How Do You Feel About Prologues

I don’t spend a lot of time here writing how-to articles or making lists of what (not) to do in writing. For all that this is a writing blog, this is a different sort of writing blog, and there are plenty of other writing blogs that do cover those things as well or better than I could. On occasion, however, I must break my own inertia and tackle certain topics. On the menu today is prologues, courtesy of my friend Astrea, who made the mistake of asking how I felt about them.

Short answer: I love them.

Slightly less short answer: I love them when they are used, as Tim Gunn would say, thoughtfully.

Essay answer, basically taken out of my email and edited to remove personal examples/callbacks there is no context for in this blog:

I hate  how the “don’t use a prologue” thing is in vogue right now on writing advice sites. I suppose that soundbite is more effective at checking the irresponsible use of prologues than saying “they are good if you know what you’re doing,” but the uptight thinking and blanket ban on them really upsets me. I love prologues.

…when they are prefacing the story for a good reason. I intensely dislike the kind of prologue that is basically an authorial hand-job to create a false tension about the coming events that would not have been supported by the beginning of the book (cough *Twilight* cough).

But an actual prologue? A piece of action that is self-contained, separated from the main text by years or by happening to different characters, that sets up something important for the problems to come or explains a pertinent past event with more emotional punch than a summary in the “current” timeline ever could? THOSE prologues are AWESOME. The opening chapter to A Game of Thrones is a perfect example: it tells the readers one very important thing that would otherwise have not been revealed for hundreds of pages–the white walkers are real. As readers of the story, we need the dramatic irony created by our knowing the white walkers are real when the characters do not.  It creates a minor tragedy in the opening scene of Ned beheading the deserter, and every time a character laughs at the legends we cringe and know better and get a little more tense waiting for the inevitable revelation. 

The Lies of Locke Lamora is a book that, to me, epitomizes “show, don’t tell” by literally showing the past events that matter. I forget if it had a prologue or merely started way back in the past and jumped forward and then back again, but the story FELT like it had a prologue. All the “interludes” from Locke’s past are there for the reason I’m talking about–to create tension and drama (and, ultimately emotional payout) that would not exist if you were merely told about the past events rather than seeing them happen. Show vs. tell, and a good prologue is all show.

Prologues, used properly, enhance a reader’s fundamental understanding of a situation and sometimes add significant tension to their reading experience. Proper prologues are good things.

One way I look at a story where I think I want to use a prologue, to determine if a prologue would be appropriate, is this: would telling the events covered in the prologue in the story be more of an info dump than just showing them as a prologue? If yes, show what happens as a prologue.

Is the prologue itself an info dump? If so, ditch it. Info dumps work better integrated into the narrative proper.

Another angle is emotional impact: will this scene/decision/choice have a bigger emotional impact if it is shown rather than told as backstory? Will the reader’s perception of this character be influenced by seeing this event happen instead of just hearing about it? If yes, then it’s a good prologue candidate.

What about writing a prologue but then just calling it Chapter 1? You can do that, right? Astrea also asked.

 Theoretically, yes.  If you are really twitchy about prologues that are called prologues, you could just write the events as the first chapter. If you are doing “parts” to the book like, for example, Tolkien did, the Chapter 1 (prologue) could be its own part, where Part 2 picks up in a different place in the overall narrative with Chapter 2. That is the point of part divisions, after all.

That said, personally, I would still put that part of the story in as a prologue, because ultimately the point of calling something a “prologue” is to make it easier for a reader to navigate the story. The standard for including it as Part 1, or Chapter 1, or a prologue, or whatever other division you decide to use, is the same standard you should be using for all the scenes of the story–does it justify its portion of the word count by showing the reader something they need to know (about either plot or character or setting) and do not get from another scene? If the answer is yes, then the story needs that scene. and whether you insert it as a prologue, or a part, or a chapter, or an interlude, or an epigraph really doesn’t matter. Those are just semantics to frame the scene for the reader to help them keep their bearings in your story. If the scene is necessary to the story, put it in–and call it whatever you want to, so long as it makes sense to a reader.

Myself, I’ll just keep calling them prologues.

Amber Waves of Spam…

Welcome to my collection of conflict resolution quotes. I update it regularly and if you have conflict quotes to recommend, please drop me a note.

Wut.

Fear

I am writing this post from my hotel room near the end of my vacation. I forgot to post that I was going on vacation, so for those of you who have been waiting for a post for a week, my apologies. I have been having a lovely time, away.

Anyway. I have discovered this trip what one of my deepest and most visceral fears in the real world is and, like I do, am now wondering if it also applies to my writing patterns.

We went on a cave tour. I have not been in a cave since I was a child, but I remember them being beautiful and a source of wonderment. I expected no problems. I was wrong. I had a moment of near panic when we were at the deepest point, when I realized that I didn’t know the way out. That I was utterly dependent on the lights, and the signs, and the guide, and if anything happened I would be lost there in the underground, helpless and trapped.

My husband had a similar moment, but his came when we were walking down a narrow tunnel. He couldn’t stand the constriction, the press of stone around him. My issue was different. It was not the claustrophic sense of being enclosed, and it was not the darkness that lurked just beyond the light. Had the lights gone out the darkness would not have frightened me. What had me shaking was the sense that I could not save myself. I was ignorant of the layout, and I am ignorant of general survival skill for spelunkers. I didn’t know the way out, and I would not be able to find it on my own – I was trapped.

What made me realize this is probably the fear that leaps out of the boggart’s cabinet at me were the following two consonant experiences:

(1) The time I got locked in a walk-in cooler with the lights out was terrifying not because of the dark or the cold or the thought that no one would find me, but because I could not find the door and then lost all orientation. My cave panic was similar to the cooler, because what made me fear was that I could not get out of the situation on my own.

(2) The only recurring nightmare I have ever had is that I am in a car and it falls, either because it is going up a hill too steep to climb or down a hill to steep to brake the descent, or over a cliff on some mountain pass. Sometimes I am driving, sometimes someone else is, but the terror is always the same – once that fall begins, I can no longer change what happens to me.

All of this together made me realize that my phobia is not being able to control what happens to me.

It explains why my reaction to religious or philosophical ideas based on fate is to want to shoot myself, if I believed them to be true. If I were shown that everything is preordained and nothing I think or do or say is my own, then I would as soon not go through the motions. (This matters, by the way, because I cannot actually see any real-world circumstances – torture porn scenarios are excepted from this discussion – in which I would choose to end my life. I simply love being alive too much to see wanting to end it sooner than it already will.)

I like to order my world according to my own culpability. I understand that things will happen that I cannot predict and cannot control, but I am also very much aware that I control how I react, and that my choice of action and reaction is going to affect what happens to me in the aftermath. I get annoyed with people who play the victim of fate card – everyone is, just grow a pair and deal with it. I am not afraid of life events but rather of being put in situations where I have no options to act, where I must simply accept what happens because I cannot change a thing.

So all of this makes me wonder, with my writing – is my getting stuck and paralyzed when I don’t know what happens next related to my need to have at least a little influence on my life? Do I feel at the mercy of something and unable to direct my writing? Or is it merely a fear of not being perfect?

Hard to say. Perhaps next time I am stuck I will try to analyze what I am feeling through this lens and see what I think then. In the meantime, no more caves for Lily.

Dance Or Die

I received an invitation from a friend in New Orleans to mask in tandem with her this Halloween. It was, to be perfectly frank, the most excellent invitation I have yet received.

So…cause I’m weird like this, would you be interested in dressing up as French ladies going to a bals des victims with me?

Madame, fear not: I am just that weird and delighted by the macabre.

Also, I have been looking for an excuse to make an empire/Regency gown but have not had an Event push it to the top of my costume-making list. Just wanting to is, alas, not quite enough for me to prioritize something.

I had never heard of this phenomenon (or 200-year-old urban legend) called bals des victimes before, nor had I heard of women wearing red ribbon necklaces. All of these commemorations of the terror make sense to me; I would actually find it more difficult to believe such balls didn’t happen than that they did. But even if these were only rumors, the idea has power.

As FIELLE blog put it so very aptly,

It is extraordinary to see illustrations of women of this period with shorn hair, in complete contrast to our ideas of the fashion of that time. Dresses were in the style of underclothes, as this was how one met with Madame Guillotine – and a red ribbon was worn around the neck, grimly recalling the manner in which the aristocracy met its end. Even jewellery in the shape of the guillotine was worn.

I will comb my hair up in the back and make curls out of my front, and if I can lay hands on a guillotine charm then I will wear that…somewhere. Not sure yet whether as a pendant or a bracelet or earrings.

As to the dress…I will probably cheat the period just a bit and go more 1810 than 1795. I like the chemise dress intensely more than the round gown style from the turn of the 19th century, and most of the particularly delightful versions of it I have seen were from a few years later. But since those were British we can always make a Gallic shrug and say, “But of course Parisian ladies had it first.”

Don’t worry…my journey to making this dress will be fully documented here. I will have to research the styles, then find an historical costuming book that has either the particular style I want or several similar styles that I could amalgamate into what I want, then pattern it, then find fabric (that might be the hardest part!), and then at last construct it. Oh, yes, and decide if I will be making stays to go under it or just a chemisette. Regarding construction, there is a possibility that I will choose to hand-sew the gown. I have been wanting to make a dress by hand for a while now, and for some reason Regency gowns seem like they would lend themselves to that pretty well.

Regardless, I now have my next historical costuming project. After, that is, I finish my spencer. And a couple 1950s vintage Vogue summer dresses. And a couple pairs of pants a friend commissioned, and the 18th century gentleman’s/pirate shirt I’ve been slowly sewing (by hand) for over a year (working less than infrequently!), and half a dozen other things. Wow. My creative ADD really is as bad in my sewing as it is in my writing….

Nerd-goggles Or Intentional Game of Thrones Reference? You Decide!

So I came across this little dialogue gem in a Christmas story anthology I bought back in December and have only just gotten around to reading (what? I was waiting till I finished my own so as to avoid inspiration creep!):

For those of you who cannot read the text picture (and, of course, for internet searchability of this outstanding moment in literature), the retort from one lady to another is “How kind, but I do not sew.”

Allow me to slip my cloak on for a moment and remind everyone reading that the House Greyjoy motto from Game of Thrones is “We do not sow.” They say this because they are pirates, and they take everything they need from other men (iron price! That means blood! Because blood has iron in it!). Not making this up. Observe their commendably vaginal sigil:

So my question to the readers is this: was that line in the book italicized to emphasize the girl’s militant severity on the subject of not sewing, or was it italicized to acknowledge that, yes, I, the author, DID just make a Game of Thrones reference?

We may never know the answer to these questions. But I, for one, prefer to see the world through my nerd-goggles and believe that the pun was intentional. We do not sew. Perhaps that could be the motto for House LeFevre…except, oh, wait, I do sew, and rather frequently at that. Alas. My motto would, instead, have to be something like “We always mask” or “Logic first.”

Logic first. Yes, I like that. It is suitably INTJ-ish.