Oh so many questions.

[Solanova]

Ok, so I've been here for a little while, biding my time, reading posts and learning... Now I have some questions of my own!

First off, when writing dialogue for a novel, is it alright to use ellipses and a question mark at the same time? For example:

"Sarah, where is your brother...?"


Secondly, I'm really bad at making info dumps. What can I do to make less info dumps, and let the reader know about the world and customs. Do I just let it sort itself out as I go along? Should I make a prologue (I'd rather not make one for the sake of info). I can't take the dumping!

[DarthPanda]

I also have a problem with info dumps. Maybe it's a panda thing...

Anyway, I'm subscribing to this thread to follow the answers, too.

[Susan Littlefield]

Solanava,

I see nothing wrong with your sentence. It all depends on the effect you want. If it's just a question, it's a question mark only. However, if you want the voice to trail off, then it seems the ellipses would be appropriate.

An info dump is putting something in the story that seem to have no apparent reason to be there. You avoid this by making sure everything in your story belongs. You also show rather than tell. Instead of giving a run down of the MC's failed love life, you can show through her own internal dialogue how she is effected by her failed love life.

[SomethingOrOther]

Instead of info-dumps, you can intersperse the information throughout the scenes, using details as anchoring points.

The Handmaid's Tale (anything by Margaret Atwood, actually) is very good at this.

I walk along the hallway, past the sitting-room door and the door that leads into the dining room, and open the door at the end of the hall and go through into the kitchen. Here the smell is no longer of furniture polish. Rita is in here, standing at the kitchen table, which has a top of chipped white enamel. She’s in her usual Martha’s dress, which is dull green, like a surgeon’s gown of the time before. The dress is much like mine in shape, long and concealing, but with a bib apron over it and without the white wings and the veil. She puts the veil on to go outside, but nobody much cares who sees the face of a Martha.

Note the clauses in blue, which reference the Marthas' customs. A lot of information about the world gradually trickles in like this—it's weaved into the action seamlessly, bits and pieces here and there. And, of course, the action itself is a form of world-building too.

Read THT and study how it's done.

[Miss Plum]

Another book you might want to look at is Never Let Me Go. It might not be the way you want to do things, but it's a great example of the Creeping Horror approach.

[rwm4768]

To me, the sentence would look better without the question mark.

As for info dumps, tell the story the way the POV character would tell it, even if you are using third person (I'm assuming third limited). Would the POV character go on a long lecture about the history of his country? Probably not. Would s/he detail every last custom? No, definitely not. Include the customs when it seems natural. For example, if there's a special greeting custom, that's easy to show when people greet one another.

Oh, and don't make an info dump prologue. Even in fantasy, that type of prologue is frowned upon. Yes, Tolkien got away with it, but he also pretty much invented the fantasy genre.

[dangerousbill]

Originally Posted by Solanova

"Sarah, where is your brother...?"

This is perfectly okay.

As for infodumps, finish your novel first, and take care of the dumps in rewrite, else you'll never get the job done.

[Solanova]

Thanks for the punctuation help!

As for the info dump, I'll just leave it for now, and try to work it into the story later

[quicklime]

the ellipses and question mark look off to me, together like that. Generally at least, they have very different purposes and I'm left trying to "right" this in my head--I CAN think about it, and I CAN see a trailing question, although generally declaratives trail, questions really don't very often that I know of (the ellipsis suggests an unfinished thought or line, a question does not) but there's the problem--I CAN go ahead and sort of "force" it into a box where it no longer looks like an odd typo, but by that time I'm yanked well free of your book. Now I have to re-insert myself.....or go play Angry Birds, watch tv, mow the lawn, etc....the line may not be incorrect, but it isn't very unobtrusive, either.

[Darkwing]

With your first question, I don't think there's anything wrong with ellipses and a question mark, but I personally wouldn't punctuate that sentence that way. Since the phrase is an independent clause (complete sentence), I'd just have the question mark. However, if you wanted to indicate someone's voice trailing off in the middle of a question, I would use something like that. For example:

"Sarah, where is your brother? Have you . . . ?"

This would usually be accompanied by some sort of character action to indicate what sort of subtext is hiding in the part that's left out (is it a disappointment to the character, is it something alarming? etc, etc.).

You're exactly right about info dumps. Readers hate them, so it's a lot better to work all those details you want them to know into a scene. Have people talk about points of history, have people do things that are interesting local customs and then have the narrator gently indicate that this is the way things are done in that part of the world, etc, etc. Ie:

"I haven't seen this many damn tourists since Alyran troops rolled through here," Derek said, leaning on his gondolier's pole. "Where you want to go?"

The woman's close-cut dress glittered in the sunlight, and Derek guessed it was infused with silver dust. It must have been latest fashion on whatever planet these people hailed from--he'd seen countless others stumbling up the pier this morning, their tight dresses tripping them up as the spikes of their heels caught between the boards. This one, though, she'd strolled up calm as could be, like she'd walked those piers all her life. And there was something else different about her, too. She wore her hair in the local fashion, looped into braids next to her ears and with a high bun.

It's a bit clumsy (not enough in-the-now action, I think), but you can see that we get a bit of characterization for Derek, and some for the mysterious lady, and then lots of surrounding details about some of the customs--that there are lots of tourists currently, that this place may be a tourist location that is seeing a burst of activity or may be a place that doesn't normally have a lot of tourists, that there was some sort of historical event that involved troops that may have affected how many tourists came to the place, that these tourists dress funny (or perhaps more elegantly than the locals), that women local to this area wear their hair a certain way. The reader will get all of this information without feeling like they're just being told it by the narrator, since it comes through the filter of a character.

[dangerousbill]

Originally Posted by quicklime

the ellipses and question mark look off to me, together like that.

At least one grammarnazi of my acquaintance has passed on the combination. I now use it all the time. Even my grammar and spelling checker are ok with it.