*This first appeared in Lit Hub’s *Craft of Writing* newsletter—sign up here.* At some point in the last few years, my students became convinced that the worst sin a fiction writer can commit is an “info dump.” Admittedly, when you put it that way, it does sound like something you’d want to avoid. I don’t want to hear the word “dump” unless you’re singing “The Thong Song” by Sisqo, in which case: that’s cool. When I first started hearing students warn against the info dump, I thought that maybe if I just nudged us to call it an “information download” or something, its repulsive power would be lost. But the problem, I’ve come to realize, runs deeper than the wording. What fear of the dump translates to in practice is a broader resistance to the work of exposition in a story or novel. I’m not talking about a philosophical objection to backstory, the way Joy or Diane Williams reasonably might in work that is disorienting by design.…