I just regret writing a 10k words worth of Prologue chapter

[Jemini]

Hmmm... I see.

Apparently, I just thought of it at first through the same way that Brandon Sanderson did on his prologue in Mistborn. He started with a character that has just unimportant pagetime by explaining what the fk is going on with the Inquisitors at that time iirc... and then presenting a scenario by looking down on their slaves at their utmost misery.

It was kind of reason why I hook with it, not because of the character, but the setting he just presents.

And that's what I tried to do the same in my book as well, but it just turned out to be... a poorly-done slam onto the reader's face.

Inquisitors = scary / negatively charged emotionality = tangible.

Suffering of slaves = pitable + culturally charged as something we as a people have come to largely reject.

These are both something that is strong and able to hook the reader, even if they are a little harder to identify with. Brandon Sanderson decided to abandon the simple and identifiable aspect of creating a hook, but that was because he understood the base concept of a hook to start with and knew the rule well enough to find something powerful enough to get the same draw anyway, even while otherwise breaking the letter of the rule.

That's a very advanced writing technique that should only be attempted by masters of their craft. For now, you should probably stick to the base letter of the rule. Make your hook simple, tangible, and identifiable, and try to create an emotional attachment of some sort.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

10k is too much.

 

[DaisukeHanashi]

Make your hook simple, tangible, and identifiable, and try to create an emotional attachment of some sort.

Well, I already cut off some unnecessary parts and also revise some into something quite more immersive.

Hopefully, it'll be a big sigh of relief to my problems

 

[georgelee5786]

I'd recommend splitting it into several smaller chapters, if that is applicable

 

[Ai-chan]

I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.

10k words for a prologue is VERY excessive. The prologue is not the place you dump the lore. The prologue is the pre-story that you add to make people interested in case your opening chapter, chapter 1 is not meant to jump right to the action. The prologue is not necessary. The cover is there to lure the readers, the prologue is the appetizer and the main story is the main meal.

It's not about short attention span. Even a literary agent would be completely turned off by 10k words prologue. When you write a story, your first 10 pages is what you promise your readers of the tone, genre and characteristics of your story. If your first 10 pages is nothing more than info dump, everyone would be turned off, except for those few unique readers. However, you don't seem to want unique readers, you just want people to read.

Again, it is not about short attention span. It's about boredom and the sentiment that the author is not thinking of the readers. You can talk about Trini Country and it's fall all you want. It can be as epic as you want to be. But at the end of the novel, you leave the readers asking questions such as "Where is this scene about Trini Country's fall?" or "How is this Trini Country relevant to the story?" or "I want to read about Hero Maximus in the prologue, but it's not here! Do I have to buy the second volume?"

Think of it like this. A prologue is a promise. A promise of what the story will be. A promise is "I will go buy the comic tomorrow" and the story involves how you go through your day all the way to the moment you purchase the comic tomorrow, ending with you holding the comic or delivering the comic to the recipient. It is not a story of a man making tall tales about fighting a dragon or surviving an earthquake and then continues the day droning on in the office.

 

[Jemini]

Well, I already cut off some unnecessary parts and also revise some into something quite more immersive.

Hopefully, it'll be a big sigh of relief to my problems

Just took a look. The new first paragraph or so is a HUGE improvement from what was there before, but it still has 2 rather major problems.

1st, you use too many unfamiliar in-world words without properly introducing their meaning. 2nd, you still head-jump way too soon after the introduction. Both of these things severely break immersion.

Your use of "misery" as a noun and this strange term "hexe" are both things that just plain have to go. I would personally recommend getting rid of that sort of thing from your entire story all together, but if you don't want to listen to that advice then at the very least do not include it in the first few paragraphs of the prologue, and when they do come up you need to give a proper explanation of what they mean to the reader IN STORY.

I notice you have a dictionary for your terms. I have quite pointedly NOT taken a look at that. If you need to read a dictionary just to understand the prologue, that is incredibly bad for your story. Your prologue should explain itself without the need to look through a dictionary for these terms, and writing it in such a way this is required is creating a very difficult barrier of entry into your story.

 

[DaisukeHanashi]

.2nd, you still head-jump way too soon after the introduction. Both of these things severely break immersion.

The head-jumping 'problem' seems to be rather difficult for me to adjust because I just wrote them as if the camera transitions from the eye of a first character to the eye of a second character while seeing and standing on the very same place... albeit a different timeline (if you're talking about first-to-second part). I can understand that there might be a sudden tonal shift, but it's just like... I divided two sections of prologue: the first one is a setting-focused, while the second (and also third one if you count the graduation part) is a character-focused.

I notice you have a dictionary for your terms. I have quite pointedly NOT taken a look at that. If you need to read a dictionary just to understand the prologue, that is incredibly bad for your story

The dictionary is optional. Readers should understand that they themselves would first dig in the prologue rather than the dictionary. But hey, I can also make those in-world terms remarkable over time, so the readers can naturally understand the meaning of those terms without giving them a directly full definition. Well, that's 'Show, don't tell' to me.

 

[Jemini]

The dictionary is optional. Readers should understand that they themselves would first dig in the prologue rather than the dictionary. But hey, I can also make those in-world terms remarkable over time, so the readers can naturally understand the meaning of those terms without giving them a directly full definition. Well, that's 'Show, don't tell' to me.

Not over time. The fact these terms appear in the first 2 paragraphs is cripplingly immersion breaking, and makes a reader feel alienated.

It's fine to introduce the terms in-world via the writing. In fact, that's best practices to a T. However, all the in-world introductions of the terms in the world mean nothing if you front-load all these unfamiliar terms right at the very beginning of the prologue.

You need to introduce the reader to the term BEFORE you start throwing it about in the reading. Not after.

 

[DaisukeHanashi]

However, all the in-world introductions of the terms in the world mean nothing if you front-load all these unfamiliar terms right at the very beginning of the prologue.

Well, except I didn’t actually front-load all of those unfamiliar terms in the prologue chapter, and I also edited some texts that explains just quite the meaning of its term ‘haxe’.

So again, don’t take the dictionary part like a part of prologue or some sort of. Instead, just take it as a glossary (could’ve worded the title better tbh).

 

[Gryphon]

There's nothing wrong with a 10k word chapter itself. However, for a prologue, it is pretty excessive. You really shouldn't need that much information in a prologue.

How you get 10k word chapters to work is by pretty marvelous pacing. Basically how longer chapters like that work is instead of changing chapter per each cliffhanger, you change chapter per each topic or scene. If the scene or topic doesn't change then the chapter doesn't change. That's pretty much the essence of the long chapter.

A prologue in itself is just information that's told by the author as needed information before getting into the actual story. Usually, I say that there's little to no need for a prologue, but if you ever do need one, have it under 1k words at most.

I recommend reading your prologue and asking yourself. Do I need this information here or can I portray it somewhere else in the actual story?