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.

On Stripping DRM

I hate DRM. It’s like gun control–it’s stupid and short-sighted and all it does is punish people who play by the rules. Do you think pirates give a shit about copyright? No. That’s why they are called pirates. Do you think they are going to let a little thing like breakable encoding get in their way? No. That’s the digital equivalent of storming a ship and bringing her to heel.

I can’t pretend like I am any kind of programmer or capable of stripping DRM without tools someone else made to help me do it. But if I have paid for a file and need to use it for my own personal use in a format which it was not “meant” for, I’m not going to buy the thing a second time in the format I need. Sorry. You have my money, and I own this material for any personal use I see fit.

Today was the first day I’ve had to strip DRM off a file. I had purchased an Adobe epub because it was the only format available at the time I bought the book (which has since been added to Amazon for Kindle, which is what I use). Remember, piracy happens because the product is not available in the format needed by the consumer at a price they consider reasonable. Trust me, I would rather have been able to purchase the file I wanted rather than spend an hour of my Sunday downloading the tools to break DRM and then figuring out how to do it, but lacking that option, by God I was not going to let some publishing corporation with a stick up its arse get the better of me. In a way they have, time is money, etc., but my time wasted is not the same as more of my money given to them if I had just bought it a second time on Kindle and be halfway through the damn thing by now. THAT’S NOT THE POINT.

The point is, again, first-hand this time, the only thing DRM does is upset legitimate, paying customers. I am just glad to be computer savvy enough that I can get my file hacked instead of being resigned to a double-purchase and getting taken advantage of by my ignorance of formatting or unwillingness to break any rules.

That emotional and moral calibration is worth considering to anyone working for or as a publisher. As a writer, I want to get paid for my work, absolutely. But I don’t want my customers to feel exploited, cheated, bamboozled, strongarmed, or in any other way ripped off. I want them to pay me because they like my work enough to pay for it in order that I will write more for them to enjoy. I don’t want them to resent paying me, ever, and especially not because I forced them to by the same book twice because they needed to convert their copy to a new format.

So the moral of the story is: pirates > DRM proponents. At least there is a certain honesty to the pirates that seems…lacking from people who want to fuck me as a consumer every way they can simply because they can.

Beautiful Creatures: Just another sexual morality tale masquerading as a witch story

So I got drug to see Beautiful Creatures over the weekend, and though the film was pretty terrible I saw enough potential in the set-up that I decided to download the book. I couldn’t focus well enough to write last night, so I finished reading the novel instead. Better than the movie, for sure, although I have some serious suspension of disbelief issues–no way a boy spends that much time emoting; have these people ever been to the rural South, much less lived there?; there is no way two creative and determined teenagers can’t figure out how to get off together even without “mating” if that will kill one of them, so why bother pretending otherwise?

My corrollary reaction was simply, WTF is up with all these teenage forced abstinence tales? First Twilight with Edward’s diamond penis and now this.

I think it’s the acknowledgment that, without such an outside imposition, two kids in love aren’t going to find a whole lot of reasons to resist physical intimacy, because they never have. It would be unrealistic for a pairing as electrically attracted as this couple not to have sex sooner or later, but their doing so would take the book out of the “safe” zone of intense longing and wanting to with no fear that it could actually happen.

For me, it’s a cop-out of addressing the actual issues of teenage sex and physical intimacy and what happens when it sucks the first time or two (or ten). I understand the impetus to leave such uncomfortable topics out of books that are about “other things” (like magic or vampires or the end of the world), and I get that a demand exists for “clean” YA, since apparently much of the plain contemporary YA has a lot of sexual content, but at the same time…why, then, do you need to write a romance? Why couldn’t this story be about lonely witch girl finding a best friend? Not a whole helluva lot would change if it were. Castrated romance is actually kind of pointless, now that I think about it.

Well. Time to go enjoy another day at work with the dulcet tones of actual Southern drawls instead of–well, whatever those atrocities were. And maybe now I’ve finally found my inspiration for that sex scene I’ve been debating….

That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard. How marvelous.

Or, How to lose fans and alienate people;

Or, Friendship and editors don’t mix;

Or, How to know you’ve made it, publishing edition;

Or, Playing chicken with the Big 6

I just read what is quite possibly the worst romance I have yet encountered, and considering my old low was the line “Oh, Logan. You’re completely inside me at last. How wonderful,” this new kind of low is impressive.

I am actually not being completely facetious when I say I am impressed. The piece was a work of art in terms of dross. The author had to try pretty damn hard to write a story this poor – there is simply no way this was written with the intention of being good or written this badly by accident. No, no, no, it was clearly meant to a defining moment in bad literature…a sort of Bulwar-Lytton approach, except to an entire novella and not just an opening sentence, a Tarantino/Rodriguez challenge to make the best worst film ever, except in romance writing. (I have not yet identified the Tarantino in this parallel, whose book turned out so secretly awesome her partner accused her of cheating because it was against the rules to write something objectively good…this one is clearly the Robert Rodriguez.)

So what was so terrible about this particular novella?

First, probably that it was by an author whom I trusted based on past work. She’s been slipping for a few years now, but I thought this one might be more inspired. Her name was the reason I bought the collection. She just convinced me to drop her from my list of authors I will purchase without vetting the book first. Or possibly even considering buying again ever.

Then we have the nonexistent characterizations and ham-fisted cultural stereotypes. There’s the southern European princess from the culture of “hot-blooded, sensual” types, and on the other side is the “northern barbarian” with no feelings, blond hair, and a giant penis. The characters do not exist outside of romance cliches–that she is secretly a scholar and he is a misunderstood warrior who wants to be a peacemonger–and the cultures they represent. Also, their two completely different cultures? Exist in some magical realm wherein it takes less than one day to travel from Greece to Germany. On horseback. I guess the reason she made up two countries was because she didn’t have the spare 10 words in her length limit to preface their arrival in the north with something like, “After weeks of travel…” Excuse me, a spare FOUR WORDS.

The plot is almost nonexistent. It’s basically a series of things that happen, where everything magically goes the heroine’s way. For example, she has to find the princess who ran off with the gypsies? The royal guards have been searching for days, but she finds her in one afternoon, no problem! There just…aren’t any real conflicts or problems, only vaguely inconvenient circumstances that, yes, make her make a decision she otherwise wouldn’t but seem to have no heft, no actual sense of threat or consequences.

I am not sure the couple has a single conversation in the course of the story. We are told they do (I think) but never see one. Then we are told that they are in love, but, again, never see any evidence of that. At the end there is a magical plot moppet who appears in her womb after a week of sex, ready to force the hero’s hand if he doesn’t come around on his own! It’s so magic!

The whole thing was also written in a stilted voice, as if even the narrator is bored by this story. As, to my opening point, I am sure the author was.

So.

How does such a lazy, trite, unengaging story get published? Here are my theories:

1. She is friends with her editor, and her editor has no spine to tell her this one blew.

2. She is an author who has always been heavily edited/coached, but she is either with a new publisher or a new editor who didn’t realize until too late in the production process to fix things what kind of writer she is.

3. She has reached the kind of sales status that means people buy her on name recognition, thus her publisher has no vested interest in quality control with her writing because “fans will buy it anyway.” Thus this type of story slips through uncorrected and unchecked because fixing her work is now unnecessary to their bottom line, thus a waste of resources that could be spent correcting the next author they think could attain this sales bracket.

4. She didn’t want to write this piece but was either contractually obligated to or strongarmed by her publisher into doing so with a threat of not getting her contract renewed if she didn’t send them a novella on this theme.

5. She actively tried to write the worst story she could, either as an experiment to see how much editioral attention she still gets or because she wants out of a contract and is hoping her publisher would drop her if she delivered a sub-par product.

Anyone care to toss out any other theories? Any guesses as to what the writer and the story is?  No internet research, please–guess from your own bad reading experiences, whether they fit this plot or not!

If Lena Dunham Were More Honest About Either Sex or Politics

Or, Why I’m Voting for Gary Johnson

If Lena Dunham were more honest about either sex or politics, her appalling confessional about voting for the first time would have gone a little more like this:

“What no one ever tells you about your first time is what a let-down it will inevitably be.  You build it up in your mind like it’s going to be some grand, romantic, life-changing event…something that will make you feel different, better, more sophisticated. It won’t be that way. You’ll find, when the time comes to make that choice, that your options are limited. You pick a guy you sort of like some things about, and even though there’s a lot that you don’t like, you know he’s the best you’re going to get this time, so you go ahead and you go through with it. You give him that place in your life, of being your one and only first. And when it’s over, you don’t really feel any different. You don’t feel that great about what you just did. You’re still the same confused, scared kid you were going in, only this time you’re left standing on the other side wondering, Is that it? Is that all there is to it?

It’s true what they say, that with time comes experience and with experience comes knowledge. You get older. You try it a couple more times with guys you only sort of like. And then you say, No. Enough’s enough. I have more self-respect than this. I deserve more than this. I deserve someone who sees the world the way I do, who I have more than a couple things in common with, and who I don’t disagree with on more than a couple issues. I deserve to experience this with someone I can be passionate about. Someone I can believe in. Someone who won’t let me down.”

And that, fair readers, is why I will be voting for Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party, this year. This is my third Presidential election cycle, and both of my other two votes have gone to candidates I viewed as the lesser of two evils. This time, I’m not voting for someone I consider only slightly less awful than the other guy. I am not voting to cancel out the vote of someone I disagree with. I’m voting with my heart, for a man who stands for almost all of the same things I do, who has pragmatic and specific proposals to act on those beliefs, and who has a voting record that supports his claim that he would actually make good on his promises.

I don’t care that he will not win. What I care about is no longer compromising my political beliefs.

I know many people would claim I am throwing my vote away, but I disagree. Throwing my vote away is giving it to a candidate I don’t even like, but simply fear less than the other guy. Perhaps this election is special simply because both candidates offend so many of the beliefs I am most passionate about, that while there is a difference between them, it is only which part of my self to betray if I were to support one over the other.

I am done feeling dirty and ashamed after walking from the voting booth. I will vote with my heart, and walk out with my head high and my conscience clear.

Republicans…you should have gone with Ron Paul.