Infodumping

I've reached a scene I've both anticipated and dreaded. Anticipated, because it explains things I've been hinting at throughout the book and because it sets up almost everything you need to know for the finale. Dreaded, because, well, it's an infodump. I wrote a pass at it last night, and it's a little over one thousand words of pure dialogue. It flows pretty well, as infodumps go, and I've got a couple of tricks to pull that will break it up some and hopefully keep it from being overwhelming or completely boring. But I need this scene to work, because it basically explains everything that went before and set up everything after. If it doesn't work, the whole book is kinda screwed.

The big thing is that when this scene ends, we go straight into the climactic arc, so I guess I better start figuring it all out. Yeah, I know, I said I had it planned already. I have the ending planned, and some middle bits, but I'm kind of fuzzy on how it gets to those middle bits. Word count: about 63,000. Goal: 17,000 words in 23 days.