How to handle a massive info dump post-ending?

Question

I know this question has been asked a few times, and I’ve read all the helpful answers, but can’t implement them in my situation. So, would love some further assistance.

I’ve written a psych thriller which ends on a single line and a massive twist that makes the reader go, ‘Huh?? What?? How on earth??’

What follows is an epilogue explaining how the antagonist managed to pull off a complex deception spanning thirty-five years, and that explanation (in order to be plausible) is HUGE! 7,000 words.

It’s the complexity of the deception that makes it plausible, so I can’t shorten it, that would leave gaping holes. I can’t drag any of the information into the body of the book (as you would usually do with info dumps) as it will give away the twist. It has to all come out at the end.

The high-stakes are over, the action is over, so I can’t intersperse it with thrilling scenes. It’s the aftermath. I can’t drag the antagonist into a Poirot/Sherlock Holmes style Q&A as he's already in jail.

I’ve thought about writing the court case, but that has the potential to be dry and drawn out. I’ve considered splitting it into immediate scenes with different characters explaining different parts, but only one character can possibly know the majority of the detail (the rest had to be in the dark for the twist to work) so that came out as an info dump too. I can’t use flashbacks as the POV is the protagonist’s, and it’s the antagonist’s backstory. I tried switching POV and going into the protagonist’s past, but beta-readers found the sudden switch, right at the end of the book, jarring.

I thought I'd get help post-submission but both my agent and editor say it's an info dump, but can't think of a way to fix it!

I’m looking for unique and interesting ways to handle such a massive explanation. It has to go in. But massive explanations and info dumps are inherently boring. How can I keep it alive? A thrill ride that matches the rest of the thriller and doesn’t land flat on its face?

Has anyone read anything where a massive explanation follows an ending, yet it’s still gripping as all hell?

Answer 1

Include characters who are emotionally involved.

The Harry Potter books have all involved various amounts of post-climax exposition, with 1, 2, 4, and 5 being the heaviest (3 and 7 mostly rely on pre-climax exposition). Of them, Order of the Phoenix is probably the most interesting. Why? Because Harry is screaming and throwing things at the walls.

Your twist, and the revelation thereof is going to have a major impact on your characters. Find the ones who care the most - those with the most to gain or the most to lose - and involve them in the explanation.

Add conflict.

The climax of the story should resolve the overarcing conflict of the story, but that doesn't mean you can't still have conflicts. Part of why Order of the Phoenix's exposition scene is effective is that it adds a conflict. Will Dumbledore regain Harry's trust before Harry destroys all of Dumbledore's possessions? It's a very small, very personal conflict that adds a great deal to the scene.

Answer 2

Expanding my comment into a full answer as OP indicated it was helpful.

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I can’t drag the antagonist into a Poirot/Sherlock Holmes style Q&A as he's already in jail.

Sure you can. Just have the protagonist, or some other major character, visit the antagonist in jail and hold the Q&A session there. This has the added advantage that the infodump is coming from the mouth of the antagonist, rather than the mouth of the narrator, and you can therefore inject his personality into it. For example, he could be gloating about having deceived everyone for so long, hence his willingness to explain the deception in so much detail in the first place.

Has anyone read anything where a massive explanation follows an ending, yet it’s still gripping as all hell?

The closest thing I can think of is Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, where there's a big one-line revelation about two-thirds of the way through the novel. Part of the remaining third deals with the drama of whether anyone else will find out about the revelation, and the potential consequences if they do, but it's interwoven with a gradual explanation of exactly what happened and why. I read that entire last third in one sitting and it is honestly one of the most gripping sections of prose I have ever read.

Answer 3

A few tricks come to mind. One that your description strongly suggests is similar to Agatha Christie's "And then there were none", which might be exactly the kind of work you are looking for. It matches your description almost exactly.

In that puzzler, she had the same issue - couldn't disclose during the story (would not work if she did), yet too complex to sum up quickly.

What she did was have the perpetrator leave a diary or letter for others to find, which as well as explaining without breaking the story, also added to the book by showing you the whole thing back to its origins, from the perpetrators viewpoint. (The perp left a complete description close to a mini autobiography, in a bottle thrown out at sea, an left it to chance if it would be found. Similar might be a letter left with lawyers to be sent in 30 years time, or buried with something - or in the digital age, an encrypted message left on social media/hard drive/email, to be cracked when technology allows, in 30-50 years.)

It worked very well, so it might work for you, too. Often such people want the world (or someone) to know, some day..... so it can probably fit in well in many kinds of plot.

You ask if anyone knows a story where a massive explanation follows the final scene, and does it work/is the book still gripping? This book is reckoned one of her masterpieces, and the answer is an undoubted "yes". Not an overly-long book, but superbly mysterious, and an "impossible" whodunnit - go get it on Amazon and enjoy, as well as seeing how it's done! Hopefully a hell of a read as well as an answer :)

Answer 4

You've chosen a challenging structure. Normally, for a twist ending to land, the reader has to have been given most of the relevant information along the way -- think Sixth Sense.

The only successful model for something close to this that I can think of is Hero (2002), which borrows Rashomon's famous trick of telling versions of the same story from different viewpoints.

With that in mind, I would suggest going with more not less. Develop your villain's story into its own mini-novel. See all (or many) of the same events again, but from his point of view, knowing what he knows, and then package the two stories together as one book. Of course, that requires him to become the main character of his own story, going through his own journey, and facing his own challenges. It won't be easy to pull off, and might require a lot of new effort, just at the point where you thought you were done, but I could picture the final effect being very compelling.

Answer 5

Some of the best detective mystery novels - I'm thinking especially about the noir genre - have a penultimate chapter where the detective solves the murder(s) and explains everything, and the bad guy gets what's coming to him blam! blam! blam! and it all makes sense and it's over.

Except, then there's the last chapter, where the hardboiled dick goes to the sympathetic girl and explains that he knows it was really her (or her deranged sister) all along and why and she makes goo-goo eyes at him but of course it's not to be and then he blows town.

Maybe your current ending can be adapted to this scheme in some way.

Answer 6

Sequel/ Different story

Could you turn that mass epilogue into a different or new story? The first one ends with the twist, but the initial situation is handled and done (this is important). They catch the killer and everyone is safe.

Now, as a reader I go "WTF happened? Why did he do it? Oh wait! There is another story".

This sequel/prequel could have someone investigate that plot, perhaps coming real close to the truth, forcing the villain to change his plans or do something different. You can then have the court case, even start in the early days of the plot and have a different perspective.

Answer 7

One thing you can do is to frame the explanation around a character in the story. For instance, there might be a meta narrative in which the story is being told by a particular character, and when the twist happens the character explains everything in the aftermath.

There can be tiny "clues" (if possible) scattered throughout the story itself, but it might not be enough to work out the mystery. Just enough, say, that things don't quite add up but the reader doesn't notice it on a first read through. The benefit of something like this is that it can make a second read through even more enjoyable, as the reader notices all the things they missed the first time around (such as a small unimportant seeming detail, or a character's reaction being slightly off).

An example of this that I absolutely LOVE is Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz. I won't say more than that because I would be giving it away and that would be an absolute shame, but if you're looking for examples definitely give this one a read. It kept me hooked right up to the final page.

Answer 8

Maybe you can interleave your 7000 throughout the story by making it a perfectly "parallel" (separated) chain of mini-chapters which are a kind of preface for each chapter of your real timeline.

As you wish to avoid spoilers, make it so that it is simply unclear that the mini-chapters are the solution to the main story. Let the reader in the dark as to what your mini-chapters are actually about. Skip mentioning names, use different names, whatever.

At the end, with your great twist, maybe the reader will go back and read the mini-chapters again, now with the complete knowledge, and have many small "a-ha" moments.

I've seen several books where this has been done (not usually with a great twist, more a gradual enlightenment; but I can see it work if you get the twist just right).

Answer 9

I am in a sense suggesting a different but similar twist to @Stilez suggestion.

It’s the aftermath. I can’t drag the antagonist into a Poirot/Sherlock Holmes style Q&A as he's already in jail.

Let the antagonist tell the real story. To someone. To a cell mate. To a beautiful journalist girl/boy (hello, "Silence of the lambs"). In his/her last will. In a letter to NYT, police, protagonist, protagonist's beautiful spouse. You'd better know, how. I am suggesting what.

The letter/confession/news story format explains the infodump structure, too. You might want to style it a bit like the appropriate prototype.

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To give an unknown example from a first-hand experience: To round-off an "alternate history" story of a friend, I took some off-the-shelf news articles and basically rewrote (and distorted them, but tried hardest to keep the style) to fit those characters who would become famous.

So, nothing really changed, but some famous people in the news are now other people. A quite anti-climatic end, but desired and heavily hinted in the main text.

Answer 10

This is typical style for any whodunnit

Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of The Four wraps up the investigation with a whopping 10,321 word chapter called "The Strange Story of Jonathan Small." Most of Doyle's investigations ended this way. Someone mentioned Agatha Christie, and her detective Hercule Poirot ended his investigations pretty much the same way, but she used the plot twist more often than Doyle.

I would very much recommend going back and reading The Sign of The Four on Gutenberg and see what you can get from this. It has a boat chase scene, sneaking around at night breaking into places, a bumbling police inspector, and a final chapter that somehow keeps you engaged for nearly 20 minutes while the plot unravels via the confession you want. Then pick up a few Agatha Christie novels as well to see how she moves your suspicions around quickly and effectively.