hello! this is probably a question you've already answered before, but do you have any tips on how to introduce a fantasy world with new races, magic systems, and countries etc, without just infodumping in the first chapter?
in a story i'm working on, there are two races of characters who are very different from humans and don't appear in like. folklore or anything (ie they're completely made up), but since i don't want to infodump i end up sort of talking about them like the reader should already know who/what they are, and that's really confusing i think. i'm just not sure where i should put my information, there never really seems like a right time but i know it needs to be somewhere
any help is really appreciated, sorry if you've already received a question like this !
So this is something where character voice and distinctiveness is going to be your way out. A lot of this depends on your POV character(s) and how much they would notice about any given person and/or creature. If your POV character for some of these introduction scenes does not belong to either race, they can be an effective conduit for info dumping in a way that doesn't feel egregarious.
I'm assuming you're working on secondary (i.e. set in an entirely different fantasy world and everyone is from that same world) > portal or hidden world fantasy, so this advice is catered slightly accordingly.
However, the concept of an audience conduit is true for all of these. In portal or hidden world fantasy, this is the Ordinary / Secretly Special Kid who Discovers a Thing or Falls through some Portal and needs to get everything explained to them as a result of having literally no or very little context.
In secondary fantasy, this is often a character who's more naive or a little less worldly (think the Hobbits in LOTR) who although they inhabit this world, haven't seen too much of it first hand. ATLA also handles this very cleverly, as Aang educates Katara and Sokka about all the places they haven't been, and they can educate him about how the world has generally changed in the 100 years since he's been gone / about the war.
What I mean in terms of character voice is something like this:
In another life, the meadow would have awoken under her touch, with unfurled petals, blooming blades of grass, and warmth. But Ally just prodded the lifeless husk of grass with the frosted rim of her boot. She’d hoped the walk and crisp wintry air would clear her head after a restless night, but to no avail. She’d been off—well, more off-kilter all week. Why was it that the more important it was to sleep well, the harder it was to do?
(Fun fact, this is the first paragraph of my WIP).
Immediately we know there's a subverted expectation, a sense of loss of power (and what those powers may be), that my protagonist is worried about something, and that we're in a world that generally experiences a snowy form of winter. A lot of this is conveyed through subtext, but there's also plenty of tell. The next 10 pages are about establishing her Ordinary (extraordinary) life, her outsider perspective, and establishing the immediate and some of the possible future stakes these hold for her.
Again, what do we have to know in order to understand an immediate, personal issue, even for something vast and sprawling, in order to get us invested? Could be a relationship, could be a character, could be something to prove - but always best to start small and specific > broad and wordy.
As my first piece of formal advice, if I had to take a guess, is that likely you're trying to establish too many stakes too in-depth at once. It may be worth stepping back and thinking "What is the most important information that has to be there, and everything else is set dressing?" For myself, this meant establishing my protagonist's broken chosen one cycle and her personal stakes. The other sets of powers, the broader world (including whole countries), the long and complicated history of the lore... all didn't matter. Or at least, doesn't matter yet.
Ask yourself: What are the personal stakes for your POV character in the first 10 pages, and figure out what worldbuilding has to be included from there? Are they a merchant, a scientist, a knight? An outsider? And then you go from there, for every ten pages onwards. Figuring out what to add later for a bit more cohesiveness or foreshadowing can be a second draft thing, and it is okay for your reader to marinate in implications or not entirely answered questions for a little, too.
Additionally, if you're worried about tossing too many names and titles, you can generalize. We don't have to know the names of every country; if say, there's an issue with one in the north or south, you can say "The northern provinces are starting to complain," and that gives us details without giving us cumbersome details (at least this early on).
If your POV character, or one of them, belongs to one of the new species, there will still be variations (or not, which is very notable) between themselves and others within their race that they can notice. For example, is the POV's characters pointed ears smaller than others'? Are the horns or assortment of limbs different or uniform across the species in contrast to other features, like hair or skin or eyes, that might differ further?
For example, I have three different types of elves in my world, but they all look slightly different from each other and have different attitudes regarding their ears / whether ears can be pierced, should be covered by hair, etc. Little things like that that a character from any of the three types would draw attention to.
Of course, that can only really be done once details concerning that distinctiveness. And again, it's okay to give more general descriptions at first and go into more detail later. Quality > quantity. Some parts of exposition really are just info-dumping (aka a paragraph on how a certain race or even building or city looks) and there's no really getting around that, but the most important thing is spacing it out. Your reader can't take it all in at once and you don't have to write it all at once.
I have offered advice on how to create a sense of distinctiveness in worldbuilding in a pretty simple way (as you seem to be working in threes already, which may work out).
I hope this helps, happy writing, and feel free to pop into my DMs or inbox with more specifics if you'd like to chat more! <3
