Argh. This is something I'm really struggling with in the first draft of my novel. Infodumping/excessive exposition is something I hate, yet I have a bad habit of falling victim to it myself. :/ Don't get me wrong, I know not every single character NEEDS a backstory and can be understood perfectly well without one. But in the case of my two main characters, I feel their backstories are important and explain how they became who they are now. That's why I desperately want to include them. I know, per conventional wisdom, a character's backstory should be sprinkled gradually throughout the novel. And yet for some reason I find myself struggling to do this. I want to make sure all the important parts of their stories are told, but I also don't want to bring the story to a halt to dump exposition on the reader.