To prologue or not to prologue?
I like writing prologues myself. I think they are interesting, they draw you into the book, and they introduce a conflict.
However, I have heard that many agents and editors will not even read the prologue. Some of them are convinced that prologues are useless and so they will rip it out of the book without reading it and proceed to chapter 1. There is an obvious and simple solution to this issue:
Call the prologue "Chapter 1."
I have written a prologue that I would like to make good on my promise to you by posting a sneak peak of it; however, since I hope to publish it one day under my name, I am not so sure that I want to post it online for anybody to copy and paste. I am working on making it into a PDF file that I will share with you.
Speaking of "starts," I have settled on a name for my main character: Sidney. I would give you her last name to be complete, but I'm going to wait for that part. Would J. K. Rowling have told you Harry Potter's full name before publishing the book?
I tried searching baby naming sites for meanings of names. Particularly for a meaning that would fit with my character. However, "Sidney"'s meanings are not too exotic:
"Sidney" could either mean 1) derived from "Saint Denis" in France, or 2) "wide meadow".
It just goes to show that sometimes you pick a name for no other reason than you like the way it sounds. I thought it sounded simple but pretty, athletic (it has actually been used as boy's name), and it spawns a number of possible nicknames.
It's a familiar enough name that people can relate to it and remember it, but it is not over-used either.
What do you think? Like it, hate it, have any suggestions? Let me hear from you.
No comments:
Post a Comment