Experimenting with Backstory and Setup

I got some interesting advice on how to play with your book once you have it finished to make sure you don't have more backstory and setup in there than you really need.

Just take it all out, saving the cut parts of course, then reread the book. Print the parts you cut out and keep next to you as you read, weaving in only small pieces in logical locations, leaving out anything that isn't essential. Then voila, your book has backstory and setup cleverly woven in without doing info dumps or pulling the reader out of the story.

Very freaking cool.

I was running into the problem where my first chapter or two of every book was running slow because I was amateurishly trying to stuff all the setup and backstory up front. Uh. Stupid, I know. Although it helped me as an author to have it in there temporarily so I could write it, then take it out as appropriate later.

Anyway, I will add this to my list of "things to do when writing a book". Good lord, the list is getting a bit long. :-)