: Re: How long can a prologue be, and what should you not do? A while back I wrote a prologue about the beginning of time and space and all that. One thing I noticed later is that between the

Firstly, I would say that if your prologue is 18k long, it is not a prologue it is your story in chief. Or it is a prequel to your story in chief.

I think the problem with a lot of prologues is that they are a device of laziness. it is heaping a whole lot of information into the storyline without putting the effort into making it a part of the storyline.

A prologue should be something that gives the reader some pertinent information, that is potentially skippable, because some people do. It is the writer's chance to give some information outside of the normal voice of the story. Details and specifics don't belong in a prologue, it isn't the place for telling the reader that when John was five he squashed a bug. That is what the story is for.

Personally I would say write the prologue once you have finished the rest of the story. Write it to fill in whatever aspects didn't fit in the story. Make it very short, no more than a few hundred words, and work at it like you would the first paragraph.

If at the end of the prologue the reader isn't saying 'wow! I really want to read this book' then you should tear it out and burn it.

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: Re: How long can a prologue be, and what should you not do? A while back I wrote a prologue about the beginning of time and space and all that. One thing I noticed later is that between the

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: How to find the balance between research and the obvious I'm embarking on writing my first popular science book on a controversial subject. For sure the writing must be rational, coherent with

: I need to smash a wrist in a grocery store One of my lead characters has to do community service at a grocery store. She has magical powers that will allow her to escape easily, but they

: It depends, but probably you want the distributed approach where the chapter on X tells you everything you need to know about X, even if some of that is only relevant if you're using feature

: How many names in a book are too many? It seems to me there is a relative limit for commercial fiction regarding the number of named characters. This makes sense, of course. Readers get confused;

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