The Salt Technique

How to avoid the dreaded ‘info dump.’

 I’m trying to prepare my upper sixth students for their A level English Literature exams at the moment – not easy when the Department of Education has only just released details of how these will be taken, but that’s another story!

What is clear is that, as is usual, the students will be required to demonstrate a knowledge of the context of literary texts. I always tell my students that, like salt, contextual details should be ‘sprinkled not dumped.’ Examiners hate long paragraphs comprising all the information on a writer that a candidate has learnt – often completely irrelevant to the question! I encourage my students to use contextual details discriminately, placing them alongside a close analysis of the text, and only where relevant.

It’s the same for writers. Often we are so eager to impart our hard won knowledge in our novels, that we forget readers find large chunks of extraneous research quite indigestible. Here’s an example of how not to do it:

Jim ran his hands through Sally’s beautiful red hair. He wondered if it had been coloured using L’Oreal Nice and spicy, a mid red tone, bound to attract admiration by enhancing your own shades whilst still looking natural. He leant towards her, focussing on her alluring scarlet mouth. Was that Max Factor’s Romantic kisses he asked himself. As he bent to kiss her, a warm fragrance overpowered his senses: Chanel number 5, he thought to himself, created in 1921, because Coco Chanel had wanted a fragrance that smelled like a woman! A scent, just like the complexities of a strong woman, that would be seen as a whole and not the sum of its parts. Jim knew Chanel number 5 was a composition of notes where one cannot easily distinguish its individual ingredients, instead smelling a bouquet of intricate and elaborate notes that intermingle like a mosaic of scent.

But instead of her warm lips he encountered a stinging slap to the face as Sally flounced off. ‘What did I do wrong?’ he asked himself

I suspect Sally’s answer would be ‘quite a bit!’ In writing terms, the research (highlighted in bold italic) is intrusive and takes our attention away from the key elements of the text. Less is definitely more.

But we need to convey a small amount of background information in order to convince our readers that our scenes are authentic and firmly rooted in the worlds we’ve created. Hopefully this is a better example, taken from my first novel ‘The Oceans Between Us.’

 [Kathleen] crouched down and reached inside the Coolgardie. The meat was at the back, two tiny chops wrapped in newspaper. They’d shrivel away to nothing in the pan. At least she’d managed to get a few old potatoes at the greengrocer’s. She’d have to cut the green out, but a pile of mash would fill the plate up a bit. And there should be a bit of gravy browning left from when she’d stained her legs that morning. She unhooked her apron from the back of the door and tied it over her grey blouse and tweed skirt. Then she took the knife out of the drawer and started peeling.

The proportion of research to narrative is much lower in the extract above. And, hopefully, I’ve done it subtly. It would be easy to write ‘during the war nylon was in short supply so, unable to buy stockings, women stained their legs with gravy powder to give the illusion of them being swathed in nylon or silk.’ But that would take my readers away from the story – so it’s much better to imply rather than state – or in salt terms, to sprinkle not dump. Other hardships are hinted at: the chops are small and the potatoes past their best: clearly there are food shortages, but again, these details are suggested rather than laid on with a trowel.

If we season our stories subtly, they will be far more palatable.