All 4800 words of it was nothing but backstory. How do I just get to the story? Should I scratch what I have and just start over? I don't know what to do.
This. One of the biggest mistakes people make when they start the whole "I'm going to use my gym membership" thing is that when they get to the gym they fail to warm up. They go right for the weights or the machines, full bore, and then end up hurting themselves. I've seen skinny guys go full tilt on curls - with dumbbells that even I think of as heavy - without warming up, finish their "curl routine", and then watch them panic as their biceps contract of their own accord into a T-Rex position and they can't bring their arms down. It happens. It's a thing. What you've written is warmup. It's the part that will get you to the real first page of Chapter #1. Don't think of it as wasted. It's not wasted. It's information you now have that can be folded in later. These are your words. You're allowed to take them apart and rearrange them and repurpose them.
Having the backstory is essential to the author, not reader. Start your story at the beginning. Many readers pick up a book and read the first page. If they are not hooked by the first page, they place book and author back on the shelf, forever.
One famous author said to just write and then throw away the first 3 chapters. What is needed should be given when it is really needed in little bytes. I would say keep writing and then toss at least 1 if not 3 chapters. And as Wreybies note , it is useful to you so you don't make contradictions later by inventing new things to describe that are different. In movies they call it continuity. If somone is wearing a red necktie then when they walk outside it should not have disappeared or become blue. Having those details in an infodump will help you. Keep adding to it as you create new things.
Very often, I find I have written things that the reader doesn't really need to know, but I need to know. I edit them out but keep them in a separate file. And I have now encountered the flip side. I have completed the first draft of a novel in a new genre (for me) - a police procedural. My protag is a detective whom I realize needs much more backstory than I have yet given her. I'm now working on that backstory, not for the novel, but for me. A fraction of it will end up in the novel.
I avoided that with a complex outline and knowing where to include all the bits of info I need the readers to know. But the advice of just writing and edit it out later is very good. You are still discovering the story as you go along and can always come back and change it.
