My novel is about a young man who emigrates to the eastern coastal area of Florida in the very late 1800s. I want a solid background established for him so that the reader will know who he is when he finally steps foot on the sandy coast. He is born in the piney woods of Georgia and spends his first dozen years there before moving to the coastal town of Savannah until he is grown. He doesn't emigrate to Florida until he is twenty years old. That is, ostensibly, where I want the 'real' story to begin. But if I started there I would be giving away the surprising twist of events that led him there.
Now my problem is that this 'prologue' to his moving to Florida is taking over the story. So far there is little to no dialogue because the telling covers the years rather quickly. I want to get him OUT of Georgia but the backstory is becoming a story of its own. It's already pushing 2,000 words and he isn't even in Savannah yet, nevermind Florida. I'm not sure I'd want to read any story that couldn't produce some meaningful dialogue amongst all that prose. Yet at the pace it moves along I don't see how it can be done.
I need either to slow everything down and just develop his childhood story as a large part of the novel complete with dialogue and protracted scenes, or else I need to cut it all out and just begin when he arrives in Florida and spoil the events of the past. His biological father is left behind and he ends up with an adoptive family in Savannah.
Any suggestions? Is it okay to fill a prologue with mostly prose and very little or no dialogue?? Once I get him to Florida the dialogue and story will move more slowly and it will become all about his adventures and experiences as the state develops into the 1900s.
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89,004 / 50,000
Jul 23, 2008 - 05 19
A prologue needs to grab the reader, just as the first chapter of any story should without a prologue. If it's full of mostly backstory I don't see how it will do that. Backstory is something that needs to be woven into the entire story little by little. You need to let the reader get to know your character as the story unfolds.
Think about where your story really begins. Start where something interesting happens to your character that's going to move the story along. Doesn't have to be something big, just enough to make the reader ask why, or who is this guy and what's he doing. Be careful of just info-dumping, especially right at the beginning.
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Melanie A.
jadedragon's muse
You can't edit what you haven't written.
13,606 / 50,000
Jul 23, 2008 - 07 05
Remember, your first draft doesn't have to be great. Your first draft is where you can explore whatever you need to so long as you just keep writing!
However, I definitely think that just writing description to try and get your character from one place to another, without actual development, is an exercise in vanity more than anything else. Sometimes prologues are entirely unnecessary. Another personal example -- in my current project, I planned to write the first three/four chapters as a "Part One" and described what happened to my characters ten years in the past. Then I read this: http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2008/07/beginning-writer-mistake-take-4.htm.... Pub Rants is a blog written by an agent for writers, and most of what I've read from her so far makes a lot of sense, so that post in particular really struck me... and I decided to scrap the idea of 3-4 chapters of history (really, only 1 chapter would have been interesting anyhow) and just jump right into the action. Once I made that decision, I pumped out 2k words in an hour of fevered inspiration, and the story feels so much more alive to me.
If the plot twist that lands him in Florida really cannot go without being told in a prologue, then put full creative effort into what you're writing -- for the sake of your readers!
Good luck with whatever you decide :]
----------http://fyreflixiewrites.blogspot.com
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Jul 23, 2008 - 10 41
Thank you both! Great information, and very much appreciated.
I've done a lot of thinking and I am going to start the story on the morning he boards ship to travel to his new home. I hope to convey his sense of wonder and adventure, enough so that the reader will want to turn the page to find out what happens. There will be a shocking event on the docks in Savannah at the very beginning that will provide closure to his past and will allow for some backstory to be rehashed in an emotional scene.
This is his true crossroads, where he leaves his past behind and begins his new life. I don't know about 'seamless' but I will try very hard to bring in the back story slowly and only the most necessary bits. I'm beginning to think I might not need most of it anyway. I think that having written such a complete prologue I did myself a favor because now I know very clearly just 'who' my MC is from the inside out. I won't need to use most of the prologue information in the story, but it will be very useful to me in writing the story.
The blog link is great, Fyreflixie!