After several days of editing printed sections, I started on a massive rewrite project to de-sog my novel’s middle.

When you find a scene with dialogued aimed at info dumping, and having little to no action, ask yourself, “How do I integrate this information into the story?” Each scene must have conflict and must move the story along. Info dumping, especially in dialogue, is obvious to any reader and pulls them out of the story.

Instead of dropping a ton of information on your readers through boring monologues or painfully obvious “well as you know” scenes, find ways to include the information in a dynamic conversation. Even if there are not action sequences to spice things up, when your characters interact, each has their own agenda. This will create conflict between the characters in the scene and conflict in the dialogue.

If you are concerned about your audience understanding an important aspect of your world, make sure it’s important enough to mention. Then find a way to fit it into the dialogue. Don’t frame the conversation around it. Your characters are not tour guides or simply active participants in the story. They are the story. Your reader doesn’t need to know the names of all your world’s rivers or detailed listing of the flora and fauna in its forests. Your world exists to add context and create a place for your characters, their struggles, hopes and dreams, fears, and deeds to exist in.

World building should add texture to your story. It is not your story.