blatherskite (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blatherskite) wrote2009-11-18 08:57 am
blatherskite) wrote2009-11-18 08:57 am
Solving the prologue problem
A reader wrote to me privately to ask about the tricky problem of helping readers understand what has come before when you're writing the sequel to a long or complex book. Here, the problem we face is that it may have been a year or more since the first book came out, and asking our readers to re-read that previous book (or several previous books) just so they can understand the current book may be asking a bit much. Indeed, it's enough of a problem that I won't read any new C.J. Cherryh novels until all three books in the trilogy have been published—I simply can't remember enough details of the originals to follow the story well.
The usual and obvious solution is to provide two kinds of reader aid:
First, provide useful "front matter". One typical inclusion is a list of the dramatis personae (the "cast"), with brief clues for each person's role in the story. Simple descriptions such as "hunchbacked and evil schemer who usurped the throne of Absinthe and slew good king Henry" can provide enough of a hook that readers can easily dig up old memories and hang them on that hook. Timelines or chronologies are also common for stories that cover long periods of time. For typical fantasy stories, where geography is often important, providing an annotated map ("here lies King Henry, most foully slain by Richard") is also helpful. I've always loved a good map because it orients me within the physical space of the novel.
Second, you can create a prologue that surveys the most important aspects of the earlier book. If you're writing commercially, this synopsis is often part of your "pitch" letter, in which you try to catch the publisher's interest enough that they'll ask you to submit your novel (thereby neatly escaping the slush pile because the book has become a solicited submission). If that pitch works well enough to secure an invitation, it'll work equally well to attract the interest of readers who haven't read the previous book.
Purists dislike prologues because they believe that every book should be capable of standing alone. There's lots of merit to that argument, and it's something we should always keep in mind when we write a new book, but it can be a difficult goal to achieve in practice. The realities of publishing are such that publishers often prefer to split a single long story into two or three smaller novels, published at intervals of a year, to ensure continuing sales for an author. I've even seen authors (including C.J. Cherryh and, if memory serves, Steven Brust) add an explicit apology for this as an author's foreword. Such forewords usually run along the following lines: "I'm really sorry that it's been 2 years since you saw the previous installment of this story. I wanted the whole story to come out simultaneously in a single volume so you could just read straight through, but my publisher wouldn't let me do that."
Prologues can certainly be done with varying levels of skill, ranging from the clumsy to the elegant. The most familiar example to most readers of this blog will be the title crawl at the start of each Star Wars movie: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...". I don't consider that approach particularly elegant, but it's an effective way to set the scene, and if you keep it short, nobody will complain much. Most TV series that feature any kind of dramatic continuity use a variation on this technique: they run about 30 seconds of "previously on [name of show]" video clips to remind you of any key points you may have forgotten since the original episodes aired. Alternatives for novels include the back-cover blurb (though space is too constrained for much of an explication) and (increasingly) a Web site that provides a home for the book, the synopsis, and any relevant author's notes.
I imagine that we'll eventually see novels published as hypertexts, possibly implemented as some form of metafiction, with copious links to "explanatory footnotes" or "asides" inserted by the author. Terry Pratchett already does this to some extent via the copious footnotes in his many comic tales. This would be difficult to integrate with a more "serious" novel, but it can be done. Neal Stephenson has apparently done this in his enormous novel Anathem, though I haven't read it yet and thus can't comment further.
The Judeo-Christian Bible (i.e., Genesis) is a good example of how a prologue can itself be an interesting story that provides important context for everything that follows, though it's worth noting that structurally and in several other ways, the Bible isn't a good model for a novel. Here, the important point is that a good short story provides useful context. It's intriguing to speculate that you might be able to write a short story (less than 2000 words) in which the events of the previous novel are recounted in the voice of a secondary character or an outside observer, possibly even in the form of a diary or journal. Steven Brust has done this to some extent in his books The Phoenix Guards and 500 Years After. Here, Brust uses the framing device of Paarfi the historian, commenting acerbically and at length on the events of the novel. If you love Alexandre Dumas swashbucklers, you'll probably love these books too.
What you should certainly avoid doing is cluttering the sequel with infodumps intended to remind readers of the significance of a given scene. "As you recall, Jim..." dialogue should never be used to remind readers of past events unless this is unquestionably something the characters themselves would need to bring up in conversation. Even then, the person to whom they're explaining past events should clearly be ignorant of those events, and should need to understand them from their personal context, not simply to satisfy authorial needs to expostulate. Although it might be interesting to create a boring character who feels an incessant need to lecture everyone else, that would be exquisitely difficult to do well (i.e., interestingly enough to avoid alienating your readers).
What solution is best for providing the necessary context after a long prequel? None of them. One thing I've learned from years of participation in writers' groups is that no solution will satisfy everyone, particularly in a criticism-oriented context such as a writers' group. The answer is to be true to your own vision as an author, without ignoring the needs of the reader. Make your story as self-contained as you possibly can, introduce infodumps rarely and judiciously (only when they're required by the characters, not the readers), and provide a prologue or alternatives such as the abovementioned front matter so that those who want or need this information have it available, while the others can simply ignore it.
What I haven't seen, but expect to eventually see on the Internet, is the kind of approach used by "the Reduced Shakespeare company": create a podcast or Youtube video that summarizes a much longer book in an entertaining yet intriguing way. I couldn't find any Web links, but I fondly recall Jason Tanaguchi (sp?) performing the entire movie Wrath of Khan in 5 minutes at a Toronto science fiction convention many years ago. (Yes, it can be done, and amazingly, you don't lose much of the movie.) If you're good at performance and have a quick wit (and a video camera or microphone), this could be an interesting way to drum up interest in your sequel while also providing necessary context in a palatable way.
The usual and obvious solution is to provide two kinds of reader aid:
First, provide useful "front matter". One typical inclusion is a list of the dramatis personae (the "cast"), with brief clues for each person's role in the story. Simple descriptions such as "hunchbacked and evil schemer who usurped the throne of Absinthe and slew good king Henry" can provide enough of a hook that readers can easily dig up old memories and hang them on that hook. Timelines or chronologies are also common for stories that cover long periods of time. For typical fantasy stories, where geography is often important, providing an annotated map ("here lies King Henry, most foully slain by Richard") is also helpful. I've always loved a good map because it orients me within the physical space of the novel.
Second, you can create a prologue that surveys the most important aspects of the earlier book. If you're writing commercially, this synopsis is often part of your "pitch" letter, in which you try to catch the publisher's interest enough that they'll ask you to submit your novel (thereby neatly escaping the slush pile because the book has become a solicited submission). If that pitch works well enough to secure an invitation, it'll work equally well to attract the interest of readers who haven't read the previous book.
Purists dislike prologues because they believe that every book should be capable of standing alone. There's lots of merit to that argument, and it's something we should always keep in mind when we write a new book, but it can be a difficult goal to achieve in practice. The realities of publishing are such that publishers often prefer to split a single long story into two or three smaller novels, published at intervals of a year, to ensure continuing sales for an author. I've even seen authors (including C.J. Cherryh and, if memory serves, Steven Brust) add an explicit apology for this as an author's foreword. Such forewords usually run along the following lines: "I'm really sorry that it's been 2 years since you saw the previous installment of this story. I wanted the whole story to come out simultaneously in a single volume so you could just read straight through, but my publisher wouldn't let me do that."
Prologues can certainly be done with varying levels of skill, ranging from the clumsy to the elegant. The most familiar example to most readers of this blog will be the title crawl at the start of each Star Wars movie: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...". I don't consider that approach particularly elegant, but it's an effective way to set the scene, and if you keep it short, nobody will complain much. Most TV series that feature any kind of dramatic continuity use a variation on this technique: they run about 30 seconds of "previously on [name of show]" video clips to remind you of any key points you may have forgotten since the original episodes aired. Alternatives for novels include the back-cover blurb (though space is too constrained for much of an explication) and (increasingly) a Web site that provides a home for the book, the synopsis, and any relevant author's notes.
I imagine that we'll eventually see novels published as hypertexts, possibly implemented as some form of metafiction, with copious links to "explanatory footnotes" or "asides" inserted by the author. Terry Pratchett already does this to some extent via the copious footnotes in his many comic tales. This would be difficult to integrate with a more "serious" novel, but it can be done. Neal Stephenson has apparently done this in his enormous novel Anathem, though I haven't read it yet and thus can't comment further.
The Judeo-Christian Bible (i.e., Genesis) is a good example of how a prologue can itself be an interesting story that provides important context for everything that follows, though it's worth noting that structurally and in several other ways, the Bible isn't a good model for a novel. Here, the important point is that a good short story provides useful context. It's intriguing to speculate that you might be able to write a short story (less than 2000 words) in which the events of the previous novel are recounted in the voice of a secondary character or an outside observer, possibly even in the form of a diary or journal. Steven Brust has done this to some extent in his books The Phoenix Guards and 500 Years After. Here, Brust uses the framing device of Paarfi the historian, commenting acerbically and at length on the events of the novel. If you love Alexandre Dumas swashbucklers, you'll probably love these books too.
What you should certainly avoid doing is cluttering the sequel with infodumps intended to remind readers of the significance of a given scene. "As you recall, Jim..." dialogue should never be used to remind readers of past events unless this is unquestionably something the characters themselves would need to bring up in conversation. Even then, the person to whom they're explaining past events should clearly be ignorant of those events, and should need to understand them from their personal context, not simply to satisfy authorial needs to expostulate. Although it might be interesting to create a boring character who feels an incessant need to lecture everyone else, that would be exquisitely difficult to do well (i.e., interestingly enough to avoid alienating your readers).
What solution is best for providing the necessary context after a long prequel? None of them. One thing I've learned from years of participation in writers' groups is that no solution will satisfy everyone, particularly in a criticism-oriented context such as a writers' group. The answer is to be true to your own vision as an author, without ignoring the needs of the reader. Make your story as self-contained as you possibly can, introduce infodumps rarely and judiciously (only when they're required by the characters, not the readers), and provide a prologue or alternatives such as the abovementioned front matter so that those who want or need this information have it available, while the others can simply ignore it.
What I haven't seen, but expect to eventually see on the Internet, is the kind of approach used by "the Reduced Shakespeare company": create a podcast or Youtube video that summarizes a much longer book in an entertaining yet intriguing way. I couldn't find any Web links, but I fondly recall Jason Tanaguchi (sp?) performing the entire movie Wrath of Khan in 5 minutes at a Toronto science fiction convention many years ago. (Yes, it can be done, and amazingly, you don't lose much of the movie.) If you're good at performance and have a quick wit (and a video camera or microphone), this could be an interesting way to drum up interest in your sequel while also providing necessary context in a palatable way.
no subject