Prologue question please

The prologue in Water For Elephants is a passage from near the end of the book. If it's not verbatim, it's very close.

kimmi said:

Also, just asking this....does a period always come before which?

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I don't understand this question? When does a period ever come before "which?"

I am relatively new to this writing correctly business but this is how I see it.

I thought a prologue was an event or explanation of circumstances that leads up to your story that we need to know before chapter one begins. It is kept to the minimum and should drag us into the story. Therefore, I can't see how snippets of a later chapter would be needed as a prologue.

The period before 'which' has got me confused too. I just don't understand your question.

JJ

Actually it is better to say "I picked up the gun sitting on the table" or "I picked the gun up off the table" or ...?
Which and that are those words consistently plucked out over each successive edit of a draft.
My copyeditors took many of my carefully placed commas out.
In some instances my agent put one in, my editor took it out and the copyeditor put it back in! I kid you not! In my next work I am NOT wasting any of my hard earned creative energy on commas.

Ah, I finally figured out when a period goes before "which." (Yeah, it's been bugging me.)

If which is in the middle of a sentence, referring back to the prior clause, which is what we were all thinking of, then of course it's a comma.

But, if there's a comma splice, and the "which" is actually the beginning of a QUESTION that asks for a choice -- Which dress looked better? -- then there would be a period at the end of the preceding sentence.

As to the prologue, my theory is "just say no to prologues" (and there's a whole thread on the pros and cons of prologues here, if you do a search on "prologues"). Taking a piece out of a later segment of the story is done occasionally, but there are some real drawbacks to doing that.

If you absolutely have to have a prologue, format it the same way you'd format the first chapter.

JD

JJ Cooper said:

I thought a prologue was an event or explanation of circumstances that leads up to your story that we need to know before chapter one begins. It is kept to the minimum and should drag us into the story. Therefore, I can't see how snippets of a later chapter would be needed as a prologue.JJ

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Agreed. I used a prologue format because I had one critical event that took place many months before the time line of the rest of the novel. I did not want the reader to miss that the event took place long before. One agent told me that unless there is a very good reason (as in my case), don't use a prologue, just start with the first chapter.

A prologue--if you absolutely MUST have one--is formatted the same as the rest of the manuscript: left hand justified, double-spaced.