Young Writers Society

The story that's unfolding takes place on the first dwarf planet in our solar system, Ceres. In the first chapters of my story the planet is there. The people are there, animals are there, nature is there. It's a place just like Earth.

But eventually there will be a chapter that explains how people from Earth journeyed towards the planet and started living there. This will happen somewhere in 2200, when technology allowed people to colonized Mars and Moon.

How do I explain the entire development of Earth, from 2012 to 2200, and it's journey to Ceres, without turning it into a boring history book? Does anyone have any examples from other stories?

Make it relevant to the story.

What you're doing there is infodumping. Infodumping is doing just what it sounds: giving a bunch of information at once. It's usually frowned upon to do it in major chunks.

Infodumping tips:

1- Make it relevant. Do we really need to know this? Be absolutely ruthless when it comes to answering that question. A good guide is asking yourself if the plot/character would not be the same at all if you did not reveal this information. A businessman who wears suits with pink socks would be seen differently than a businessman who wears black socks. In the latter case, you have no need to say his sock colour at all.

2- Break it up. It could be with questions, it could be simply slipping little pieces of whatever you want to say throughout the book instead of having a whole chapter. Then you're not sitting through huge chunks.

3- Never stop the plot. If you put on the breaks to deliver a giant history lesson, then chances are that history lesson will be skipped because people want to get on with the story itself. If you ever catch yourself saying, "Oh, I can stop things for this super important information..." don't put it in, or find a way of not stopping the plot to deliver it.

4- When in doubt, leave it out. If you're wondering if people really need to know this, leave it out and sent it out for review. If people get confused about what's going on, add in a bit more information. If people go along with the plot just fine, then the information wasn't needed.

Hope this helps.

I would also seriously consider moving the time period of colonisation (or at least the 'current' time of the story) much later. Or else do some really good research in order to develop the technological/scientific aspects behind it, because according to most recent estimates by NASA and European Space Agency scientists, terraforming Mars (they haven't even estimated Ceres or any otehr planets) would take about 3,800 years to fully terraform. So in order to make it believable, I would set the 'present' much farther into the future, or else do enough research to invent some technological advancement htat explains the super vast development.