Two days ago, on the 6th of February, I finished writing the novelette titled Guest of Honor. At a little over 11K words, I finished just shy of midnight. Goal accomplished!
I'm still going to continue with what I've been calling my "NaNoWriMo in February". Now I'm starting work on the first draft of a . . . alternative history/military fiction/thriller novel (holy crap, what a combination, but the writing industry loves their little tags and categories so there it is). I wrote about nine chapters about 4-5 years ago, then stopped. I stopped because I wanted to edit one of my completed novels for publication.
In re-reading the nine chapters, cleaning up some of the language and changing the date of the time period, I came to a conclusion: I need a prologue.
I've been listening to some podcast episodes lately on the use of prologues. A pros and cons, so to speak. Many are severely against it--one guy on a podcast even said he would NEVER read a novel that had a prologue.
I may write a blog post on this (okay, not may. I will!) soon so watch out for it.
Prologues have their use. If used properly. Here's the way I see it: prologues are used to set up the story. Movies do this. In fact, I've been watching the DVD of John Carter (no, don't feel sorry for me . . . at least not yet) and the opening few minutes sets up the rest of the movie. Even National Treasure and The Amazing Spiderman and . . . the list goes on and on.
The prologue in my new novel would be new. I haven't written it yet. But I have made a decision to do so.
Because it's needed.
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