: Re: At what point does a POV character noting their surroundings go from showing/telling to an infodump? In a story I'm working on, at one point one of the main characters (also the POV character

@Gonzalez219

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Turn the infodump into an investigation, revealing the owner of the space.

I think one technique is to be NOT just looking. +1 DPT for lengthening to personal connections, so I will talk about seeking insight into the owner of the setting. Give your MC a reason to be paying so much attention, a desire to understand a person.

Note how the fictional Sherlock Holmes always gathers an enormous amount of information and personality from the observation of a crime scene setting. This is usually told in retrospective dialogue, but in fiction, a similar attention to detail, incongruity, what is new and what is old, what is recently used and the layer of dust that implies something is seldom touched, what is grimed by cigarette smoke, what is sentimental and what is utilitarian, may or may not provide insight into the owner, but the attempt to understand can be quite plausible.

This same "investigation" can also serve as first-impressions character building for the owner of the space, a way of showing their character without them being there or taking any action at all. The reader learns something if your MC counts seven magazines folded as if half read, one of them over a year old. Is it research? The subsequent find of a half-completed model of airplane suggests it is not, they just put some things aside, for whatever reason, intending to return but never do.

Then your room-owning character can start in media res with all their quirks, e.g. in the example I gave interrupting themselves or veering off topic. The reader already knows something about them and the quirks do not feel forced or implausible.

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