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: Re: Is it sometimes okay to info dump to enhance your story even if it's not necessary to the plot I am writing a YA novel in 3rd person limited. The first scene of the chapter opens in a high
It depends on where in the writing process you are.
If you're on the first draft, underline the passage for later inspection and move on. The first draft is you explaining the story to yourself, and it's not productive to spend much brainpower on four sentences if you end up cutting or rewriting the encapsulating scene later.
The editing process is the proper time and place to put the other end of the pencil to the paper. When your story is 25k words over its intended word count, that digression about the school's name which seemed so pleasant at first now openly calls for a visit from your eraser. Or if your word count is just fine, upon rereading the scene the dump might stand out as a section which doesn't go anywhere. The cure is the same.
Every sentence in a story must do one of two things: advance the plot, or reveal something about a character. Some leeway exists in the sense an explanation of the setting is sometimes required for a reader to understand what is happening, but if you overdo it (or concentrate all of your explanations in one passage) you end up with an information dump.
If you're intent on keeping the explanation of the school's name, consider if the paragraph can also somehow either advance the plot (probably not, if you have an outline) or reveal something about the main character. For the latter you arguably have a case. If the event has negative consequences for him/her, is the ironic juxtaposition between the school name and the event salt in the wound? How does (s)he respond, and what are his/her resulting emotions? Are they interesting to the reader because they reveal who the protagonist is on the inside? Then the dump -stripped of all but the necessary parts- might be worthwhile keeping. This is a judgment you will have to make on your own.
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