posted
So I'm a sucker for prologues or intro stories that are only distantly or indirectly related to the main story. Some of my favorite examples are Clive Cussler books where he starts out with some historical event that we later find has some impact or bearing (small or large) on the mystery/adventure of the rest of the book.
I also love maps and charts, diagrams of troop movements and battle strategies, indexes, geneologies, etc.
Now I've been picking up that those kinds of things, especially prologues, are frowned upon by publishers, etc. Perhaps a matter of telling instead of showing?
So what is the big deal and what do you personally think about such things when you read a book?
As an aside, I love chapter intros that have quotes, poems, journal entries, etc. like Dune, Mistborn, and some others I can't recall at the moment. They set the mood or add/confuse information that builds suspense interest.
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posted
Prefatory content, whether prologue, prelude, editor introduction, author foreword, preface, or epigraph, has one purpose: to provide content important to understand the main action to follow.
Whichever one or all a narrative may contain, each has a distinct voice. Prologues are narrator voice. Preludes are in the same voice-type as the main action, in the moment, place, and situation of the main action's overall setting, at least the milieu and situation but not necessarily person, time, or place.
An editor introduction is often about the editor's interpretation of the action to come, of course, in the editor's voice. An author foreword is, of course, in the writer's voice and from the writer's desk.
A preface is also given in writer voice, though for fiction, actually, given in implied writer voice, a persona distinct from the writer's. A preface starts a step closer to the main action and voice than from the writer's desk, not as close as to a narrator's voice or standing nor a character's voice or standing. An implied writer is the invisible hand on the drama's tiller. A preface's main distinction is as a stepping stone interlude from editor and writer's voice to the voice of the narrator or the main action.
An epigraph is usually in the voice of whoever composed the statement, whether the statement is given from within the narrative's setting or from an external source depends on the genre, for example, an excerpt from a False Document originating in the narrative's setting for convention-based genre like science fiction and fantasy or an external, real-world literary allusion for literary fiction. Though the distinction is not an absolute division. Literary allusions and False Documents occur in any genre.
With the exception of epigraphs, which are usually unlabeled but set off by italics and block quote formatting, writers, editors, and publishers generally no longer appreciate the distinctions of prefatory content types. They label prefatory content whatever suits whoever's whimsy.
A reason prologues are deprecated is because they too easily summarily and explanatorily lecture about the action to come without developing meaningful drama. Prologue, whether labeled prologue or not, is often a backstory lecture given in a telling voice. In traditional terms, this is an exposition act. An exposition is prescriptively an introduction, though because many prologues lecture, summarize, explain, and tell the meaning of the action to come, the term "exposition" has come to mean tell rather than introduce.
Anyway, screening readers have grown weary of prologue exposition that tells introductions, lectures as if from a disembodied voice speaking from an invisible lectern on a vacuum-dark stage, since many struggling writers fail to manage exposition's dramatic introduction expectations So prologues are generally drama-less and subject to rejection.
posted
Tastes fluctuate. Legolas and I seem to like much the same type and style of writing, for example, while others do not (based on the comments I received on the current Hebora challenge). Of course, successful writers are those who are attuned to what the masses (and the editors whose livelihood is attuned to them) like at this particular moment in time. Still, there remain smaller readerships who hear a different drummer and follow the path less traveled. There are writers for them as well. Many prefer Star Trek and Star Wars, I prefer Firefly/Serenity, Babylon 5, and Battlestar Galactica.
Prefaces can be powerful for setting the tone of a story and, most frequently, succinctly provide key background information to the "present" conflict. While they may be exposition by an omniscient narrator, the can be very dramatic; for example, showing a pivotal moment of past history and the characters associated with it (e.g. consider the "preface" to Peter Jackson's film adaption of The Fellowship of the Ring, where the One Ring was sliced from the finger of Sauron and subsequently lost, only to be rediscovered thousands of years later). This dramatic opening is still a preface and, admittedly, one I believe better than that of Tolkien's original preface Concerning Hobbits which was mostly extraneous exposition.
And yet, both were extraordinarily successful.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
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posted
I generally enjoy the assorted side-information -- maps, appendix, language/name notes, character lists (useful with mega-epics). If I discover an appendix, I'm likely to read it first.
Then again, I can get lost for hours in the dictionary, or worse yet, the synonymy.
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posted
Ah, prologues again. We all know that they're controversial; agents and editors claim they hate them, yet quite a few of the things obviously manage to make their way into traditionally published books. Having read quite few unpublished manuscripts myself by now, I think I know what's going on, and it's this: A prologue is an almost fiendishly perfect mechanism for drawing attention to defects in your writing.
Picture if you will a journeyman writer. By dint of hard labor he has managed to raise the level of his writing from embarrassing to tolerable mediocrity. This is a real achievement that puts him ahead of most authors submitting manuscripts. Indeed the shelves of bookstores are crowded with tolerably mediocre books, and our hero's manuscript stands a tolerably mediocre chance of joining them there.
But then our hero decides to tack a prologue onto the front of his manuscript. Disaster! Out here in front his prose has to work without the support of many powerful structural allies which dull critical evaluation of his writing in the *body* of the novel. There is no plot yet propelling the reader forward. There is none of the reader commitment to soldier on that carries them through rough bits in the middle. There is no reader curiosity about what is going to happen to Naomi. There is only the poor author's prose style, characterization, and scenery, and atmosphere, all standing naked in the harsh glare of unsympathetic critical examination.
Give your novel writing skills a letter grade from A+ (Vladmir Nabokov) to F (Star Trek self-insert erotica fan-fic). Now take 1-1.5 letter grades off that score. That's how a reader experiences that same level of writing in a prologue. But a prologue that scrapes at lest B- and does something important for the rest of the story might pull its weight.
So if you have a *good* and *significant* prologue, great. I promise to read and enjoy it. In fact I pledge to read and enjoy anything you write that's unusually good, no matter how many canons of literary taste it violates.
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posted
One prologue that I can think of that worked for me on its own, and actually turned out to be crucial for the gut-wrenching "reveal" later in the book, is the one for Guy Gavriel Kay's TIGANA.
It was more like a short story and provided characterization and conflict in an incident that was referred to more than once through the body of the novel, so it avoids some of the problems MattLeo so aptly describes.
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quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury: It was more like a short story and provided characterization and conflict in an incident that was referred to more than once through the body of the novel
That also works in first chapters -- make them kind of like a short story in themselves. I think of it as a "bootstrapping challenge"; you give the protagonist something to do that the reader can understand without lots of explanation. Solving that problem draws the readers into the story world, and leaves the protagonist facing the problem that will drive the main action of the story.
This approach is particularly worth considering if that driving problem is somewhat esoteric and needs some specialized understanding of the story world.
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posted
The problem with prologues is that too many novice writers use them as a handy stash for infodumps. And they usually write them before writing anything else.
My advice about prologues is essentially: write the REST of the story first. If you still have necessary material that can't fit into the manuscript any other way, then write that prologue.
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posted
I get irked by lengthy prologues (more than four or five pages). I'd rather get to the story or let the infodump come in slower doses. Having said that a prologue of a few pages can effectively create the setting for an opening if done properly.
My feeling is that the default position is no prologue unless there is something important.
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posted
The prologue discussion fits in with the discussion of rules/principles of writing. A rule of conventional wisdom is always worth breaking, on a trial basis at least. But you should expect to fail when you break a rule. And if you *do* happen to succeed you shouldn't expect other people to give you any credit for succeeding. So if prologues interest you by all means try your hand at one (although probably best after you've got the main story sorted as Reziac suggests). But be prepared to chalk the results up to experience.
Now on the matter of maps, or elaborate world-histories or magical spell-systems etc., I fully understand the attraction for readers. But I believe that writers should avoid putting much effort into those things until they have a couple of novels under their belt.
I realize that following the spirit of my reasoning above you might choose to defy my advice and start with your appendices, but let me say why I think it might be a bad idea for some writers to lavish time on these incidentals: too many writers never finish more than one major story. I see their beginner manuscripts, which are promising, but then they spend years fiddling with that manuscript and it never gets substantially better.
I think they'd have a better chance of raising the level of their manuscript if they wrote another story, preferably two. After that if adding tailfins to their first novel still seems like a good idea, then at least they know what they're doing.
Another reason for writers who haven't got two or three MSS under their belt should avoid lavishing time on world-building incidentals is that it increases their emotional attachment to their first MS.
Attachment has a host of negative implications. Excessive attachment makes it hard to see the faults of the MS, to take criticism constructively. It makes it harder to move on and try new things. Sometimes the writer seems to just retreats into his MS world, immune from any outside praise or blame. I think we all do that sometimes, but unless you invite other people in it's not writing. And getting people to come into your world has to be done story-first. Leading with 4000 years of dynastic history is a bit like suggesting house shopping as first date.
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posted
At the other physical end of book layout and design is backmatter: epilogue, afterlude, coda, afterword, appendices, indexes, colophon, author's note, helpers acknowledgments.
Other front matter includes copyright page, inside title page and publisher information, dedication, publication listing of previous works by the same writer, acknowledment of previous publications of the same work, acknowledgement of others' creative content used, table of contents, and table of illustrations. Places in between narrative content are maps, charts, illustrations, tables, figures, and clip art necessary to appreciate the main action.
Cover matter includes front exterior cover, inside front cover, spine, inside rear cover, exterior rear cover, jacket design for case covered and board bound books, jacket flap content--sometimes used for paperbacks as well as board bound and case covered books, blurbs, ISBN or serial barcode.
I recommend Marshal Lee's Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production, 3rd Edition, for writers interested in understanding book design and for self-publication purposes.
A writer is ultimately responsible for the entire content of a book, though a publisher designs and lays out everything simply because writers oftentimes don't care to and don't know how. A writer participates in the process but may be vetoed by a publisher on anything, including narrative content from the agency of an editor.
Cover design and artwork are areas that a marketing department decides, based on the premise the writer may know the content of the narrative but not how audiences perceive the physical product and its subtle appeals.
Publisher vetting of all manuscript content is also true of prologues. Does the prologue overcome its inherent shortcomings? Meaning does the prologue do what prologues are meant to do: provide prefatory content necessary to understand the main action, prescriptively in narrator voice, and with appealing, accessible, relevant dramatic action.
Prologues traditionally expressed backstory in summary and explanation manner. The ancients gave this content for epic and dramatic poetry in song sung by a chorus before the agonists entered the stage and began performing the main action. Historically, prologues were the pedigrees of the main action's players and the histories of their cultures, families, communities, cities, nations, countries, empires. Prologues then were preliminary history reviews as reminders of the cultures in which the main action takes place for audiences' sake.
In several ancient cultures, leaving out pedigrees and histories was a capital crime, the players and poets subject to bombardment with spoiled food, stoning, or summary execution for altering historical accounts from their government and socially accepted and approved content. Needless to say, many theater goers arrived late to skip past a repetitious prologue. This is an origin of the contemporary social practice of arriving fashionably late.
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