If you read last week’s post, “Skip the Prologue,” you’ve hopefully seen some of the reasons prologues are often a bad idea. Even prologues that escape being boring information dumps tend to delve into the dangerous waters of distancing a reader from the main story. Having invested their interest and emotion in a prologue, a […]
January 1, 2008 by 35 Comments Beginning Your BookSkip the Prologue!
Writers have an ongoing love affair with the prologue. You know, that chapter before a chapter inserted at the beginning of a book, intended to fill the reader in on important need-to-know info, so that he and the writer will be on the same page when they dive into the “real” beginning of the story. […]
December 17, 2007 by 16 Comments Beginning Your BookDostoevsky and the Art of In Medias Res
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short novel The Gambler never reached the popularity and renown of his other works (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Notes From Underground, most notably), but it deserves a spotlight of its own for several reasons. The most notable reason is undeniably its stunning and incisive portrayal of gambling addiction. Dostoevsky, who […]
