: 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

@Sent2472441

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The thing you have to always keep in mind is that in chapter one, the reader is not yet invested in the story. They don't yet care about your characters, your setting, or your plot. They're currently making up their minds whether they should keep reading or put the book down and go reread Harry Potter or something instead.
Your job, as an author, is to get them invested. This usually involves getting the reader to start caring about the protagonist, and/or making them curious about some minor mystery or point of tension you've introduced - give them some question they want answered. You need your reader to want to know what's on the next page ASAP. You need your story to draw them in. To some extent this is true for the whole novel, but it is especially true for your first few chapters.
This makes early chapter info-dumps really dangerous, because:

settings don't, as a rule, draw readers in the same way that characters do. Time spent explaining your setting is time you are not getting the reader into your protagonist's head, setting up tension/conflict, or otherwise making them feel invested.
info-dumping in first person or third limited can actively work against characterization, because it's not how people usually act or think. How often do you go on long mental disgressions about the history of the place you're in? "As you know, Bob"-style conversations or mental monologues can distance your reader from your protagonist because they're just plain unrealistic and out of character.
delaying explanations or only giving them piecemeal is an excellent way of leaving small questions to hook your readers. Why did character X react like that? Why is everyone so shocked she's acting up? How come she's at the principal's office frequently? etc. If they want to know the answers, they'll have to keep reading! Or maybe they'll have to put some clues together and draw conclusions on their own instead of having them spelled out, which is also a way to draw readers in. If you info-dump, you destroy this.

As a reader, I have abandoned multiple books first chapter because it became clear that the author was intent on spoon-feeding me every bit of information and that's not the reading experience I'm looking for.
In your particular case, I'd look closely at exactly what part of those several paragraphs of information you want to include would make the following scene more interesting and funnier for your readers. I'd also ask myself whether it could more compelling for the reader not to know it going in but infer it from the next scene. If not, I'd then see if there's an interesting, true-to-character way to communicate only that information. And like Anna A. Fitzgerald said, I'd want that information to be doing double duty in terms of also showcasing the POV character if at all possible, because you can't afford to drag your feet on that if you want to keep your readers.

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