Kill the Backstory Nobody Asked For
Alright. Last lesson we figured out why your talk runs twice as long as you think it does. This lesson is about the biggest reason: backstory.
You know the kind I mean. "So a little bit about me before I get into this." "To give you some context, back in 2019..." "I want to start by explaining why I care about this topic." None of it is bad information exactly. It's just not earning its spot.
Here's the thing. People think backstory makes them sound credible or makes the audience trust them more. Mostly it does the opposite. It makes the room wait longer for the point, and waiting is where you lose them. They start checking their phone, or thinking about what's for dinner, and by the time you get to the actual thing you wanted to say, half the room already checked out.
Why we do it
Nobody pads a talk on purpose. It happens because backstory feels safer than the point. If you're nervous, easing into a topic feels better than just saying it. It's a warm-up lap before the race. Problem is, the audience didn't sign up to watch you warm up. They want the race.
I do this too, by the way. I'll catch myself starting a work instruction with "so the reason we do this step is..." when nobody asked why yet. Just tell them the step. The why can come after, if it's needed at all.
The test
Here's a fast way to check every sentence in your talk: if you cut it, does anybody in the room notice something's missing? If the answer's no, it wasn't earning its spot. Cut it.
Backstory almost always fails this test. Setup fails it. Long explanations of how you got interested in the topic fail it. Say the point first — we already covered that — and then only add what actually supports the point. Everything else is you filling time because silence feels uncomfortable to you.
And that's worth saying plain: the discomfort is yours, not theirs. The room is fine with you getting to the point fast. You're the one who wants the running start.
A story about four seconds
First talk I ever gave as Young Men advisor, I lost my place completely. Just stopped talking. In my head that silence went on forever — I remember thinking, okay, this is it, I've broken the meeting, everyone's staring, I need to say something right now. Felt like a full minute of dead air.
Somebody told me afterward it was about four seconds.
Four seconds. That's it. That's the whole gap between how long silence feels to you standing up there and how long it actually is to the people sitting in folding chairs watching you. I bring this up in this lesson because it's the same instinct that makes people pad talks with backstory. You think the room needs more from you than it does. It doesn't. It needs the point. Give it the point.
How to cut it at home
Take whatever you outlined last lesson — the two-minute talk with your point and your three supports. Now go sentence by sentence and ask: does this sentence get us closer to the point, or is it throat-clearing?
Common stuff that's almost always throat-clearing: - "I want to start by saying..." - Any sentence explaining why you're qualified to talk about this - A full account of how you first got interested in the topic - "Before I dive in..." (also, banned phrase in my house, "dive in") - Explaining the structure of your own talk out loud ("first I'll cover X, then Y")
Cut those. If your talk is about fixing a fence, you don't need thirty seconds on how you got into fencing as a hobby. Say "here's how you fix a leaning post" and go.
One opinion I'll stand behind here: if a sentence isn't earning its spot, kill it. Doesn't matter how good the sentence is on its own. Doesn't matter if it's a nice detail. If it's not doing work for the point, it's dead weight, and dead weight is what makes a two-minute talk feel like six.
When backstory actually belongs
I'm not saying never explain anything. Sometimes a little context is the support, not the padding. If your point is "we should change how we schedule shifts," and your support is "I tried the old system for three months and it kept causing problems," that's not backstory, that's evidence. It's doing a job.
The difference is whether the audience needs it to understand the point, or whether you just want to say it. If they need it, keep it. If you just want to say it, that one's for you, not them, and it goes in the cut pile.
Try it now
Grab your two-minute outline from last time. Read it out loud once. Every time you hit a sentence that's just setup, cross it out. Don't feel bad about it, everybody's first draft is mostly setup. Read it again with the cuts made. It should feel faster and it should feel like you got to the point sooner. If it doesn't feel different, you didn't cut enough.
Before next time: bring your trimmed outline to class. We're going to time it, and I'd bet money it's shorter and better than the version you started with.