Question on getting into the detailing and actual writing

Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by Leishua, Jul 15, 2018.

  1. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Okay, I had to laugh....
     
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  2. Leishua

    Leishua Member

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    I did some surveys with friends 2 weeks back on the starting scene which kinda gave me the idea that they weren't grasping the genre of it very well. I def wouldn't dwell into the details of the lore in it. But i would likely use the prologue to give reader a quick idea of what kind of story this is. I'll leave volume 1-3 to explain the rest of how everything came to place.

    Yup, pretty much, people started to see such superhumans as unnecessary damage and hero worship. Their lives became better, they started colonizing planets but these metahumans remain the same even when technology has reached a state that can replicate everything they can do. In time they got tired of the moral authority and the squabbles and decided to get rid of them and so they did. Till the events of the story where the MC discovers himself and his family to be a descendant and they are being hunted for extermination.
     
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  3. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Try to avoid the 'history lesson' approach to your prologue (even if it's short.) Potted history lessons are one of the things people have come to hate about prologues. What's more important, if these readers start skimming or skipping through the prologue, your whole exercise is wasted effort.

    Remember, that while this history of your world is exciting to you, it's not exciting to your readers—yet. They WILL tend to skim and skip until they reach a character who grabs them. So ...if you're going to do a prologue, make sure you have a character in it who means something to the reader right away. It can be somebody who lived 'long ago' but it has to be somebody we can identify with. Somebody who had to struggle with what happened 'back then.' Somebody who made a difference.

    Again, keep in mind what Tolkien did in the book trilogy Lord of the Rings. If you haven't read the book as Tolkien wrote it, do read it. The movie is not the same. You are also writing a book, not making a movie, so it's a good idea to study the form.

    The movie version of LOTR started differently from the book, and, to my mind, not as well. All that big Sauron battle stuff was the movie's prologue—complete with sonorous narrator voice and dramatic music—thankfully short—but it was NOT in the book. I wonder just how much of that prologue's information stuck with the moviegoers who were unfamiliar with the story. Perhaps Peter Jackson & Co were counting on the fact that nearly everybody who initially saw the film HAD read the book? Another topic, really....

    Anyway, the movie didn't actually come alive till we met Frodo and Gandalf on the road, did it?

    The book, on the other hand, starts with Bilbo's 111th birthday party, and everybody preparing for it, which has a similar immediacy. It sucked us right into The Shire, introduced us to Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippen and, of course, Gandalf. By the time we got to all the highfalutin Sauron prehistory stuff, we were already invested in the characters, and we cared about the story.

    When it came to the backstory, it was Gandalf who told it to Frodo (and Sam.) It wasn't some disembodied narrator speaking into a void. With Frodo and Sam also present during the dramatic telling of the tale of how Sauron got the Ring, they were able to react, to ask questions. This made points of Gandalf's story stick with the reader.
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2018
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  4. Leishua

    Leishua Member

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    Agreed, i def don't plan for the prologue to be a expository of the lore. My current plan is to do it as a diary entry of the MC during his time hiding in a cubicle apartment. Through his diary entry of the day it will imply all the needed details of the world setting as he "writes" to his imaginary friend.
     
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  5. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    As long as your MC's perspective is in there (very strongly ...what he THINKS of the details he's writing about is what's important to include), you should be fine and that kind of prologue should work. Good luck!
     
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  6. Leishua

    Leishua Member

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    Arigatou! As much as possible i'd like the story to be self narrated by the MC. I'm pretty inspired by The Fall of Max Payne. I love the narrative style they had it was humorous and definitely personable it also helps the writers to keep very consistently aware about the psych of the character imo.
     

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