What I Learned about Prologues… WD Tutorial lessons!

As some of you know, I subscribed to the Writer’s Digest Tutorials a few days ago.  Yesterday, I finally took the time to sit down and go through one of them, specifically the “Opening Up: How to Create Captivating Opening Pages” by literary agent Kathleen Ortiz.  You can find it and all other WD Tutorials here, if you are so inclined, and I highly recommend checking them out.  The subscription idea is a wonderful thing, too… unlimited access to all Tutorials, for up to a year if you wish.

I am very glad I watched this one in particular, as I found myself wincing throughout and realizing that I needed to do some more work on my novel’s opening.  It’s not terrible as it stands, based on the criteria Kathleen goes over in this Tutorial, but it can definitely be improved based on her criteria, too.

It made me realize two things quite abruptly, and reinforced a third thing that A Girl Who Writes had already mentioned to me as something she’d heard another literary agent say.  Those three things were the following:

1) Prologues are almost always unnecessary, and a majority of agents not only dislike them, but skip them all together if they are submitted along with a query.
2) The inciting incident of my novel is actually not what I thought it was!  This is something that only came to me after I had watched the entire Tutorial.  While reading the notes I had taken and comparing my first chapter to the checklist for a “captivating” first chapter, I realized that my inciting incident did not actually center around the villian escaping his prison, as I had thought, but was instead the fact that Clara’s (the protagonist) grandmother dies, thus sending Clara’s world into a tail spin, and leading to all the other events in the book.  I know, it seems like it should have been obvious what the true inciting incident was, but it wasn’t.  It appears I was too hung up on that pesky Prologue to think clearly.  😛
3) If querying agents, you have, at most, ONE PAGE to capture their interest, and sometimes as little as the first sentence.  This is what A Girl Who Writes had alluded to during one of our meetings.  She said she’d heard 10 sentences from one agent, and Kathleen pretty much confirmed this.  She said she can usually tell within the first paragraph if she wants to see more of the book or not, and confessed most agents don’t give your submitted work more than the first page (being that they receive 15k-30k queries a year!).  If you enthrall them with the first sentence and first paragraph, they will read the rest of what you sent and most likely request the whole thing.  If not… they will send you a pass.

I have been writing for a long time now, and sending my fanfiction chapters to beta readers has taught me to swallow writing-related news that I may not like with a relative amount of ease.  There is usually a little flare of Mr. Ego, but I beat him down with my Staff of Better Writing.  Nowadays, the fights are very brief and almost non-existant.  There was, however, a little more of a struggle over the Prologue bit of this news.

I like my Prologue.  I want it to stay.  I want people to read it, damnit.  Those who have read it reacted favorably to it.  It is not completely unnecessary to the story – it is not endless description or too-much backstory or world-setting-up for the sake of world-setting-up.  But neither is it quite COMPLETELY necessary to the story, either.  Grrrr.

My better sense is telling me I need to take another look at it and possibly rework it.  I could still keep it, but just move its location so that it is no longer the Prologue.  My previous notion of “use the prologue to catch readers’ attention, and then move into a more low-key beginning of the story!” has been duly shattered by this Tutorial, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little irked by this utter destruction of preciously-held ideal.  *sigh*  But, that’s what happens, isn’t it?  We live and we learn.  Especially as writers.  It is all just one big scramble over splintered egos, sputtered protests and toddler-like whining (oh you’ve whined, admit it!), blood and sweat and tears and eyestrain, to emerge victorious at last on top of the heap with the streaming banner clutched in your hand that reads “MOST AWESOME WRITER OF ALL THINGS AWESOME!”

Or at least I hope that’s what happens.

Anyway, just a few summarized pointers from this Tutorial below, to aid in your struggle up that precarious mountain.  For all of the extremely helpful details, check out the Tutorials on the Writer’s Digest site through the link provided at the beginning of this post!

Essential Elements to a Captivating First Chapter!

1. Introduce a captivating character, preferrably the one we’ll be following around for the rest of the book.  When describing them, don’t make it a checklist.  Readers don’t need to know every single thing about their appearance right off the bat.
2. Use the POV that works best for the story you want to tell, and be consistent throughout the story!
3. Tell us where the story happens and the timeframe it occurs within (past, present, or future) through the use of slang, clothing, technology or setting (not a checklist!)
4.  Introduce your hook – ideally a problem or obstacle that must be solved or overcome, but don’t yet give away the big climactic obstacle.
5. If the prologue is meant to contain your hook, find a way to grab readers in Chapter One instead!
6. First few pages must contain some type of interaction… someone doing something, someone interacting with someone else or something else, dialogue, or straight-up action like a shooting/explosion/car chase, etc.  Don’t just have a character sitting around observing their world for the purpose of description/backstory though, for example.
7. ALWAYS end every chapter with a page-turner.  The end of a chapter is NOT a pause, but a springboard into the next chapter.  Does not have to be a cliffhanger, per se, but needs to leave the reader with a question: “Will the character find x on the next page?” “Will these two regret their decision in the morning on the next page?” “Did character z show up after all on the next page?” etc.  Try to avoid cliched chapter endings such as a gun in someone’s face, not knowing what’s around the corner, or opening a door when we don’t know what’s in the other room, etc.

Good luck to all and Happy Writing!!!