ICK!!!

I am SO glad I don't have to do that every day. I mean driving to and from UBC. Once in awhile is fine, but golly that's a long drive. And in rush hour traffic it really sucks. Today I had to detour into the West End for a meeting after UBC, so that made the day even longer. I am exhausted.

Gee, didn't I start the day exhausted?

Off to FAT Jazz rehearsal this evening. What is FAT Jazz you say? It is the jazz big band I've been singing with for about 11 years. FAT has nothing to do with our physique. It is an acronym for Friends and Teachers. The band, originally formed back in the mid-eighties, is comprised of music teachers who didn't want their love of teaching music to overshadow their love of playing music. The Friends fill the gaps in the instrumentation. The Friends come from a variety of backgrounds: we have a doctor, an architectural engineer, a youth worker, a music store owner, for instance. (And me, I'm a writer.) 

We play as guests at schools in a mentorship role, we play for fundraisers and dances and festivals, and we simply have a great time. We're playing a fundraiser for Eagle Ridge Hospital at the Inlet Theatre in Port Moody in a week or so. 

I didn't get any reading in today. Perhaps in the morning. After my blurb about prologues this morning I checked in the book I'm reading and found the copyright was in 1976. Maybe the rules were different back then...

I think they were, because I don't think Peter Pan would be published in its original form if Barry had written it today. 

Thinking about prologues...

A word about prologues.

I bring this up because the book I started reading at 4:50 this morning has one. Now, there's a bit of debate over To Prologue or Not to Prologue. Many times I've heard agents say, "I hate prologues." I've even been given the impression that they will reject a novel outright because it has a prologue. I think that's a bit silly, and maybe I don't want an agent who would reject a work for a goofy reason like that. To be fair, maybe the agents in question were just being melodramatic. But it has made me think about prologues.

I have to confess [flushes guiltily] that I have skipped prologues. Why? Because so often they are too long and dull. If a prologue just gives me a bunch of world history and background info, well that's boring. Why hasn't the author skillfully worked that stuff into the story itself if it's so important? The book I began this morning has such a prologue. 

The whole time I was reading it I was thinking, "This had all better be crucial information." It was about five pages long, and that's a lot of energy to invest in something that is kind of boring. If it isn't crucial I will resent being treated so disrespectfully by the author. 

Sometimes a prologue is the right way to impart critical information to the reader. If it's an event that takes place prior to the time period of the story but is somehow a catalyst for the events of the story. Or if it involves characters that may or may not appear in the main story. Or when said event needs to be from the point of view of a character who will not otherwise be a POV character. Those are some case where a prologue is a great tool. But for me as a reader I want it to be short and I want it to be intriguing. I have been known to skip prologues that go on and on. I read a book years ago, I can't remember which book it was, but its prologue went on for about 14 pages and I was so confused

[Growls in frustration because this is the point where the internet shuts down, and everything typed after this point is lost so it must be typed again... Grrrr]

...that I stopped reading after just a few pages. See, without any grounding in the story none of the places and names mentioned in the prologue made any sense.

An example of a prologue I liked is in The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie.

It is 1915 and the Lusitania is sinking. A man approaches a young lady and asks her to take charge of a packet of important papers, "because of 'women and children first'. He gives her a few instructions and that's it. It takes about a page and a half. That is the inciting incident for the rest of the story. When the story opens it is several years later, and the reader meets the protagonists, but continues to wonder what happened to the girl and the papers and why they are significant. 

That's a prologue that really works for me because it is intriguing and it's short! I figure I shouldn't refuse to write a prologue because some people "don't like prologues." If it's the best thing for the story, then I will go for it. At the moment my second book has a prologue which I quite like, but I revisit it when I return to that book for revision. 

My original ending for this post was way better, but I can't remember what it was. Ah well.

Boy, it's really easy to make these posts very long, isn't it? (sort of like some prologues). I'll have to watch that.