He saw a double halo, one above the other, of what looked like boiling air. "That's where the microwave beam passes through the canopies. Although the microbeam is nearly one terawatt in strength and the electricity it generates powers all the agriculture and cities from Terre Haute to Indianapolis, we can't see it. Isn't that fascinating?" }} — Counting Heads by David Marusek.
Screenwriting : To speak, or not to speak? by Hilary Moyo
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How to avoid info-dumps? Rewrite obsessively.
Try to use demonstration instead, or do things in steps instead of all at once.
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Hi Hillary, I'm sure you know the saying "if you can show it don't say it". But sometimes, as it seem to be in your case, you have to explain something. The best thing to do in these cases is to have something interesting happening while one of the characters tries to explain to another the information you need to audience to know. For example, as your main character's ship is about to be capture by the enemy, and he is dangerously maneuvering through an asteroids field, he explains to his pilot about the microbeam and how they can use it to scape their enemies. Any George Lucas movie will be a good case study; I love how he does it in the Indiana Jones movies. Also, unless the microbeam is important to the progression of your action, you don't need to explain it. Best luck to you. Ridel
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My one guiding rule for dialog is simply to always leave my characters to have the conversations they need or want to have, without regard to what I need to share with the viewer. They will reveal what they reveal, and the rest is up to me. Forcing them to spit out facts and plot points I need to get out never rings true.
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Look at Star Wars: we are not told how the droids work, Luke's land speeder, why the Jawa's hunt and then sell droids, how Uncle Owen makes a living with a moisture farm, etc. The characters just act with their own motivation and that drives the story. We as kids debated if Darth Vader was a person or a droid, which is to say that George Lucas gave us room to think. He gave us 2 + 3, not 5. Yes, Obi-wan told Luke (and therefore us), what the Force is, otherwise we could not understand, but he didn't say how a light saber works, because we don't need to understand that to understand the story.
Unless the dialogue is essential to revealing something about the character, character motivation, or the journey, then the dialogue is not essential. Moreover, if your characters are speaking their feelings then I would use action descriptors, instead of dialogue, to express the concept.
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dumping exposition is made best during a heightened conflict in a scene, between characters or action.
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spread the information over an larger area than one scene. also try conveying the information as part of the story not dialogue and further more maybe realise that the audience doesnt require to know it all. leave a little mystery. it doesnt hurt.
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My two rules are: 1) Have people talk the way they talk. 2) Don't have them instructing someone on the world they both live in. Nobody does that. Those rules aside, there ways to refer to the information you need in a natural way. For example, if I wanted to make people aware of an invisible microwave energy beam in the air I might have a bird fly through it, get fried, and drop on the ground. It would be natural to comment on seeing that happen in front of you.