Goodbye Prologue

After much deliberation and the help of my most recent conference - I am putting to rest my prologue.  As a reader, I love prologues - if done well.  They really can grab my attention and throw me into the story.  The problem as a writer - it has to be perfect.  Mine was far from perfect.

My real problem was that I have two stories wrapped around each other. I was trying to start my manuscript with my secondary story and my prologue introduce that second story.  Therefore, the prologue didn't have anything to do with the story itself.   The prologue often give a back story that helps the story move.  I've heard many editors say that if a prologue is done - they will skip it immediately - read the story and then read the prologue.  If the prologue teaches them something that they had missed in the story - then they would consider keeping it.

My change wasn't hard at all.  If you can imagine - my manuscript has 51 chapters. 41 chapters are devoted to my main story and 10 chapters are devoted to the secondary story.  Truth be told though - the secondary story is really just a single long chapter. My former prologue was the first chapter of 10 I just mentioned. My change consisted of taking the prologue and moving it to chapter 5 of my story.  From there - every 5-7 chapters I would add another piece of the puzzle. It was a fun way of doing it. In the end, I kept the chapter - because it is helpful in the overall story.

What are your feelings, as a reader, about prologues.  If you are a writer...does your idea of a prologue change?

This blog post was originally seen at Earth's Divide - my book blog

The Importance of a Query Letter

The Query letter is one of the more crazy things in publishing. I mean - right up there with your pitch. It's so crazy that most writers hate it...or so I've been told. The problem is - as crazy as it seems ....it's vitally important to do and to do it well. But when we get rejected - it can be painful. We need to find a solution to avoid getting rejected.

I believe there is an art to Query letters - and a formula. Stick to the formula and you are playing it safe. Add some splashing colors and you could drown out your canvas or make it glorious. Break all the rules and you will usually implode - unless you shine above the others.

The funny thing is that the query letter is written so differently than the actual story. But almost no one will even read your story if you don't knock the query letter out of the stadium.

I just finished my 9th round of editing. It is time to move on. The next logical step is the query letter. I think that I've written it 10 different ways and I can't get a handle on which one is better or worse. I've read a ton of other query letters and some of the ones that succeeded - I didn't like and some that failed - I loved. It's all a matter of opinion and what gets you on a certain day.

It's important to be honest and make your query letter yours. Research as much as possible and read as many as possible but in the end - write what you need but do it well.

What really seemed to hit me is that the final ingredient in a query letter - must be a dash of luck!

Originally seen at EarthsDivide