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Yep I've seen that bit of advice before myself. Sinclair Lewis is supposed to have read over an effort by a new writer and told them to throw the 1st 96 pages of their 100 pages away. When the young author protested that they had had to set the scene Mr. Lewis asked,'for 96 pages?' "If I want a history of the Azores," he said,"I'll get National Geographic." I stopped reading "The Valley of Horses" by Jean Auel because the story stopped moving while a history of the land began. Maybe someday I'll go back to it, but I'm sure I'll skip over a large chunk of text if I do. Story has to move forward and large chunks of data, however interesting, stop a story cold.
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