A Writer's Woes

Prologues and Starting Over

I have rewritten the story summary to encompass a back story / premise that is much more realistic for the times than I originally wrote. In so doing, though, I will pretty much have to start my story over from scratch. The mid-section will not change, but the beginning will need to be rewritten.

And what about prologues? I’ve read in many places that prologues are mostly fluff, that editors will often delete them, and that readers many times skip them. That leads me to wonder if I should keep my prologue. Is there anything so critically important in there that I couldn’t do without it? Do I show anything so unique that it can’t be shown elsewhere in the story? Could a simple sentence such as, “Luke remembered when Susanna was knee high to a grasshopper and riding bareback, rebelling even then against society by refusing to ride with a saddle.” Does that one reflection, that one remembrance, serve the same purpose as a lengthy prologue? It just might.

posted by chrmisha @ 1:27 PM