Backstory

As I've already mentioned, I'm in the midst of reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, in which the author jumps all the heck around in time. From the forties to the nineties and back again and everything in between. He pulls it off for the most part, but I do feel a bit of reader's whiplash and have to re-orient myself a bit each time.I don't do this. When I first outlined Cycler, the main character was twenty-five. But I found myself spending so much time doing backstory, I decided to make the backstory the real story. I made the character a teenager.Now for Novel #3, I've written this killer prologue and I'm thinking, hmm... 2 options here. I could interweave the backstory throughout the real story. OR I could save it all for a prequel.I think I'm a very linear writer. I write clean, brisk forward-moving stories. I wonder if this comes from my screenwriterly background.