I got told you shouldn't do it because it means no one can get invested into the character properlyI very much like to drop the reader into the middle of ongoing action. Explanations can come later.
Opening a story like that is called in medias res, (latin meaning into the middle of things) and there is nothing wrong with that as a story telling technique. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey start in medias res, and it was a literary practice of which the Roman poet and critic Horace thoroughly approved (read his Ars Poetica to see his approval, expressed in hexameter verse!).I've really been trying hard not to put any action in my first chapter for fear of breaking writing rules. But I cant help it everything keeps leading me to it. Is there any examples of authors doing anyway? Or do you think its could get away with the taboo?
I would say write what feels appropriate for the scene. Robert Jordan's first chapter of The Eye of the World in the Wheel of Time series has some serious action near it's end, and the chapter is about 50 pages if I recall.I've really been trying hard not to put any action in my first chapter for fear of breaking writing rules. But I cant help it everything keeps leading me to it. Is there any examples of authors doing anyway? Or do you think its could get away with the taboo?
Not only can you not correct a mistake you haven't made, you can't learn from it either. I would imagine there are a bunch mistakes all (or the vast majority of) writers make as they learn their craft. Write early and get them out of the way I say.> fear of breaking writing rules.
Best to make mistakes and then try to correct them than it is to be frozen in place because you're so worries about making mistakes in the first place. After all, you cannot correct a mistake until you've made one.
In the hobbit he also breaks the rule of adding to many characters in a single chapter but Tolkien was awsome at breaking the rules. Unfortunately I'm not that talented I'd talk my self in to jail lmaoIf you read The Hobbit, there's a whole chapter that talks about hobbits in general and one or two famous hobbits from history in particular, before there's any action. That is an exception compared to more recent fantasy writing. Whether we like it or not we live in the social media age. The age of the soundbite, the browsing flick through multiple possible items that compete for attention. In that context writers have to capture the attention of a potential reader much more quickly now than they used to. Action is one of the easier ways to do that.
People like me who prefer a slow burn are a dying breed I think, certainly a shrinking minority.
I'd be willing to bet there was a point early in his career as a writer, when Tolkien was not that hot either. From what I've read, he spent many years developing the ideas and setting of middle earth, with numerous rewrites of stories and sections before he came up with the version we know and love.In the hobbit he also breaks the rule of adding to many characters in a single chapter but Tolkien was awsome at breaking the rules. Unfortunately I'm not that talented I'd talk my self in to jail lmao
No.Or just add a prologue?
He wasn't a writer. He was a linguist. He wrote the books as a way to ensconce the languages he'd created; a hell of a lot more fun to read than dictionaries in Dwarvish and Elvish. (Although it could be argued The Silmarillion is effectively that.) Tolkien was a terrible writer. Do not ape him. No one will read it.I'd be willing to bet there was a point early in his career as a writer, when Tolkien was not that hot either. From what I've read, he spent many years developing the ideas and setting of middle earth, with numerous rewrites of stories and sections before he came up with the version we know and love.
Mine is a epic dark fantasy novel but it was a joke I really don't like prologuesNo.
That is not what a prologue is. Especially in fantasy.
Oboy, I get to do this again.
Prologues are only necessary for epic fantasy. Anywhere else, they're performative, superfluous bullshit.
I said what I said.
What makes epic fantasy "epic" is that the characters' actions change the world. That's it. That's the definition. Without world-changing consequences, it's not epic. It could be high fantasy, or low fantasy, or sword and sorcery, or sword and sandal, or romantasy, or whatever. All of those are perfectly awesome and valid, and you don't necessarily have to stick to it. My first novel is sword and sorcery; the second is epic fantasy. The third in the series (coming this summer!) is contemporary mil-SF, but let's not get off-track right now. Suffice it to say, it's complicated.
Because the world changes in epic fantasy, the world is a character. It interacts with the other characters, and it follows an arc just like every character. It's different at the end than it was at the beginning.
The prologue is the world's walk-on scene. It's not a history of the world, and it's not a chapter of endless exposition. It's the world, just doing its thing, before your characters f*** with it. When your MCs join the story, you don't tell their entire history back to when they were in a bassinet (I hope). You just show them being who they are, and let the crowd figure it out after that. You drop hints along the way, flashback, long talks around the fire about their childhoods, whatever.
The best example of this in the past 30 years is the opening to A Game of Thrones. Whether you read the novels or just saw the show; the opening scene/chapter, with the White Walkers, sets the whole story up. Because of the prologue, you know the White Walkers are real. Knowing that they're real throws all the political gamesmanship into sharp relief, because they don't know the world is in danger, but you, the reader/watcher, do. Skip the opening and watch the rest of the show or read the novels, and it's a completely different story until like Season Five and Book II. (III? I forget.)
If you're not writing epic fantasy, you don't need a prologue. Don't do it. And please, don't make your prologue a pile of slow-moving bullshit you made up and are proud of. Prologues have a bad-enough rep, already.
You don't have to start in situ but for the love of a merciful God, don't call your swimming-through-molasses first chapter a prologue. Please.
Thank you.