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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40235
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It is generally not very effective to try an introduce big chunks of exposition, especially near the beginning of a story as it tends to be fairly dry information and gives the reader little incentive to continue reading. The first few chapters are what sets the tone of story and you generally want to start with something which is going to make peopel keep reading and intriguing unanswered questions are much better in this respect than a dense block of information.

As a writer you should be aiming to give the world you create colour and texture and often the best way to do this is from the perspective of interesting characters.

Bear in mind also that if you have an original and complex universe you could write a pretty long book and only scratch the surface. Consider a novel set in the real world, how much actual information about the world do you think it might contain ? Probably not that much.

Equally thorough and detailed world building is good but you don't necessarily need to put it all on paper directly. It can be useful in informing the story without having to be spelled out in detail.

Think about what is relevant to and driving the story and what is relevant and interesting to the characters. It is often better to assume that readers are as familiar with your world as they are the real world.

You also want to be wary of creating needless analogues of familiar things just for the sake of being 'original'. I personally don't want to read half a page of description of f'khargi space brew which turns out to be for all practical purposes tea and is then never mentioned again.

I think a useful test on whether something is an infodump is to put yourself in the position of a character and think about how you would explain something in _spoken conversation_.

Original score: 1