To prologue or not to prologue?

Should you write a prologue for your novel? Maybe yes, maybe no. To find the answer, let’s begin by defining the term:

Prologue
noun

• a separate introductory section of a literary or musical work: This idea is outlined in the prologue.
• an event or action that leads to another event or situation: Civil unrest in a few isolated villages became the prologue to widespread rebellion.

Sometimes I pick up a book and read the prologue and wonder why the author thought it was needed. I ask myself, Does it do anything that can’t be done in the first chapter? If the prologue is all back story, shouldn’t that material be braided into the story as the plot and characters develop? Is the prologue intended only to hook the reader? If so, why wasn’t that done on page one of Chapter One, where the reader-baiting and -hooking should take place?

You may think I’m death on prologues, but I’m not. A prologue can be effective if it’s written well, with a clear view of its purpose, and if it includes significant facts that contribute to the reader’s understanding of what kind of novel this is and where the plot is heading. Furthermore, contrary to what some believe, I think a prologue can be used to pull readers into the story, to create a sense of place and time, to foreshadow events to follow, and to provide the voice and viewpoint of an important character.

Even so, I often find myself sighing with impatience when confronted with a prologue. Just get to the damn story already! I think. Show me a scene. I want to see someone doing something worth writing about. I want to hear people speak. I want setting. I want conflict. I want to know what kicks this story in the ass to get it moving.

The prologues of far too many self-published novels, especially, contain none of these things. They tell; they don’t show. The only thing they do well is extinguish any interest an intelligent reader has summoned in order to start reading the book in the first place.

That’s why I often urge new writers to deep-six their prologue. I’m pretty sure they haven’t given much thought to the craft of writing one, to its purposes and pitfalls. They just jump into the task of prologue-ing and fire away only because it seems like a good idea at the time and is an easy way to get started. All too often this results in a long-winded info dump of back story and character introduction written from the viewpoint of an omniscient narrator, that invisible godlike being in the sky who sees all and knows all, even when we’re in the shower (Yikes!). I don’t know about you, but I find no pleasure in hanging out with a bossy, faceless narrator who’s bent on force-feeding me great globs of information that are too much to digest in one sitting before the story gets under way.

Note: Reading page after page of back story and background info about people you don’t know is not entertaining. It’s more like a chore, like trying to memorize a page of a phone book or, even worse, trying to read Ulysses.

I often tell my writers this: Readers won’t be very interested in learning about a character’s background until they’re interested in his or her foreground.

How to drive a literary agent to drink

Some people say that all literary agents hate prologues. Not true. But many of them do. Here’s what some of them say:

“I’m not a fan of prologues, preferring to find myself in the midst of a moving plot on page one rather than being kept outside of it, or eased into it.” — Michelle Andelman, Regal Literary

“Prologues are usually a lazy way to give back story chunks to the reader that can be handled with more finesse throughout the story. Damn the prologue, full speed ahead!” — Laurie McLean, Foreward Literary

“Prologues often show that the writer doesn’t know where to start the story.” — Carly Watters, P.S. Literary Agency

“Almost all the agents I know completely skip the prologue and start with chapter one when reading sample pages.” — Kristen Nelson, Nelson Literary Agency

“Most agents hate prologues. Just make the first chapter relevant and well written.” — Andrea Brown, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

I'd say 99% of the submissions I receive with a prologue don't need it. Most of the time they read (to me) like: Look at me! I can write an AMAZING scene! Oh, but sorry, you have to read 100 more pages to get to the story. — Natalie M. Lakosil, the Bradford Literary Agency.

In best-selling author Kristen Lamb’s blog (http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/), she says that “there are a lot more reasons to NOT use a prologue than there are to employ one.” She calls prologues a big “fish head” that, in many cases, should be “cut off and thrown away.” But she also acknowledges that “prologues, when done properly, can be excellent literary devices. Yet, with a clear reader propensity to skip them, then that might at least make us pause before we decide our novel must have one.”

She identifies “The 7 Deadly Sins of Prologues,” as follows:

• The prologue is really just a vehicle for a massive information dump.

•  The prologue really has nothing to do with the main story.

• The prologue’s sole purpose is to “hook” the reader.

• The prologue is overly long.

• The prologue is written in a totally different style and voice that is never tied back into the main story.

• The prologue is condensed world-building (especially in science fiction).

• The prologue is there solely to “set the mood.”

As you can see, she’s one pro who thinks a prologue is no place for reader-hooking and mood-setting, while others think this is okay.

So when can you use a prologue? Ms. Lamb says:

• Prologues can be used to resolve a time gap with information critical to the story.

• Prologues can be used if there is a critical element in the back story relevant to the plot.


To all this I’d like to emphasize these points:

1. A prologue is not a side or back story. The best ones, IMHO, are a pivotal event that leads up to Chapter One.

2. Literary agents usually read only the first three to five pages, so if you have filled those pages with prologue material, many agents will reject (or set fire to) your manuscript without going any farther.

3. Readers tend to skip a prologue.


I have made my own admittedly unscientific survey of e-novels self-published on Amazon. After reading many samples from these books, I saw how popular prologues are with this legion of writers. I’d say that about 80 percent of these novels start with a prologue.

We probably shouldn’t rush to a judgment based on this observation, but I think it indicates something for us to ponder. Most of these prologues break one or more of the rules already mentioned. Some of the ones I’ve read should be labeled “Chapter One.” Almost all the others are info dumps of back story and biography used to set up the main story. Too many of them were so long that I couldn’t bear to read the whole thing. Will other readers feel the same way? I’m going with a yes.

So before you write a prologue, consider what I and others have said here. I also urge you to go to a library or a bookstore and analyze prologues in many published novels and see what works and what doesn’t and why. Take notes. Then reread the prologue you’ve written and decide whether to keep it or cut it. 

Like a fish’s head.


Paul Thayer
Your Book Editor

He spewed?

One of my clients asked me this question:

Q. Using the word said after a line of dialogue all the time seems boring. Why can’t I use more descriptive verbs?

A. Using attribution verbs like gasped, laughed, spat, croaked, rasped, barked, and even (oh God please no) ejaculated and many others of their ilk is unnecessary and redolent of the work of amateurs and writers of pulp fiction. Speakers don’t gasp or spit or laugh a line, they say it.

Stephen King agrees, calling the use of these words “shooting the attribution verb full of steroids” (page 126 in On Writing). He admits to committing that sin in the past, but declares now that “the best form of dialogue attribution is said.” Dean Koontz declares that he never uses any attribution but said, although he may have done so in the early days, as King did. Other writers and teachers, including Elmore Leonard, have also sung the praises of the simple word said.

One of Leonard’s ten rules of writing is “Never use a verb other than said to carry dialogue.” He says: “The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.”

You can use some attribution verbs other than said as long as they aren’t of the steroid-injected kind. For instance, you can use words such as shouted, cried, called, whispered, murmured, mumbled, and a few others occasionally. If writers go beyond that by using goofy steroid words or verbs followed by adverbs, they’re intruding in the story by explaining too much. As King says (page 128, On Writing) if your context is constructed correctly, “when you use he said, the reader will know how he said it—fast or slowly, happily or sadly.” So don’t write something like this: “Go to hell!,” he said angrily. Don’t add the adverb angrily. Anyone who says that is obviously pissed off.

Paul Thayer
My website

Indirect or summary dialogue

You don’t want to miss any opportunities to present dialogue. Sometimes, though, you should not present dialogue directly; instead, you should present it indirectly, meaning that it should be summarized, a.k.a., paraphrased. For example, two people meet and say something like this:

“Hi, Bob. How are you doing today?”

“I’m fine, John. How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks. How are your wife and kids?”

“They’re doing great. How about yours?”

Dialogue like this is unnecessary as well as boring. Don’t include everyday chitchat. You must get right to the point for having a conversation—to the real reason why the people are talking. Dialogue has been called “conversation’s greatest hits.” This means you should include only the most meaningful words and ideas, just as you give readers only the most significant physical details in a scene. When you use only meaningful dialogue, it helps to advance the story and develop characterization. You could summarize insignificant dialogue or, better yet, don’t include it at all.

Neither should you use dialogue where one person tells another one information that the reader already knows. That’s when you should summarize that information and say something like this:

He told her how he had discovered Johnson’s body that morning and what he had found in his apartment.

Furthermore, in order to save space—remember, economy is one hallmark of good writing—and to keep things moving, summarize dialogue of secondary importance yet important enough to communicate useful info or create images, or both, that help enlarge the story in some way. Example:

So Virgil never got to go ashore. One of the midshipmen who did, delivering messages to the consulate, said the city was full of beggars and Spanish soldiers; he said people walked in the middle of the street, rode horses holding umbrellas over their head, and the women wore so much white face powder they looked like they were dead. Virgil said he’d like to see them anyway. The midshipman said don’t step in the gutters; some places there was poop in the gutters. He said hey, he bet that’s why everybody walked in the middle of the street.
— Elmore Leonard, Cuba Libre

Summary dialogue like this delivers info and imagery to readers quickly.

As you review your text, consider each section of dialogue carefully, asking yourself, Do these words need to be spoken aloud, or should I rewrite this part as indirect dialogue?

Paul Thayer
My website

Verbs are moody little buggers

Verbs have three "moods"—indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. The most common is the indicative mood. You are using the indicative mood when you make a simple statement:

I know the window was shut. (indicative mood)

Where the indicative mood tells, the imperative commands, and the subjunctive wishes or speculates:

Shut the window. (imperative mood)

I wish the window were shut. (subjunctive mood)

Mood indicates how the writer thinks about a subject. If you wish something were true or speculate about what might happen (subjunctive mood) or give a command (imperative mood), you let the reader know this by changing the form of the verb or by the omission of certain words.

Consider this embarrassing situation: A husband comes home unexpectedly and sees a man fleeing out his back door. He rushes into the bedroom and accuses his wife of cheating on him, and she responds:

So what if my lover were here? (subjunctive)

By using the subjunctive mood, she is not confessing; she’s inviting her husband to consider a hypothetical question.

But the situation is quite different if she says:

So what if my lover was here?

Now she is indeed confessing and wants to know what her husband intends to do about that fact.

The changing of was to were is the signal for the mood involved—the subjunctive mood. 

Look at the subjunctive in another sentence:

The captain ordered that the sails be hoisted and the anchor be weighed.

You might expect the imperative since the captain is giving an order, but—since the desired condition of the sails and anchor are not yet fact—you use the subjunctive.

Once the order has been carried out, you could use the indicative mood to express the situation:

The captain saw that the sails were hoisted and the anchor was weighed.

Compare that to the imperative mood, used to give a command or to direct someone in the performance of a task. Note that the imperative mood is created by removing the implied subject, which in English is always you.

"(You) Hoist the sails! (You) Weigh anchor!" yelled the captain.

Now we are hearing the captain give the actual order—in contrast to the first sentence, where we are merely reporting what the order was. This distinction will become quite important when you start writing dialogue and quotes. It differentiates between the summarizing or paraphrasing of speech and the speech itself.

Paul Thayer
Your Book Editor

Finding the right word

Mark Twain said, “use the right word, not its second cousin.” He also said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

I couldn’t agree more. When I line edit a manuscript, I typically change many words to ones I think are better ones. The author can accept or reject these changes. I hope they will accept them or find one that’s even better—the quintessentially right word. After I’ve made quite a few of these changes, I suspect that the writer used the first word that came to mind. Nothing wrong with doing that in a first draft if the words flowed from a writer’s figurative pen in a rush of creativity. But the writer must, must, must slowly and carefully review and revise that first draft. One thing to look for is words that could be stronger and more precise in their meaning. Most words have a number of synonyms. Use a thesaurus and consider each of those synonyms to see which one most closely communicates what you want to say.

Tip: When you review your writing, look for only one thing at a time, not for everything that could be improved. You could look for weak and/or imprecise words in your first review.

Tip #2: Many of the words I change are anemic action verbs. For instance, instead of writing "Susan walked across the room," you could say, "Susan flounced across the room." Remember the old adage "Show, don't tell"? Weak verbs such as walked only tell what Susan did. A word like flounced shows what she did.


Read more here.


Paul Thayer
Your book editor

Scene Breaks

You must indicate a scene break when one scene ends and another one begins. To do this, just leave a blank, one-line, horizontal space on the page by hitting the "Return" key twice. When I line edit a manuscript I indicate places where the writer should insert a scene break with this notation:

---------- 1# ----------

You must insert a scene break whenever:

• The narrative point of view moves to a different character from the one in the previous scene
• A significant amount of time passes between one scene and the next
• A different set of characters enters the story
• The characters have moved to a different setting from the previous scene 

No rules, dashes, or dingbats of any kind should be placed in the white space of a scene break unless the scene ends at the bottom of a page. When that happens insert three asterisks (*), centered on the page, with five spaces between each one, at the bottom of the page or at the top of the next one to alert readers to the break. 


 Paul Thayer
Your Book Editor

Who’s on first?

The pronoun that may have a long history of referring to people as well as things, but using it can sound illiterate in some contexts where you’re obviously referring to humans—a habit that writers have picked up from spoken American English. Further, despite the long use (or misuse) of that in connection with people, current English textbooks maintain that who should be used to refer to people or to animals with names or special talents. That and which, they say, should be used to refer to animals, things, and sometimes to anonymous or collective groups of people.

A few exceptions exist, as usual. Using that instead of who can sometimes get you out of a tough situation, like this one:

“Did she say it was a man or a book that she curled up with last night?”

I could make an inappropriate comment about this sentence, but this time I’m gonna restrain myself.

Paul Thayer

Your Book Editor 

Soaping up

Providing readers with information they need to know is necessary, of course, and a great way to do that is by using dialogue. You have to make sure, however, to avoid what I call “soap-opera dialogue.” You shouldn’t have characters discussing things they already know just for the benefit of the reader. Chitchat like this is called soap-opera dialogue because it’s used in soaps frequently to help viewers who may have missed a few shows. Example:

Rick: “Jeff got here about ten minutes ago.”

Todd: “Jeff? That sleazy attorney who broke up with Natalie last week after Dr. Lebowitz told him she had a brain tumor?”

Rick: “Yep. He flew in this morning. I guess he figures that big murder trial of his in New Orleans can go on without him.”

In conversations like this you can almost see the characters winking at each other. Never use soap-opera dialogue in your novel.

Paul Thayer

Your Book Editor 

Which hunting

            The problems many writers have with the words that and which make copy editors inveterate which-hunters. Remember that a nonrestrictive clause is not essential for the reader to understand the full meaning of the word or words that it modifies. It simply adds more information, describing but not limiting (“restricting”) what it modifies. On the other hand, a restrictive clause contains information that is essential for the reader to understand the full meaning of the word or words that it modifies. It limits (“restricts”) what it modifies. To keep things simple, use the relative pronoun that to begin restrictive clauses and which to begin a nonrestrictive clause. Examples:

Restrictive:

He showed me the book that arrived in the mail today. [The meaning is restricted to just one book—the one that arrived in the mail today.]

Nonrestrictive:

He showed me the new Stephen King novel, which is the one I told you about yesterday. [The clause just adds more information to the sentence.]

            Also note that you can often delete the word that in many constructions: The books [that] I ordered arrived today.

Paul Thayer

Your Book Editor

Use a singular noun with a plural possessive

            To avoid ambiguity you should usually use a singular noun with a plural possessive when only one of the things possessed could belong to an individual.

Example:

Four pilots crashed to their death (not deaths).

Mr. Smith knew most of them by their first name (not names).

See the plural possessive their in both sentences? That should clue you in.

Another example:

“Let’s go put something in our stomachs.”

People have only one stomach (although some look as if they have at least two), so you must use the singular word stomach. See the plural possessive our?

Paul Thayer

Your book editor

Hooking up: The comma splice

 Recognizing comma-splice errors in your writing is important. What’s a comma splice? This is linking two sentences (two independent clauses) with a comma.

Examples:

The current was swift, he could not swim to shore.

I like you, you’re nice.

Martha was a lonely woman, she didn’t have any friends.

What we have in these constructions is two separate independent (main) clauses—clauses that contain a subject and a verb—that express two separate thoughts. Example:

Martha was a lonely woman. She didn’t have any friends.

When you have two independent clauses in a sentence, you must write them in one of the following ways:

>   Separate them with a period so they’re treated as two complete sentences.

>   Connect them with a semicolon if the two thoughts are closely related (I like you; you’re nice.)

> Connect them with a conjunction, which should have a comma in front of it (The current was swift, and he could not swim to shore.)

This is such a basic rule of writing that I cringe when I see a comma-spliced sentence. Where was this writer, I wonder, when his 7^th-grade English teacher taught this lesson? In the john, perhaps, sneaking a smoke. To be honest, this error also makes me prejudiced against the writer because it raises a big red flag. If the writer doesn’t know about such a simple rule, how many other grammatical sins am I going to find in this manuscript? This does not make an editor look forward to reading the rest of the book. We would rather clean the toilet.

Paul Thayer

Your Book Editor

Going begging

You will see the expression begs the question used incorrectly in many different contexts, from student compositions to respected national magazines and newspapers to TV news programs.

The concept of “begging the question” is a fallacy that comes from the discipline of logic and the art of formal argument, where it’s known as petitio principii. In a debate, if someone begs the question, he is assuming in the premise some truth that he seeks to establish in the conclusion. For example, in Alice in Wonderland, during Alice’s wacky conversation with the Cheshire Cat, the cat uses certain assumptions (including his own madness) to conclude that everyone in Wonderland is mad. He says, “Well, I’m certainly crazy; therefore, everyone here is crazy.” This is using flawed logic.

You will see the phrase begs/begging the question used incorrectly in statements like this one:

Giving the schools billions more dollars begs the question of whether this will improve students’ grades.

Instead of writing “begs the question” in sentences like this one, write “raises the question” or “prompts the question” or “forces one to ask.”

Paul Thayer

Your book editor

Going retro

The title of the book is A Tale of Two Kitties. Yuk, yuk.

Subtle viewpoint shifts

I have already discussed viewpoint, or point of view (POV), in fiction. The most obvious mistake is shifting the POV from the viewpoint character (VPC) to another character in the same scene. Less noticeable POV shifts are from the VPC to an omniscient narrator—the all-seeing, all-knowing invisible intelligence—which is really the author in thin disguise. Writers often fail to see these inadvertent shifts, but a good editor will catch them. Here’s an example:

Braelynn rounded the berm and headed for the bluff, fistfuls of her skirt bunched in her hands to keep her legs free. But before she reached the crags, more horsemen appeared on the cliffs. The lass skidded to a halt. . . .

This shift occurs when the writer says “The lass.” In the first two sentences, Braelynn is the VPC. After that an omniscient narrator intrudes, because Braelynn would not think of or refer to herself as “The lass.” Only an omniscient narrator or another character—who shouldn’t have the POV—would. To avoid the POV shift, “The lass” should be changed to “She.” That maintains Braelynn’s viewpoint.

Sometimes an omniscient narrator—that crafty bugger—sneaks in here and there with words that describe something that the VPC cannot, or probably cannot, know. One book I edited said a character wore an Armani suit and Italian-made Moreschi shoes and talked to a Bengali sales clerk. An omni narrator could recognize an Armani suit, Italian-made Moreschi shoes, and a person from Bengal, but can the VPC? I doubt it. In most such instances the author has provided these details.

See what I mean? Writers should review their work carefully to eliminate such unintentional viewpoint shifts. Better yet, get an editor to do this for you.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com

Using the em dash (not to be confused with the M&M dash and the Eminem dash)

Writers need to know how to use the em dash, which is written as one long line (—). This punctuation mark is used to set off a sudden break in thought, an interruption in dialogue, an introductory series, and a parenthetical element (such as an appositive*) in a sentence. Em dashes are often used to set off parenthetical elements within a sentence, like this:
Four states—Illinois, Ohio, Alabama, and New Jersey—are putting up highway signs             in metric language.

As you can see, the words between the dashes can be deleted from the sentence without affecting its sense. Dashes used like this are a lot like parentheses, but they are not as strong. A parenthetical phrase is much more of an aside to the reader.

An em dash can also be used to set off a word or words that come at the end of a sentence, like this:

They had twenty-three murders to solve, no leads, and only one suspect—Hannibal Lecter.

As an interruption in dialogue:

“Will he—can he—obtain the necessary signatures?” asked Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith said,  “But I thought—”

The em dash should not be used as a generic form of punctuation.

________________________________________________________________

* The term appositive comes from the Latin, "to put near." An appositive is a noun, noun phrase, or series of nouns placed next to another word or phrase to identify or rename it. Example:

Saint Valentine, the patron saint of lovers, was never married.

Paul Thayer

your-book-editor.com