Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Thanks for your thoughts on this, much appreciated. In regard to the little bit that I quoted: It's not so much "worrying" (although I admit there is an element of that) as it is constantly trying to find the right balance. It's only by exploring both sides that a writer can hope to see where things may be getting out of balance. (It's also why a writer can't afford to be too precious about their writing, because there will always times where the balance is not right, even if it is just not right for a particular reader.)
That's an interesting thought. It fits quite well with what someone once said to me about falling in love in the characters in the prologue and basically hating me for what followed.
My logic for adding the prologue was that I thought it was helpful to give some context to chapter 1, and I actually thought it might help to show that the book was not all going to be a sob-fest (but this bit may have backfired  ). The prologue also has some relevance revealed later; it wasn't critical that the scene existed in print, but it with the other thoughts I finally decided to include it.
I suspect the biggest problem is that I should have cut the first three or four chapters much more heavily than I did (they are quite a bit shorter than originally written) ... but I was still learning to trust the reader enough to see the passage of time without forcing it upon them. |
The passage of time is not the problem. It is the sob fest in the first chapter after such a loving scene.