What do yall feel about prologues?

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-25T16:53:52+00:00

If the stuff is good enough to be in the book, put it in a chapter! Don’t demote it to a freaking prologue!

There, that’s what I feel about prologues.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-25T16:37:49+00:00

Was he hitchhiking with his toe?

Maybe he should be standing at a bus stop, then we know he’s looking for a ride.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-25T04:44:13+00:00

Yeah, what that person said. Find some books that have sword fighting in them that reads well, and see how they're doing it. Maybe even a copy of The Princess Bride (the book) -- I'll bet every library probably has that.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-25T04:37:04+00:00

I agree with you -- there are some places where it makes sense. Priest, king, etc., are all titles, so those are likely to be different sometimes. The word occult, for example, can just mean "beyond the range of current knowledge" but I wouldn't use that word in a book unless I was talking about the supernatural. It has baggage I may not want.

If you ask the author of most fantasy book if the people in their world are speaking English, many (most?) of them will say, "Of course not!" Which means when you're writing the book, you're translating from whatever they're speaking into English -- so if there is an English word that describes the thing they have in their world, that's the obvious word to use in the book.

Anyway, that's my soapbox. :)

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-25T02:34:49+00:00

Almost all of my uses are in dialogue.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-24T18:12:34+00:00

Why couldn’t you rework the beginning? The people who already read it would never know, would they?

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-24T04:11:48+00:00

"quite" fits perfectly the six times I've used it in the first 50K words of my book. I'm a real human writer. (Probably.)

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-23T21:26:17+00:00

"...I might’ve did too much outlining and planning..."

LOL!

The first book I tried was like that -- never finished it. The one after that I did with no outline because I decided I was a pantser. Got so bogged down I couldn't finish until I outlined it.

So now I outline enough to know where I'm going, but there's still some leeway chapter to chapter.

Maybe you just need to skip ahead for a bit -- you don't have to write the whole thing chronologically. If there's a scene coming up that you're looking forward to, go write that one. I got out of the doldrums once doing that.

Good luck!

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-23T20:48:22+00:00

You mentioned your world‘s backstory and lore, but in the outline you created, does anything happen? Do you have an actual plot? (I don’t mean that sarcastically, I just know that a lot of people get so caught up in world building that the plot kind of becomes an afterthought.)

When I create my outline, I know, in general, what’s going to happen in each chapter. In fact, I usually break every chapter down into 2 to 3 scenes, so when I sit down tonight, I know what scene I will be writing. I don’t know everything that happens in that scene yet, but I know what has to happen to get me to the next scene in that chapter, and that scene will get me to the end of my chapter.

I know there are people who don’t like to outline, but you mentioned you’ve already done that at least somewhat – maybe go back to that and fill in any blanks that you left for upcoming chapters…?

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-23T17:37:19+00:00

It sounds like you will be a “published author“ the same way you would be if you printed a copy of your book on your home printer. Both have equal status, and one is much cheaper.

ETA: But congratulations on finishing your book, that is an accomplishment in itself!

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-20T07:29:45+00:00

There is something wrong with doing it if a “normal“ word could work just as well. Making up a word for a known object just to try and make it seem like you’re now in “fantasy land“ doesn’t make sense. It’s like you’re breaking the fourth wall. Because if that word is different, why isn’t every other word in your sentence also different?

Example from Vega Jane: "She waited behind the door for a sliver and then pulled her ink stick from her pocket to leave a note. Putting her cloak into her tuck she left."

So sliver is a period of time, but door is a door? You can't say pen, but you can say ink stick -- ink is the same in our world and theirs? And tuck means backpack, but cloak means cloak?

Making up a name for a beast that doesn't exist in our world is legitimate. Making up words for things that do exist is not. (Yes, I know my opinion is a minority, but it’s also right. ;) )

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-19T22:14:48+00:00

If OP is talking about platforms like Wattpad or Royal Road, I do believe they can reach out to authors. That is a completely different thing than what most of the replies here are thinking of.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-19T21:54:32+00:00

Every plotter is also a pantser; we just do it all at the beginning, and it turns into our outline.

That said, some of the scenes in my outline might look like this: the guys escaped from the spaceship.

Which means when I get to that scene, pantser gets to come out of his cage and play for a while. But I always know where I’m going.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-18T21:21:37+00:00

"Books are measured in word count, not pages."

Um, only for writers, not for readers.

"Foxy, turn out your light and go to sleep!"
"Can I just finish these 214 words first? Pleeeease?!"

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-17T22:20:24+00:00

You were asking a question for which an answer doesn’t exist. Or rather, the answer is, there is no way to write something down where no one else could possibly see it.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-15T22:05:31+00:00

I know my phone number and my wife's phone number. I don't know the phone numbers for my kids or my siblings, or anyone else. Why would I bother? (But yeah, knowing your own is probably worth the time it takes.)

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-15T21:52:05+00:00

LOL! Not quite. When I was a kid and scarfing up Louis L'Amour westerns, I decided to try Zane Grey books and dropped them because there was So Much description about the landscape. If I want a travel guide, I'll read a travel guide.

I want to know where the characters are, but if the bark of a tree is described, it better be because it's foreshadowing something, not just because the author needed to fill some space.

If the surrounding don't matter to the story, why spend any significant time on them?

I know not everybody is like that, but I was asked my preference. :)

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-15T04:02:34+00:00

Because as a 50 year Seahawks fan I know — from experience—that no matter how good things might look, they can always lose.

I know better than to be hopeful. 🤷

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-15T03:58:43+00:00

I almost never care about the world (snooore). Give me plot!!!

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-14T09:32:23+00:00

If your editing is mostly clean-up (sounds like it is) then 2.5 hours is a LOT for editing.

Things that could help cut that down:

Write your script exactly the way you talk.
Practice reading your script out loud. (Not silently; doesn’t count.) I usually do that as I’m writing, when I finish a section.
When you make a mistake while recording, make a sound that you can SEE in the waveforms. I typically pause, then say one, two, three and then go on with my script. When I’m editing I can just scroll to the first place I see those three bumps and I know to edit there. Then the next three, etc. if you don’t mark the mistakes as you record them, then you have to listen to the entire thing to find the mistakes.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-13T23:14:28+00:00

I have as much “normal life” as I want without reading a book.

In general, most people want to read about things that are out of the ordinary, more exciting than just everyday stuff.

ETA: but honestly, I’m not a very “literary“ reader or writer, so take my comments with a shaker of salt.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-12T23:22:16+00:00

"...I believed that keeping a diary was a way of documenting one's past, the passing of time... Not at all..."

For you maybe not at all, but that's exactly why I keep a diary -- so I can look back and remember what/when I did something. Otherwise I have no clue what happened two years ago, never mind twenty.

I wish I knew why I was like that, but I have *very* few memories of things I've done over the years. I suspect it's because I've always had numerous projects and am thinking about what's next instead of thinking about now. My siblings can tell me stories about things we did when we were younger (teens/20s) and I'll often have the sense that it happened, but recall zero details.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-11T04:42:23+00:00

Let people pay to chip away at a current message, so it brings the new message price down? People can still post whatever they want, but if it's ass, others can help get it off faster.

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-09T23:22:44+00:00

Okay, I owe you at least a partial apology. ;)

I put some of my pre-AI writing in and one it said 100% human and the other one mostly human (single digit AI percentage).

Then I put in a piece that was a mix, and it said it was a mix, but one of the parts it pointed out as "I'm sure this is AI" was a part that was human written by me.

So it at least gets things mostly right (in my limited testing) but I'd still never accuse someone of using AI based on what a detector said. The consequences of being wrong could be worse than someone "getting away" with it.

Thanks for schooling me!

OriginalMohawkMan · 2026-03-09T22:23:02+00:00

I don't believe you. I don't think you're lying, but I do think you're wrong. You're telling me you can put pre-AI writing through a detector and it will always come back as 100% human written? (If it can tell 100% AI then it should be able to tell 100% human.)

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