Saturday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

PONDERING THE PROLOGUE: KEEP IT OR KILL IT?

By: Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

There was a time when prologues were all the rage. You'd show a snippet of your set up before your story actually started to entice the reader to read on. It was almost a requirement in fantasy, where the prologue was almost always a bit of history or a legend or even a scene with a major god doing whatever it was that had come back to bite everyone.

Not so much anymore.

So, how do you know if you should keep or kill your prologue?

Ask yourself why you're putting it in.

1. It's an important piece of the protagonist's history that the reader needs to know to get the story.

Keep or Kill? Chances are you can kill the prologue. The reader won't know the character yet, so the important event will have little meaning, and it won't drive the story since it happened in the past. In most cases, you can background this information and drop hints, show the effects of it on the protagonist to build suspense, and reveal it later for much more impact.

2. It's an important piece of world history that sets up why things are this way and how that's going to affect your protagonist.

Keep or Kill?

. . .

Read the full article HERE! 

~*~

If you missed my writing & marketing tweets and retweets yesterday, here they are again:

1. Q&A: Creating Tension in Your Story - Michael Hauge's Story Mastery http://ow.ly/IWF12
2. How to Build a Following On Triberr | Triberr Blog http://ow.ly/IWX6k
3. What Makes a Good Badass? | Fantasy-Faction http://ow.ly/IXPRC
4. Mythcreants » The Why & How of Foreshadowing http://ow.ly/IXQ0a
5. Is “Love Conquers All” Realistic? | Jami Gold, Paranormal Author http://ow.ly/IYsA9
6. What not to say to authors (and what to say instead) | AUTHOR ALLSORTS http://ow.ly/J0GdW
7. Fiction University: Pondering the Prologue: Keep it or Kill it? http://ow.ly/J0GrG
8. Mythcreants » Five Ways to Make Your Character Stand Out http://ow.ly/J0JbD
9. The Definition and Criteria of Concept | Storyfix.com http://ow.ly/J0K6t
10. 36 Tried-and-True Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts [Infographic] http://ow.ly/J0Mko
11. Want Your LinkedIn Profile to Stand Out? Don't Include These 10 Overused Words http://ow.ly/J0MAK
12. Twitter for Business: What Smart Marketers Are Doing With Twitter | Social Media Examiner http://ow.ly/J0MJ5
13. My Recent Visit to Barnes & Noble or Why I Don’t Go to the Bookstore Very Often | Sagittarius Dolly http://ow.ly/J0N9H
14. Why modern authors should consider writing series of novels | Advice for Authors Who Self-Publish http://ow.ly/J0Nwf
15. Writer Beware®: The Blog: Who's Running Your Writers' Group? Why You Should Be Careful http://ow.ly/J0NIO
16. Ethical Author | Advice for Authors Who Self-Publish http://ow.ly/J0NUd
17. Why Authors Should Pay Attention to Gravity - Nelson Literary Agency http://ow.ly/J0OHS
18. Will the New Kindle Unlimited Expansion Cause Another Dip in Author Payments? ⋆ Ink, Bits, & Pixels http://ow.ly/J0PC7
19. How to decide who inherits your Facebook account http://ow.ly/J0TJf
20. Scott Abel Tells Why Content Strategy Matters for Content Marketing http://ow.ly/J0Vh0
21. Seth's Blog: Is Google making the web stupid? http://ow.ly/J0W5r
22. 7 Tools To Help You Write a Novel (+ a free ebook) http://ow.ly/J0Wha
23. 4 Ways Besides Query Letters You Can Contact Literary Agents | Writers In The Storm http://ow.ly/J0Xdv
24. 13 Great Tools to Analyze and Measure Your Social Media Results by Frances Caballo — The Book Designer http://ow.ly/J0Xoz
25. Overwhelmed As An Author? How To Work With Virtual Assistants With Chris Ducker | The Creative Penn http://ow.ly/J0YY0
26. 5 Ways To Engage Your Audience During A Presentation http://ow.ly/J0ZpM

Happy writing and running, Kathy