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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37864
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37864
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Not too lazy. Your work habits really have nothing to do with it. The question is, can you make it interesting?

Providing context is difficult because it is a chicken and egg problem. No one cares about the context until they know what is a stake, and no one can tell what is really at stake until they know what the context is.

Ways of handling this go in and out of fashion, and the idea that you can avoid an infodump at the beginning by having two characters fill in the background with dialog later is a popular approach at the moment (though more so with aspiring than published authors). But when it comes down to it, this is still an info dump, and an infodump with dialogue tags is not really an improvement.

The real answer, as you can see in the works of successful authors, is not any form of info dump, but compelling immersive writing. Thus LOTR starts off by immersing us in the Shire. HP starts off in Privet Drive. Cannery Row starts off with a stunning description of Monterey. These are not info dumps. These are vivid immersive portraits of a world, a place, a time, a people.

This stuff is compelling by itself, if it is done well. It does not have to start with a plot. (How far into LOTR do we get before the plot is properly initiated?) At most they require a kind of tension that suggests that the material for a plot lies ahead, that this is the sort of place where something interesting could happen.

That is what you need to do. Not an infodump, in any form or in any place, but an immersion in a compelling situation.

Original score: 38