Writing Advice Needed: The Briefing

[CattyNebulart]

How would you write a briefing to avoid it being an infodump? Especially when there is a lot of info you need to dump.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Star Ranger4]

There really isnt TOO much you can do to avoid it but...

Questions, Interjections, Snarky comments all work. Internal monologues, whispered asides, even flashbacks.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Bob Schroeck]

Arguments over differences in recollection...

If it's being watched, like in a police interrogation room, cuts to the watchers and their comments/opinions/arguments.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Epsilon]

How vital is this information? Because it may be possible to just avoid it entirely.

For instance "You are going to New Orleans to track down the infamous criminal Papa Panic and shut down his heroin importing operation." can be more
effectively handled by "When Agent Carter arrived in new Orleans he had no idea how hard finding Papa Panic would be. Heroin was a major commodity here
and well entrenched, which made..." blah blah blah.

You can have small, relevant flashback to the breifing information only when you need to reveal it as well. That part of the advantage of writing, which
doesn't have to deal with linear time the same way visual mediums do. For example, "The Jade Pleasure Dome was full of a cloud of head-numbing smoke
and the sound of smooth Jazz. The patrons gave Agent Carter disinterested glances as he made his way to the bar. According to his breifing many dealers
practically lived in the secluded private booths in the back room..."

Generally speaking once you have established there was a breifing and that the characters were given important information from it you don't need to reveal
all that information at once. It can be placed in abeyance until needed to be revealed to the audience. Its the same principle which allows you to have a nice
caper film without revealing all the plans until its dramatically appropriate to the audience.

---------------

Epsilon

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Epsilon

[Ebony]

Jump between the briefing and the events that prompted the briefing. For example, if it's a criminal investigation, jump from the briefing officer talking
about the crime to the perspective of the criminal as he commits the crime, or just an active, present description of the crime in progress. Alternately, focus
on the people attending the briefing between pertinent bits of data and their reactions to the briefing or their state of mind during the briefing. Use the
scene as a way to define characteristics of the attending characters; a patient, studious character might be taking meticulous notes, a distracted character
might be surreptitiously texting the cause of his distraction or reading email, a hedonistic character might be nursing a hangover behind a pair of sunglasses,
and so on.
Ebony the Black Dragon
http://ebony14.livejournal.com

"Good night, and may the Good Lord take a Viking to you."

[Acyl]

My two cents - sometimes you do want to have a briefing scene, given the mileau of the story. Police examples have been brought up here...sometimes in those kinds of story the briefing can be an important scene in and of itself. Particularly if you're focusing on, say, the background investigative work rather than action (or in addition to action) ... behavioural analysis, profiling, and so on.

What you can do to make that less...infodumpy... is to have a something else for the reader to focus on. You can, as StarRanger suggested, do that purely based on the interactions between the characters. Make the dialogue snappy, so on.

I figure a good way is to have some other point to the scene beyond conveying information. Maybe focus on the newest member of the team, the rookie, and that being their first briefing (consequently they're nervous, watching everyone else). Or you can do the Arthur Conan Doyle thing, have one brilliant character trying to lead others to a conclusion by spelling out the information - in a way that poses the problem to the reader as well.
-- Acyl

[Black Aeronaut]

If you need an example, try that scene from Independence Day where the fighter pilots are gathered for the briefing for the first, ill-fated counter attack...
"You scared, man?"
"Nah. ... Hold me!"
"Get off!"
"Gentlemen, is there a problem?"
"Ah, nah sir. Just a little eager to get up there and whoop ET's ass!"
"You'll get your chance, son."
Bits and pieces like that to break things up are priceless, especially if you can pull it off without making it seem over-the-top or out of character. Another way of doing it, if it's a short breifing, is something I did on a project with a friend.  They've got a trashed apartment on the verge of being condemed to clean up, and Zeke is going ofer the broad strokes, after which his best buddy decides to get funny wiht him...
"Any questions?" asked Zeke.
Tannim raised his hand.  "What does yellow smell like?"
"Yellow would be that stuff thats been left in the toilets for too long," said Zeke without missing a beat.  "Don't worry, I've got a way to deal with that."
"Throwing them out?" wondered Tannim, grimacing at the thought.
"Only the ones that are too far gone.  I'll get a garden hose to clear out the ones without working water."

[CattyNebulart]

I need to get a batter work ethic when it comes to writing fanfiction.

After giving up on the briefing for a while I'm now finally back to working on it.

How vital is this information? Because it may be possible to just avoid it entirely.

It's the divergence point from the anime, the brieifng given in Full Metal Panic: Second Raid goes differently with a different objective. so fairly important.

For breaking up the monotone of the briefing I'll have to use Kurtz I guess. It would be OOC if he didn't anyway.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Necratoid]

I think it also depends where in the story your info dumping.. It makes a big difference if your in chapter 50 of 76 or during the prologue or at the start
of a chapter. If its the first thing there you can do a classic 'suiting up' sequence... which means two to four paragraphs of various character's
points of view going over what they are doing during check points or during parts of the lull at the start of the mission.... separated by half a page to two
pages of the briefing from that persons perspective. If its in the middle of a chapter somewhere, even more so if it causes a lull during the 'good
parts', your going to have to be more creative... the problem is not the infodump itself its keeping the infodump from being a hinderance to the flow of
the story. If at any point the reader starts think along the lines of... 'Yeah, I get it already. Its mazelike and we can't use explosives... The
enimy is likely to include magical bunny shaped peeps with flamethrowers for eyes.... Get on with the good parts already', your doing something wrong.

Epsilon's Caper film method of spreading the briefing out over several scenes... basically using bits of the briefing as if they were the pre-opening theme
scene. They are used to set the mood but aren't used in that really, really infuriating way where key pieces of info are withheld until after they are
important. Its a bad method, that involves making the plot twist come out of nowhere... because if they mentioned it ahead of time they'd be unable have
it as a suprise plot twist. Info dumping after the fact, makes a mean spirited gotcha moment from nowhere hit you. A more effective method is to go for the
rereadablitity / rewatchablity trick of giving little clues along the way that add up to a twist later... the kind of thing that in hindsight makes perfect
sense but is unimportant at the time. For good briefing in section introbits example watch Ocean's 11 or its sequils

You can steal an idea from Second Raid itself... someone made a tangential comment about something random and it saved the mission. Any changes you make can
be used later or not. This is again an important placement issue... if your going to have it be a start for the fanfic you can get away with a different
pacing then if the changes started months previous and your getting to that point later on.

A more difficult, but if successful method, is the dueling breifings. This is where you swap between the briefing for the Psychotic Nutbar Lord's planning
and the Mithril briefing... With this method you can clearly explain the differences in plot/time line without having it rely on a single source of explaining
the changes. For instance, if your starting off the fic with the briefing you can have flash sideways to the PNL ranting/gleefully raving about what went
wrong/right... granted your going to have to get inside said PNL's head for a bit and the mooks he randomly kill during his rant will probably hate you
from the afterlife.

In short, always remember that the goal of an info dump is to have the info flow through in a manner that the reader/watcher feeling like its a breeze or a
gentle current rather that like they are slogging through armpit deep swamp mud or sewage.