Writing Devices

No, I'm not talking about those nifty little Alpha-smarts or the invention of the laptop (although how people wrote BEFORE laptops were invented I'll never know. How they did it without the internet blows me away, too, but that's a whole other topic.)

I'm talking about those little mechanisms writers use to bleed out emotion in their stories, to draw you in, flip you over and -hopefully- keep you riveted to the edge of your seat. Things like prologues, epilogues and flashbacks.

Personally, I like prologues, but I know a lot of people who say they never read a prologue, that it's backstory and not relevant to the novel. My thought is, why would someone skip part of the story? Makes no sense to me. I devour books, page one to the end, prologue and all. Granted, I've read books where the prologue really wasn't that great, sometimes not even necessary, and I've read others where the book would have been a great let-down had the prologue been cut.

If you're going to write a prologue, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Be sure the prologue sets the mood for your novel. You're setting up the book for your reader. Don't try to pull a one-eighty to hook them. If your book's a romantic comedy, make sure the prologue's funny. If it's a dark and gritty romantic suspense, there had better be something chilling in that prologue. One of my favorite prologues can be found in Allison Brennan's The Hunt. A woman is running through the Montana wilderness and the man who kidnapped her is hunting her down with a rifle. Yes, this is a dark and gritty RS, and it's set up right from page one of the prologue. Allison said she originally wrote that scene for herself as backstory to get to know her character, but once it was finished realized she had her prologue. Would the book have worked without that particular prologue? Maybe, but I don't think the threat would have been as immediate or as "real" to the reader.
2. A prologue should take place before the story starts. Hence, the definition of a prologue. An event that happens an hour or immediately before chapter one isn't really a prologue - it's the beginning of your book. Short chapters are okay. If your book really starts in your prologue, then call it chapter one.
3. Don't call your prologue Chapter One if it's really a prologue. Readers are smart, and this is a very irritating phenomenon writers seem to be using more and more because some judge on a contest circuit somewhere said prologues were a no-no. Call it what it is and move on. You aren't fooling anyone by being tricky with your headings.
4. Keep your prologue short. The goal is to show a past event that has some major impact on your story now. Long, drawn out prologues defeat their purpose. Three to five pages is your best bet.
5. A prologue should have a GOAL. Prologues are not fluff. As with all scenes, they should show something important - characterization, a pivotal turning point for a major character, motivation and/or conflict. If you take the prologue out of your book, the book should suffer. On the flip side, if you can take it out and it doesn't impact your story, then it's not needed in the first place.

Epilogues are another device writers tend to use to evoke emotion. Technically, an epilogue occurs after the story ends. They're often used in romances - particularly romantic suspense - to show the happily ever after moment after the harrowing climax. The hero and heroine kiss; a wedding's taking place; a baby arrives. Whatever your reason for including an epilogue, ask yourself if it's really necessary. I admit to liking prologues a lot, but epilogues usually leave me feeling blah. The story's over, and usually (as far as I'm concerned) the author could have wrapped it all up in the last chapter without the epilogue.

One area I find epilogues helpful though are in series. A lot of times an epilogue really is the hook that gets a reader to move into the second or third book in a series. For example, Cindy Gerard uses epilogues in her Bodyguard Series to get the reader interested in the next book. It's generally a family gathering where the reader sees that yes, the hero and heroine are living happily ever after, but there's always foreshadowing about the next sibling or the next story that will happen. In this case, I can usually stomach them because I'm already somewhat invested in the secondary characters that will become main characters in the next book.

And finally, the last writing device I want to talk about are flashbacks. I recently read an article by Tara K. Harper titled, Flashbacks - Absobloominlutely Not. The gist is that flashbacks are lazy, irritating writing devices new authors tend to use because they don't yet know how to successfully incorporate backstory into their novel. Stephen King calls them weak writing. Why? Because the idea tends to be that flashbacks are "cheating". That you should be able to convey the emotion and event through dialogue and backstory in order to keep the reader "in the moment". I tend to disagree. Granted, I don't want to see flashbacks in every book, but in some instances I think they work. They can also be needed.

JR Ward uses a couple of incredible flashbacks in Lover Awakened, the third book in her Black Dagger Brotherhood series (yes, this is the one Lisa conned me into reading). Could she have told the character-shaping event through dialogue and backstory? No. Not at all. The hero in this book was closed off both emotionally and physically from the people around him. He would have NEVER spilled his guts to anyone and talked about what had happened to him in his past. The only way the reader was going to understand why he was such an ass was through a flashback. And it worked. Now, you might be wondering, if it wasn't explained through dialogue, did the heroine ever learn the backstory? And the answer to that is, not completely. She learned snippets but not the entire thing. And that was okay, because she didn't need to know the details, but in order for the reader to connect with him, the rest of us did.

As with Prologues, there are a few things to keep in mind when writing flashbacks:

1. Don't let anyone tell you you CAN'T use a flashback. Only you know your story. Only you know what works and what doesn't. As with all "rules", know when to break them when doing so makes your story better.
2. If the flashback shows a crucial moment in the character's life and it's IMPERATIVE to the current story, use a flashback.
3. If the flashback isn't relevant to the current story - no matter how much character it shows - don't include it.

So time to chat. How do you feel about prologues, epilogues and flashbacks? And what other writing devices do you like or dislike and why?