To Write a Prologue or Not to Write a Prologue

The day I heard that some people actually skip over prologues when reading novels, I was shocked. To my sixteen-year-old self, prologues always seemed like the most fun part of writing, and I had included them in every single story I’d written for the past few years (finished or unfinished). Besides enjoying writing them, I could not understand why someone would skip any part of a book. The author went to all that trouble to write the prologue, so it must be important. Now, I think I’ve changed my mind on prologues.

Someone said, in an online discussion about prologues on a young writers’ forum that I moderate, that an author should be able to put the important information into the actual novel, and so prologues are just a way of cheating, especially when author’s use it as an info dump where they tell their readers the entire history of their fantasy world. They forget that unless they’ve already got a following of avid readers, no one’s going to care about a war that happened five-hundred and fifty-one years ago.
There are cases where prologues do work, or else I would feel like a complete hypocrite writing about this because one of my novels still has a prologue in it, six years and four full rewrites later. I’ve decided that the occasional prologue is all right, so long as it’s short enough and to the point. A fifteen page prologue with a vague connection to the actual plot of the novel is stretching it in my book, yet I’ve seen this done (and it is part of the reason I never got more than twenty pages into the book).

I still find prologues extremely fun to write, though now when I begin a new story I try to limit myself when writing prologues. Most of the time, they’re unnecessary. Even for my rewritten novel, I’m considering cutting the prologue when I eventually reach a final draft, but then I remind myself that my prologue hooks up with the main story right away, and I’m still left undecided. To write a prologue, or not to write a prologue?

Dialogue Tags

Sometimes, I think that being a writer makes reading a whole lot harder. I constantly find myself focusing on an author’s sentence structure and description when I am trying to read for enjoyment. Of course, almost every author who has written a guide on writing (and whose guide I have read) says to read, read, read, so taking note of how a published novelist goes about creating his or her fantasy world is certainly helpful. I think back to before I considered myself a writer and the books I read at the time. Back then, I cared little about cliché plotlines and the ever-controversial prologue; now, I find myself mentally critiquing published novels as I read.

If an opening paragraph does not catch my interest, I will give it about a page or two before putting the book down if it is not by an author that I know I like. Even if a book I am reading is by one of my favorite authors, I still critique them in my head.

The book I am currently reading is a young adult fantasy novel, as with most of the books I read for pleasure, and the second in a trilogy. I have read another series by this author, and have been waiting for this book since September, yet I noticed a pretty blatant error about twenty or so pages in.

Sometimes I wonder about an author’s editor, such as in this case. I have noticed numerous places in this author’s work where a period was missing, or a dialogue tag was wrong. This was another such case with dialogue.

Normally, when an author writes “he said,” the dialogue tag is there to inform the reader which character is speaking. I have read guides on dialogue tags, where they say that the tags can be replaced with a character’s action, otherwise “she said this” and “she said that” can get a little dry. If, then, dialogue tags are there to help the reader distinguish between who is speaking, would it not make sense to only have one dialogue tag per dialogue?

I would say so, but the author and editor of the book I am reading apparently have a different idea. For three sentences of dialogue, they figure that three separate dialogue tags of “he said” are in order. It still baffles me as to why someone would need three dialogue tags for a single paragraph of dialogue. I remember what Kurt Vonnegut said when talking about excess sentences and think that it should apply to dialogue tags, too: "Never include a sentence which does not either remark on character or advance the action." (I have been trying to use this line of thinking while rewriting my novel and it seems to work.)

After cases like this, I wonder if I would have noticed three dialogue tags for one set of dialogue three years ago.

Everything happens for a reason... right?

I hate when you get yourself set on something happening and then it doesn't. Unfortunately, that's what today's been like.

Even though I got into a dance conservatory, I won't be going until Fall 2011. In the meantime, I've been taking classes at my local SUNY college. Only problem is, I'm considered a continuing education student, so I have to register last. I've taken three other classes, and it's never been much of a problem, registering late, that is. I've managed to get into each class I wanted. But there's a first for everything.

I was planning on signing up for advanced writing, being as I already took COMP 100 and composition classes transfer perfectly. There were about twenty spots open for COMP 200, so I figured I was good. Most people hate writing, don't they? So how many people are going to take advanced composition, anyway?

Apparently a lot. I never realized how many English majors there were at this college.

So I e-mailed the professor of the class I want to take. Still waiting for his reply, but I don't want to spend the next five months doing nothing--and not many classes will transfer and I don't want to take too many because it's best to take them at the university I'll be attending.

Things like this really mess up my writing. I can't concentrate and keep hitting the "send/receive" button on my e-mail. But I'm a fan of thinking, Everything happens for a reason. Funnily enough, an author whose page I've "liked"  on facebook (Neal Donald Walsch) posted one of his quotes today that reminded me of this.  And when I think about it, it makes me less angry/annoyed/upset, because it's one of those things that I find totally and completely true. 

I'm beginning to think that things actually do happen for a reason. (Okay, "beginning" is wrong. I know they do.) I mean, when stuff goes wrong if you try to figure out what the reason might be, I've found that it makes whatever has gone wrong seem less dramatic, less horrible, less "this isn't fair!"

So today when COMP 200 was closed, I kept trying to think of a reason why. The answer came a few hours later when my mom found another class that I could take (because I'd be completely bored out of my mind waiting to go to college in the fall. Writing novels is good, but there's only so many hours in a day that I can force my mind to concentrate before it decides not to listen). I don't know if this class will transfer, but I've already figured out that if I get a creative writing minor as I want, I'll be over the required credits by about two classes. And what better class to help me reach my goals of publishing than a course on editing and publishing. I mean seriously? In the class description, it even mentions a query letter!

So now I'm trying to decide if I even want to take COMP 200 if the professor let's me in, or do I just go for the publishing and editing class. I keep thinking that it would help my writing a whole lot if I learned about publishing, while COMP 200 is just more essay-writing. Yay for decisions that I have until tomorrow afternoon to make. (<--sarcasm.)

But to end on a positive note, this is the quote by Neale Donald Walsch: “Nothing can happen, nothing can occur in your life which is not a precisely perfect opportunity for you to heal something, create something, or experience something that you wish to heal, create, or experience in order to be Who You Really Are.”

Reading and Writing

(I'm too lazy to think up a better title.)

I've been waiting to read Sapphique by Catherine Fisher since I first heard that it was going to be published in the US. It took me almost exactly forty-eight hours to read the book. When that happens, I always think about how long it takes an author to write the book that I just sped through in less than a week. For me, writing a novel takes a good three months, and that's without editing, so when I read a book in under five days, I almost feel like I'm wasting the book. Like I shouldn't be allowed to read the book that fast when it took the author so much effort to write. Having written numerous novels myself, I now have more respect for books when I read. I can appreciate the amount of work they spent editing the pages I'm reading; I even pay more attention to the way a book is written, but that doesn't stop me from reading it in two days.

And speaking of writing, here's my transition into talking about my current novel. Yay for abrupt transitions, a lack of an actual transitional sentence, and starting a sentence/paragraph with a coordinating conjunction! But hey, my comp 100 professor said you can break the rules so long as you know that you're breaking them. Er, yeah. My novel.

It's actually the first novel that I ever finished (way back in 2004) that I'm rewriting. I finished my seventh story and decided it was time for some editing. This particular novel, The Legend of Zirannia, has been rewritten numerous times (I think I'm working on the fourth completely rewritten draft), the biggest rewrite being in 2008, so I figured, it's 2011 now, why not try again?

My single-sentence book summary:

When reincarnation brings a young ruler back to his kingdom, his return is not at all how anyone expected, least of all the king himself.

I thought up the idea for this story when I was twelve/thirteen, though the actual storyline and characters I'm working with now weren't created until 2007, perhaps? It's an interesting change, to know exactly what is happening in a story I'm writing, because usually I do hardly any planning. But it's also nice to finally fix this story up and cut all the pointless subplots and rewrite all the horrible sentences as well as add some characterization--which was very much lacking.

I've rewritten 20,000 words so far since January 1st (on New Year's Eve I decided I was going to rewrite The Legend of Zirannia--the next day, I started), cutting out about 15,000 of eck. With those discarded words went numerous characters. Two POV characters have been scrapped, another semi-main character has dwindled to half the character that it used to be, but I don't mind so much. Now I realize that those characters were just fill-ins. I thought my story needed more people in it (besides the three main characters, two "bad guys," and the few other smaller characters that are actually important to the plot), so it's actually a relief to cut them. It's a fun experience, rewriting my first novel and watching how the characters change and seeing how the plot kinks unwind. This story is finally narrowing its focus and its plot is becoming clearer. Finally. After about seven years.  

(As I write this post, I keep thinking I should write something about dancing next, being as my "about me" says I'm firstly a dancer. I guess it's easier to write about writing than write about dancing. :p Maybe my next post will be about dance, seeing as dance has started back up and I've got one last audition on February 5th.)

Book Review: Catherine Fisher's Incarceron

As I was scanning the shelves of the bookstore one day trying to kill some time (and where better to do that than in a place with lots of books, eh?), I came across Incarceron, by Catherine Fisher. The cover as well as the title interested me, so I read the summary:

Imagine a living prison so vast that it contains corridors and forests, cities and seas. Imagine a prisoner with no memory, who is sure he came from Outside, even though the prison has been sealed for centuries and only one man, half real, half legend, has ever escaped.

Imagine a girl in a manor house in a society where time has been forbidden, where everyone is held in a seventeenth century world run by computers, doomed to an arranged marriage that appalls her, tangled in an assassination plot she both dreads and desires.

One inside, one outside.

But both imprisoned.

Imagine a war that has hollowed the moon, seven skullrings that contain souls, a flying ship and a wall at the world's end.

Imagine the unimaginable.

Imagine Incarceron.

Incarceron is not just about a prison and its prisoners, but about a prison that is alive. Its captives doubt that there even is anything outside, and that maybe Incarceron is all there is. But when Finn discovers a key—something that the others don’t even have a word for—he knows that Outside exists. He can remember things from a time when he was Outside.

While I really enjoyed this book, about a quarter of the way through it I became skeptical as the plot took a turn towards the obvious. The writing left me wondering who said what on more than one occasion, and I think there should have been more description (it’s a living prison, what’s it look like!), but it was very entertaining and had some plot twists thrown in towards the end that I wasn’t expecting, which somewhat made up for the obviousness at the beginning. But overall, it was a good book. I've read it twice, and it was almost better the second time.  

This is one of those books that I wish I'd read slower, but that at the time, I couldn't put down. Fortunately, the sequel Sapphique was just published in the US yesterday. Thirty-five pages in, it's turning out to be just as good as Incarceron. It even looks like Fisher is going to twist the clichés from book one.

I've read other books by Catherine Fisher and never particularly liked her novels, yet Incarceron is one of my favorite books, and I'm sure Sapphique will be, too. If you're a YA fantasy fan, I highly recommend you read this series.

Writing "what ifs"

I recently read a post by an author (Catherine Fisher, author of Incarceron and its sequel Sapphique, which I can't wait to read) about writing. In it, Fisher talked about how her novel could have turned out so differently, and I've often thought about that, too.

I don't plan my novels, so as I'm writing, half the time I'll just write whatever ideas are coming to mind. But I always wonder about the "what ifs." What if I didn't write yesterday? or What if I hadn't pushed myself to write 1,000 words and had stopped at merely 200? My story would turn out completely different.

Right now in my writing (current story, at 20,000 words, will be my eighth completed novel), I'm up to a turn of events, but I have two different choices for the plot. My two main characters can either go off through the rest of the story together, or separate. Either option will make the story turn out completely different, and I keep thinking back to Fisher's post. I could probably write two completely different stories just with the same first 20,000 words and characters. That would actually be quite interesting, but I have little inclination to write 50,000 or so words of something I'm never going to use.

Stories could be so different if their authors had changed one tiny detail. Looking back on the first book of my trilogy, I see that I had four different name choices for my MC. Yet other things stayed the exact same, such as a bit of dialogue that I had. It's written in my "ideas" document on my computer, and it somehow found its way into the story some hundred plus pages later.

I've been writing seriously since 2008, but even now writing still amazes me sometimes, such as whenever I think of what my novel/rare short story/paper could have turned out like had I been in a different mood while writing it.

First Post

First posts. Don't'cha just love 'em? No, not really.

I've been thinking about making a blog for a while now, and finally decided "Eh, why not?" I keep getting ideas for blog posts and not having a blog. Except, I already had a Wordpress account from when I blogged for Young Writers Online's magazine website, so there was really nothing stopping me. Don't know how long this is going to last or if it'll go anyway, but let's give it a try.