Writing.Com General Discussion

You can't always 'show don't tell' with backstory. Sometimes the efforts to do so become too unwieldy to be worth the read. My rule is to make every effort to tighten it up and keep it to a minimum unless an opportunity already exists in your story to do the showing.

But when you have a backstory infodump like this, it is almost like a law of physics that the first draft will be way longer than necessary, so always tighten it up first before looking to see what you can 'show' instead.

Here's five sentences from your paragraph:
Before four months had passed, Carol was pregnant with Jolene. He knew he had to marry her eventually, so he quit the job he had in his hometown, Grimsley, and started working at the lumber mill in Pikeville. His father wasn’t happy with the arrangement. It was nearly a three-hour drive from Grimsley south to Pikeville. Mr. Bowen wasn’t about to go down there just to see his son.

That I can state in two sentences:

Before four months passed, Carol was pregnant with Jolene, and he had married her and taken a job in the lumbermill in Pikeville. His father refused to drive the three hours south from Grimsley just to see his son.

The word 'refused' might be replaced with a stronger term, depending upon what words work in your narrative voice. Something like 'His father loathed the three hour drive south...', for example. Or 'His father couldn't be bothered to drive three hours...' Choices like that are going to depend upon things I don't know about the personalities involved.

Allow me to point out that working this way can create opportunities to show rather than tell though. The two alternatives I gave would paint different pictures of what the relationship between father and son had been prior to it distilling down to just christmas cards.

...
Regards,
Eric Fretheim

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage-- as long as you edit brilliantly." ~C.J. Cherryh

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~Winston Churchill