Info dump tricks

The work I'm writing for the NaNo write-ins is a novella.   The first section of the story is a long briefing meeting between the new President and her security chief.  This whole first section is backstory.  It's the history of what Humans have done for the last century, and why the new President needs to take action immediately to undo it.

The whole section is, in effect, a massive info-dump.  I didn't want to show what happened at the time, for a couple of reasons.  One, the characters involved in that action, and causing a massive problem for the current President, aren't the story's main characters.  They're long dead by now, and this isn't  their story.  And second, I didn't want to make them into viewpoint characters because they were both, in effect, psychopaths, and I wouldn't have felt comfortable diving into their minds.  And third, it's likely that making those people viewpoint characters would turn readers off the story.

I wanted to start the story a century later, with the good girl, the newly-elected President who gets this massive problem dumped on her three hours into her Presidency.  So how to avoid a boring info-dump?  I put the information into dialogue.  Now the backstory is being related as part of an, admittedly very long, question and answer session.

Then I've added action and description to the dialogue.  I've described how the tough security chief won't meet the president's eyes when she tells her about this problem.  I describe the President getting up and pacing around her office, looking down on the innocent people strolling in the park below her office.  And I've linked that action to the information the President is being given.  If she doesn't take action swiftly, some of those innocent people strolling along in the park will get murdered.

So, despite the fact that the scene involves two people in an office talking, I've managed to get some action into it.  But the biggest chunk of action is internal.  It's the change of the President's mindset.

This new president is changed for ever by the horror she learns about. And she is forced to admit that only rapists  and murderers have the skills needed to do the very dangerous job she needs done.

It was a risk starting the story with that long briefing, but I think my info-dump tricks make the opening work.