Tips and Timesavers
Showing, not telling
I love this rule. It's one of the most constructive and useful tools for keeping yourself from getting bogged down in backstory and exposition and it's so easy (in theory) to implement.
The rule is exactly as it sounds. Good writers (at least in the Romantic fiction genre) will 'show' action and character/plot development instead of 'telling'. Writers who also dabble in more general fiction (where you can get away with more 'telling') are often bigger users of the 'tell'.
Show
You play out scenes in which exposition or back story is delivered through dialogue between characters, or generated naturally through happenings in the plot. Often takes longer to construct but gets the information across more subtly & helps keep the story moving forward. There's room for both styles in a manuscript, but everything in moderation. Balance. Example:
"Why is no-one living here?" Hannah nervously voiced her thoughts to the brooding man half way down the stairs.
"This was my Grandfather’s house," Drake clipped, annoyed to even be indulging this conversation. Why was she even still here? He'd asked her to leave. He started down the stairs toward Hannah. "He grew up, married and died in this house where four generations of McMurtries have lived their lives."
"Why don't you live here?"
There was no way Drake was going to tell this stranger about the crazy goings on in this house after midnight, about how he found any excuse not to enter the creepy family estate.
"I choose to live elsewhere."
Tell
You get all the backstory or other detail out of the way with chunks of exposition (often in past tense) before moving back to the main story flow.
There was no way Hannah could have known about the crazy goings-on in the old house after the clock chimed midnight. No-one had lived in the McMurtrie mansion since Old Man McMurtrie had passed on near on 30 years ago. He had been born and raised in the old homestead, even raised his own family and eventually died there--as had four generations of McMurtries before him.
Now, even Drake McMurtrie wouldn't step food in the building unless he had to.