fantasy · General · Short Story · work in progress · Writing

On Info Dumps and Exposition

If I had a red pen, I would sooo mark up my third scene. Word’s red highlighter will have to do. It is nothing but a huge info dump. It is the dragon short story. I need to explain the magic, right? That’s hard because I don’t understand the magic myself and by the time I gained some small amount of understanding, I had 300 hundred words of explanation.  I am thinking that’s too much, particularly in a short story (my second scene was shorter!!!). Most of what I wrote needs to go.

Oh, I wasn’t as obvious as I could have been – I had my MC (who is still nameless!!) moving around and considering what she needed to do. But it is still obvious and a little bit gratuitous too. I mean, she doesn’t really need to move from here to there. I want her to just get down to it without too much explanation. Which I need to find a way to distribute that info more evenly and more naturally, too. But how do I do that? I don’t want to create a whole new scene just for exposition. I also don’t want to slow down the other two scene by adding too much stuff.

So I am not sure what to do. I am thinking what I need to do is to figure out what is most important and insert a couple of sentences into the other two scenes. But what about the other stuff? I don’t know and I will have to figure it out. What are some really good ways to do exposition?