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Q&A Is it a bad habit to reveal most of the information still at the beginning of the story?

The main problem with "revealing too much" is info-dumps. Boring the reader early on. If you can reveal a lot without boring the reader, that's great! The opposite of what you do - dribbling bits ...

posted 7y ago by SF.‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:12:33Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27064
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar SF.‭ · 2019-12-08T06:12:33Z (over 4 years ago)
The main problem with "revealing too much" is info-dumps. Boring the reader early on. If you can reveal a lot without boring the reader, that's great!

The opposite of what you do - dribbling bits of exposition and making the reader tear down the image they built and rebuild it with the new info repeatedly - is a far worse problem.

If you feel the rest of the story is getting dry, just migrate some pieces into later sections in the editing phase. It's quite easy when you have all the pieces already laid out, to find where something would fit better - say, transformed from "tell" into "show" as we encounter it live in the story, or your [cabbagehead](https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/7537/4291) has the good opportunity to ask his questions. Regardless - if you indeed, _can_ provide all the exposition in the beginning of the book without ever boring the reader, I can only congratulate the talent.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-03-07T13:51:05Z (about 7 years ago)
Original score: 4