A Conversation With My Muse - 4. Chapter 4: Information Dumps

Staring at his sudden visitor, Sunny couldn’t help but wonder why the confused looking muse was sitting before him. One moment, he was sitting alone, watching MIB and the next, he was staring at a blue eyed male before him. Brushing some hair back out of his face, Sunny settled back onto his pillows, legs crossing as he waited to be told why he had decided to pop up and bug him when he had no monitor to type up his already large pile of writing.

“So, what are you doing here, Jean?”

Okay, so he couldn’t wait for the other to tell him the reason for his visit. It was too early in the morning to deal with this shit and his movie was waiting for him.

“What the fuck is an information dump?” Jean asked, brows furrowing together. Sunny blinked at the sudden question and turned his movie off having a feeling this was going to be interesting.

“Why do you want to know?” the writer asked, turning the channel to a movie to listen to as he answered the others question.

“Well, while you were working on that epic one shot, along with Braders story, you kept thinking ‘no dumping information, that would be bad’,” the slim were replied, moving from bed to desk chair, sitting back in it.

“Well, an information dump is pretty much an overload of details in one or two paragraphs,” Sunny said, turning back to his television.

“Huh?” was the oh so articulate response, causing Sunny to sigh and shake his head.

“Okay, how to explain this…” he trailed off, rubbing at his eyes under his glasses.

“Starting from the beginning would be nice,” Jean said, propping his feet on the bed as Sunny flipped the channels again.

“Alright. Well, when writing a story you want to spread out your plot,” Sunny started, shifting and looking to his muse. Jean nodded and looked at the other, fascinated with the way Sunny looked while talking. “So you have your plot, now the details make up the story. But you don’t want chunks of details to happen.”

“What do you mean by chunk?” Jean asked as Sunny grabbed his water and sipped at it.

“I mean where you take something that can be described over three or four pages and shove it into a couple of paragraphs,” was the reply, putting his cup down and raising an eyebrow at the other. “Such as action scenes, which should be, at minimum, a chapter long, or the description of a character.”

“I’ve seen you describe a character in a few paragraphs though,” Jean cut in, pointing a finger at his creator.

“Six or seven, yes, one or two, no,” Sunny retorted, shaking his head again. “It depends on your writing style really. Now, back on subject,” he continued, leveling a glare at his muse. Jean just smiled sweetly at Sunny and nodded his head. “As I was saying, when you condense something you end up with an information dump. Summaries can be considered them if you’re not really careful,” he explained, pausing to let the information sink into Jeans mind.

“Got an example?” the muse asked after a few moments.

“Yeah, let’s see,” Sunny mused, running a finger over his bottom lip as he though. “Okay, an information dump can look our sound something like this. [i]Hi, my name is Alfric Mantic, I’m 18, date a guy with a huge dick and am quite the bottom boy. I go to this school, work at this place and do this in my spare time. I have brown eyes, brunette hair, pale skin and I’m 186 pounds. Oh and I have a tattoo on my back.[/i]”

Jean blinked and tilted his head to the side as his brain stuttered, trying to keep all of the information straight. Sunny snickered softly as he nodded.

“Okay, information dump bad,” Jean whimpered, shaking his head.

“Very. Too much information at once can confuse people, make it hard to keep it straight in the first place,” Sunny explained, waving a hand before flipping the channel again. “It also shortens the story and time to build up to your climax, which is another subject all together.”

“So, to get this straight, information dumps are when the writer shoves as much detail into a small space as possible,” Jean said slowly.

“Yep. Well, as much detail as they can without adding supporting details,” Sunny expanded, grabbing his binder and pen, finding a fresh sheet of paper.

“Alright. Now, as for why they are bad, it’s because they can confuse the reader by…” Jean started, eyeing the other as he jotted something down.

“Giving the reader too much information at once with out any chance to absorb it,” the man replied.

“I see,” Jean hummed, pulling one leg up and blinking. “I can see why they are bad then.”

“Did I answer your question then?” Sunny asked, tilting his head once more.

“Yeah, you did. Thanks,” Jean chirped before disappearing. Sunny huffed and rolled his eyes, going back to his new story.