“Editors don’t like Prologues.”
“Your manuscript starts in the wrong place.”
“This first chapter is nothing but backstory.”
Have you ever received this feedback about your work? Did it
leave you confused and wondering what the critique meant? I think I found a way
to help you understand. This will involve a five dollar investment (matinee
cost) or you can wait a couple of months and visit Red Box. Either way, the
movie you want to see is Man of Steel.
Okay, I know. Superman has a great body. Fine. For those of
you who can’t see past that, you may have to plunk down another five dollars.
The second time, watch the audience. The problem? The first hour is backstory.
Literally. Backstory. (Backstory is what happens to a character before the
imminent story begins. It’s what shapes him/her. Like the story of the
destruction of the Planet Krypton and why Superman had to be sent away,
followed by the story of his life growing up on Earth.)
So why is this a problem, you ask? It’s necessary to have
this insight into a character’s background, right?
Yes, it is. Especially for the writer. But for the reader, backstory
holds no tension, no conflict. (Just for the record, most prologues are really
backstory.) In huge amounts, backstory creates a pace that is S…L…O…W. And what happens when the pace is slow? In the
movie, the audience fidgeted; there were huge high-in-the air stretches. They
fell asleep. They were bored.
You see, this movie audience bought tickets with the
expectation of seeing some epic battle
to save Earth, and for the first hour, almost half of the movie, there’s not so
much as a hint of this grand theme. The
action that everyone paid for didn’t show up till the last half of the movie.
But it’s in there, you say. In my book. If they just read far enough
they’ll get to it.
Alas my friend, this may not have been a fatal flaw for the
Man of Steel. But for you as a writer? Think about it. You are asking your
reader to sit for more than the typical movie time of two to two and half
hours. You are asking your reader to invest five to ten hours. And that time is
not spent in an enclosed, darkened room with nothing else to do but watch/read,
but is spent in a life filled with distractions like homework, meals, TV,
friends, computers, etc. all competing for your precious audience’s time. So
when your reader gets bored, what happens to your book? Let’s just say there’s
no extra-large tub of popcorn to hold your reader in the seat until ‘the good
stuff’ shows up.
Your reader buys your book with the expectation of being enthralled
by your words, your story. They want a snapshot of ‘the good stuff’ from page
one and expect it to build from there.
In Average Town, USA, there are typically no more than twenty movies
showing at any one time. Not so with books. At each and every moment there are
thousands of books available at bookstores and online. The competition is
fierce. If you don’t provide what they want (including agents/editors) someone
else will.
That means you have to start with the inciting incident –
where the good stuff starts. (And just for the record, a threat made twenty
some odd years ago is not an inciting incident. The threat has to be
immediate.) The backstory comes in tiny bits and pieces sprinkled throughout
the work.
And that’s a story for another day.
Lisa Tapp
