Please welcome back
Earl Staggs to our blog with a guest post he originally did for PJ Nunn’s Bookbrowsing
Blog back in August of 2015…
The Bastard Prologue by
Earl Staggs
Not long after I began
writing fiction, I learned that a prologue was a no-no. A prologue was
akin to the plague, something so horrible some people would scream and shriek
and run away from as fast and as far as they could. Even though not every reader
and every editor held them in such disdain, I decided I would never use a
prologue.
Not long ago, while
working on a sequel to MEMORY OF A MURDER, my first novel, I found myself
returning to the opening chapter even though I had already written several
later chapters. Something didn’t feel right. Something was
missing. The beginning of my novel needed an extra oomph. It
occurred to me that the oomph might be created by using a <gasp>
prologue. Fortunately, before I committed the unthinkable and inserted
one, I came to my senses and talked myself out of it.
A week later, I found
myself in a Barnes and Noble. I wasn’t there for the usual purpose of
finding a book to read. No, I was there with my wife because she wanted
to find a particular book on the art of crocheting. While I toil away at
writing the Great American Novel, she pursues the creation of the Great
American Afghan.
While waiting for her
to find what she wanted, I realized I was standing next to a table stacked high
with books and with a sign over it saying, “Former Bestsellers. $5.99 and
up.” I decided to browse through them.
I opened twelve books
and was aghast and agape to find that nine of them began with a prologue. These
were not books by unknown authors. These were authors whose names I
knew. You know them, too.
The first two were by
Tom Clancy. One was AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, the second, THREAT VECTOR. The
next six were:
Sandra Brown. . .LOW
PRESSURE
Brad Meltzer. . .THE
FIFTH ASSASSIN
Linda Howard. .
.SHADOW WOMAN
James Rollins. . .THE
EYE OF GOD
Clive (and Dirk)
Cussler. . .POSIEDON’S ARROW
Brad Thor. . .BLACK
LIST
The ninth book was THE
BLACK BOX by Michael Connelly. This one had a section preceding the first
chapter, but unlike those listed above, it was not called a prologue. It was
not called anything. It was just there without a heading or a
title. Since it did not have a name, I felt justified in calling it a
Bastard Prologue.
What had gotten into
those writers? Did they not know what I had known for years: You do NOT
use a prologue?
That’s when I
remembered something else I’d learned during the years I’d been writing.
It was that there is really only one true Rule of Writing. That rule is:
“Whatever works best.” It means within reasonable judgment and common
sense, authors can do whatever they feel is best for a piece of written work.
That one rule overrides all others which may be floating around out
there, no matter who declares it or tries to enforce it.
It also means if I
feel a prologue will make my book better, I can use one. If the authors
listed above and their publishers can do it. . . .
So that’s what I’m
going to do. I’ll put a prologue in front of Chapter One of my work in
progress. I’m not going to call it a prologue, however. I’m not
going to call it anything. It’ll be a Bastard Prologue.
And, here’s what it
will say:
* * *
He carried the girl
over his left shoulder and the shovel in his right hand. Moonlight barely
penetrated the dense forest above him, and he nearly stumbled several times
over exposed tree roots and large rocks. He had to duck under low-hanging
branches and occasionally had to push the shovel ahead of him to move thick
brush out of his way. He wished he could turn around and go home and not
do this, but he always did what he was told.
A noise off to the
right made him stop. The sound of wood breaking, like someone or something
stepped on a thin brittle branch. He looked and saw nothing. Then a pair of
eyes appeared ten feet away from him. A deer. Not moving. Staring. Accusing.
He wanted to shout, “I
didn’t want to do this. They made me.”
After a few seconds,
the eyes disappeared, and he heard the sound of the deer moving away. Then he
heard nothing but crickets in the distance and the swishing of small branches
above him when a breeze found its way to them.
He pushed forward
again and tried to ignore the burning sensation in his shoulder. The girl was
small, but he knew he would be sore tomorrow from carrying her so far. He had
to keep going deeper into the woods until he found a clearing large enough to
dig the hole.
After trudging another
fifty yards, he came to a circular area twenty feet in diameter where nothing
grew. Three rounded boulders roughly formed a triangle in the center of
the bare patch, each about four feet long and half as thick and rising knee
high out of the bare ground.
He decided he would
dig in the space between the boulders. He leaned his shovel against one
of them and laid the girl on the ground. Her long dark hair splayed out beneath
her head like a black halo. Moonlight washed over her face, adding a
silver sheen to the tawny skin of her Latino heritage. She was so young,
he thought, and so pretty. Too young and too pretty for this.
But that didn’t
matter. He had to dig a hole and put her in it. Then he would get home as fast
as he could. Before he went to bed, he would pray that when he woke in the
morning, he would not remember what he had done.
If he did, he would
remind himself it wasn’t his fault. They made him do it.
Earl Staggs earned all Five Star
reviews for his novels MEMORY OF A MURDER and JUSTIFIED ACTION and has twice
received a Derringer Award for Best Short Story of the Year. He served as
Managing Editor of Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, as President of the
Short Mystery Fiction Society, and is a frequent
speaker at conferences and seminars. He invites any comments via email at earlstaggs@sbcglobal.net
