Advice needed on which idea for a prologue

[eric11210]

OK folks,

I've been bouncing this around in my head and I'm a bit stuck on chapter 3 of my novel because of this.

I know first of all that everyone says try not to do a prologue because many people don't read them. My problem is, my novel is a MG novel. I've been re-working it to minimize the third omni of it and trying to do it as much as possible in third limited (I do have some scenes that have to switch POV, for instance, my MC's friend sells him out and admits to his mother that the MC is running away from home. I felt like that had to stay for the readers to understand what happened but I didn't feel like the MC had to be privvy to that. It was enough when he sees cops chasing him that he gets the idea (actually, as I was writing this, it occurred to me that maybe he gets a call on his cell phone from his friend warning him just as the cops are chasing him. . .I'll have to think about that).

OK, on to the problem: the story basically revolves around the MC running away from home and finding himself on board a space ship from the future that resembles his favorite TV show. I originally wrote the first and second chapter where it splits between my MC and the future so that you see both stories. Then in the third chapter, they discover each other (he accidentally gets on board in the second chapter, but thinks he's aboard some kind of government spy plane at first). It's not until the end of the third chapter that he admits he knows about the future already (at first, since not everything is exactly the same and he doesn't quite know what to think, he keeps his mouth shut, but then at the end of the third chapter he sees an adventure unfolding which is just like the series finale, so he decides to take a chance and admit what he knows and warn the captain).

Then it occurred to me that the story might be more dramatic and exciting for young readers if you know nothing more than the MC does. It's much scarier if you are discovering the future ship at the same time the MC is and you are learning along with him that the ship is the same as the one in the TV show).

Anyway, my problem is that the MC would know all the characters from having watched the TV show, but my readers wouldn't know that, so I decided to take my future timeline, originally written into chapter 1 and roll it into a prologue.

If you read it, you have more insight into the future characters. If you don't, you will still understand the story without it (this way, I avoid the problem of people not reading prologues).

My problem is, now I'm debating about what adventure he sees on TV. I originally thought to show just the beginning of the adventure that he lands in the middle of and then it flows better.

However, for the sake of the story, he has to keep his mouth shut about what he knows until they leave our solar system. The way it was originally written, he doesn't know anything about this adventure and first sees that the ship is going through an adventure he saw on TV when they go through a black hole which transports them across the universe to the andromeda galaxy (at which point it's too late to avert the adventure they are about to have. If they know about it before-hand, they might try to explore other ways of getting back to their time).

But if he saw this adventure on TV, he'd be saying something sooner and that would create problems for the story.

OK, so after that whole long intro (sorry, I know many of you probably got bored and stopped reading long before this, but for those who stuck with me ;)), which would be a better choice for the prologue?

The adventure he falls into (and then I have to work harder to figure out a way for the story to move forward, because he still can't get them to believe his warning before they leave the milky way galaxy) or an alternate adventure where I don't have that problem, but I do have the problem that it's completely independent and then I have to write the back story of the current adventure into the main story (of course, I'm doing that anyway in brief on the assumption not everyone will read the prologue). . .

Eric

[Toothpaste]

Okay I"m just confused. Sorry. But I will try to answer your question. By not answering your question.

From what I understand the dilemma is making it known to the reader that the MC watched that tv show. And to me because this is so extremely important to the plot, that you really should weave that into the story itself. Like he rushes home from school every day to watch it. Or he gets beat up because he is a geek or something. Kind of like Galaxy Quest, we need to know about the fake world so we can then compare it to the real one.

As for the prologue, I actually think it is nice to give a taste at the beginning of the future world. Something that is a bit mysterious and we don't really get where it is going until we read further in the book. But I don't think that prologue resolves your tv show dilemma. It adds a nice level to it (and I so agree it is way more exciting for us to go on the adventure with the MC as opposed to being in on the story), but doesn't clear up the issue at hand: that is how does the MC know how to exist in the future world - the answer to which you (and now I) know is that he watched that show.

[Soccer Mom]

If this show is like a lot of the shows I watched as a kid (okay, I still watch them. So sue me!) the plots all start to looks the same. Maybe he thinks it's a different adventure than the one it is and when he realizes which episode it is, it's too late to do anything.

[writerterri]

What Toothpaste said. :D

[eric11210]

Well establishing that he watched the show is already incorporated. Sorry if that wasn't clear. The story starts with him having a fight because another kid stole his picture of the creator of the show. And he does talk about the show throughout the first chapter. So that isn't the issue.

My reason for wanting the prologue was not to establish that he knows the future world. Rather, it was to establish who the characters are on the show (and by extension, who they are in "real" life).

Granted, they would be caricatures of their real selves on the show, but the story in the TV show is based on the "real" future. Specifically, what I need to incorporate is as follows:

1. The captain has a son and just got divorced from his wife who has decided to run off with their son to some outer planet, presumably where he will never see his son again (the wife's reasoning being that he's hurting his son because he's not there for him, because he's always running off on adventures on his ship). This establishes that he's at the same time ambivalent about my MC who basically needs a father to love him and also receptive to my MC's needs, because deep down, he misses his own son and feels a need to offer fatherly affection to my MC.

2. The captain is a baseball fan (this is really not so important for the story, but since my MC is a Yankees fan, I wanted that connection to exist because I use it to end the story in a very poignant way).

3. There are a lot of new crew-members because the ship just went through a re-fit and many of them don't entirely trust the captain (Very important. I can incorporate this a little bit, but I felt like I wanted it better established before they are in a bad situation. I feel like it's a little more realistic if they are known to have just come aboard, because in the heat of the action, it's harder to make them betray the captain if they know him for years and there is no easy way to work in that most of them are new aboard once they are in a difficult situation).

4. The ship is a older one and isn't the pride of the fleet like the Enterprise. I wondered what life might be like on all the other federation ships, maybe an older one like the Caine, from the Caine Mutiny, but with a captain who has a bit of disdain for the spit and polish types and likes to get a bit more of a motley crew. He also wants a more diverse crew - earth of the future in my novel is dominated by humans and the space service is dominated by Americans. This captain is British and gently rubs his American friends' noses in the fact that they dominate the world (nothing heavy, nothing super insulting, but gentle nudging).

5. The captain is also kind of a drunk -- he likes to drink, (Star Trek Scotty like, not oh god, he stinks from all the booze like). Sorry to keep doing the Star Trek references, but I happen to be a huge Trekkie and can relate to that best.

6. This is where I have my big problem. How did they end up in the past? In the original version, the first chapter ends with them going through a black hole and potentially getting crushed. I did put brief descriptions in the chapter where the MC finds out where he is, but I liked the more in depth treatment I did originally and didn't want to leave in the entire alternate story line where the MC is not involved at all -- trying to keep it from the MC's POV as much as possible, or where not possible, it's usually a scene that directly relates to the MC -- towards the end of the book, he's wounded and lying in a coma and the adults finish getting him back home to the future, but the MC is always in the background of everyone's minds and they keep saying how they need to get back to the future so he can get to real hospital (this is after he saved all their lives, keeping it a MG story, with the MC definitely still the hero).

Now, the trouble I had, and the reason I felt I needed to put these things in the prologue is that by the time they pick up my MC, they are already in a bad situation, caught in the past.

Some of this stuff is much better established when they are feeling laid back, not when they are in a dangerous situation. Plus, once the MC is aboard, if I'm trying to stick to his POV. Even if the captain is thinking about his son, the MC doesn't see it. And I have a line where the MC knows the captain has a son, but doesn't know the son is no longer in the picture. Or the baseball thing, the captain says he's a baseball fan, but I like the showing I did where he's watching a game and is annoyed at being interrupted by his new navigator.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts. Hope this helps explain what I'm trying to accomplish.

Eric

[Toothpaste]

You know . . . I think all that information would be much more interesting to learn as the MC learns it. There are ways of showing the reader the relationships and personalities of the characters once we meet them. And a simple, "Captain we;ve been ordered to accompany another shipment of toilet paper again. Sir, are we ever going to see combat?" "Now now, Jones, we all have our duties to perform. It may not be as glamorous, but imagine if that toilet paper shipment was attacked? What would become of the galaxy then?" - can establish that the ship is less than a glamorous one.

It would be far more fun I think for us to get to explore things like the kid. He thinks everything is just so exciting from watching his tv show, but when he gets to the actual ship everything is far from it. It's funnier that way too I think. Unfortunately it goes back to that oft repeated rule: show, don't tell.