To "Prelude" or drip feed?

[MstrTal]

As my thread title asks I am curious on peoples thoughts. I have been world-building and researching for my current WIP for a while now and for the longest time I couldn't develop a single story to fit my massively detailed world. Eventually this changed when I started working on my 1st possible character and much like the floodgates opening I suddenly had dozens off plots and stories jotted down ready to be written and I felt much relieved. This leads me to a new dilemma I never foresaw.

I may have over created my protagonists back story. It is so detailed and so enmeshed into the development of my world now that I wonder if I should write a sort of "Prelude" novel all its own about her. So I ask what is the prevalent feelings of those here, should I continue with my current plan and slowly reveal my protagonists history in bits and pieces as well as unfold the world or should I put my current planned work on hold and write her story as its own novel? The compromise of course being do both and if there is ever a call for a prelude try to publish it after the current planned project.

Thoughts?

 

[Arkose]

Well, why should you decide now? I have a couple of short stories (3k-8k) and for each character I have a good page of description. Do I really need a full page to describe one character in a story 5k long? Probably not, but I feel like I know the character. Does every line make it? No, I put in what the story requires.

IMO, I would write the story and see what it needs. Don't force things.(I did in my fantasy short story posted in critiques and I didn't like the story much and rewrote it).

If your at the end/midway, and you would like to add more, than write prologue and see if it hinders or completes the story.

**One of my bad habits is if the prologue doesn't catch my interest in the first paragraph, I don't read it anyways.

 

[alchemist]

Just becaue you have a lot of backstory, it doesn't mean you have to use it. I think a lot of writers have unused background, and so it remains. Over-indulging, showing the reader that you've thought of this and that, doesn't necessarily make for a great read.
Resist the urge, put in what you need, and save the Origins story for when your character is established in the present world and there is a demand for it.

 

[Hex]

I like the drip-feeding of relevant information, myself.

Michelle Sagara wrote (and is still writing) a series of books - The Chronicles of Elantra - based around a character called Kaylin.

Kaylin has the most amazing and traumatic backstory, but Sagara drips it into the stories - I think the last one I read was number 6 - and makes it one of the central reasons we want to read on. What happened to Kaylin? We've still got a couple of vital years missing from her life (which I think might be covered in the next book).

At the start of book 1 she meets someone from her past and tries to kill him but we don't discover why until the very end of the book.

Anyway, they're good examples.

I love the way that Tolkein's characters often have amazing back stories that are only hinted at - especially e.g. Elrond and Aragorn - you don't need to know the backstory details and, indeed, they'd just get in the way of the story he's telling.

I think when you've worked so hard on something it can be tempting to show the reader all your working, but you're telling a story and the story needs to keep moving along.

 

[J-WO]

drip-feed.

 

[slack]

drip, drip, drip.

 

[HareBrain]

In general I'd agree with drip-feeding, but I'd be wary of saying it's always the best option. In my WIP, I've sometimes wanted to be able to do away with my prologue, just because people have mixed feelings about prologues and I'd be happier, all else being equal, to begin with ch1. But the amount of information currently contained within the prologue that I'd have to feed into the first six chapters (by the end of which I feel the reader ought to know it, to avoid getting too confused) is just too great for it to come out naturally. There's no particular reason for the characters to reflect on it, or discuss it, in the first six chapters, not with everything else that's going on. To drip-feed it, I'd have to contrive various bits of dialogue, reminisences etc, which would no doubt feel clumsy (to me at least) and disrupt the flow of the whole thing.

As a reader, I think I'd rather an author came out with it and blurted out the backstory in a contrived but interesting way, rather than "force-dripped" it in. But certainly, if it can be drip-fed naturally, that's the better option.

But that's a general point, not necessarily about MstrTal's issue. I agree with the others on that.

 

[Malloriel]

If you drip-feed it in effectively, the reader understands the world and the character's history on a subconscious level, causing them to feel as though they -know- the character. To separate it out lets them know that you are -telling- them -about- the character. If you're telling the actual story of the character's life up to a certain point, and the goal of the story is simply the conflicts that character has encountered, that's a horse of a different color. If, however, you want people to feel at home in a world you've spent so much time and effort designing, and if you want them to live with your character, I would say allow the details to reveal themselves as necessary, then go back and release the backstory on its own. I think that this helps not only to fill in the blanks, the spaces you left in the mind of the reader to keep them curious (and because elaboration was unnecessary/distracting/pointless for the scene), but to keep the appetite whetted for the next adventure, and help them feel a deepening of that connection they developed in the main story.

I've gotten to a point with my own work where I see the "central story" that should be told. Honestly, I always knew it was the central story, and always called it "the central story arch", but seeing where it "picked up" in the lives of a majority of the players left me feeling like their stories needed to be told as well, which meant several non-linear trilogies would be released before I ever got 'round to releasing the main story, without which none of the other lives would need be affected at all. I know, now, that I need to write this main thread, this thing which binds them all together, and once done may go back and let everyone in on how the other characters went from being relatively normal to being instrumental in that main conflict.

I haven't moved past the idea that for internal integrity between the "now" and "then" moments, I do need to know how and when they all ended up meeting and interacting, and in that way need to have a kind of working story upon which the later books (the trilogies) would elaborate, but I'm headed in the right direction for progress!

 

[JohnnyMc]

Another vote for drip feeding, for what it's worth.

Consider a prologue that hints at the secrets without really revealing them.

 

[Primitius]

I like it when writers go for quite a stingy drip, too, A la steven erikson - the less you know about the stuff the characters are doing, the more mysterious everything is. Although I guess it becomes a very fine line to walk when you start letting things happen without fully explaining why.

 

[Anne Martin]

I'm a drip-feeder, too, although a slurp is sometimes necessary.

For me, a Prologue shouldn't be an infodump. It should be action tangential to the main story, pointing toward an incident that will intersect the main story, amplifying the significance of that incident.

 

[MstrTal]

Thank you for all your input everyone.

I guess I should elaberate now that I have had time to digest all your responses. By prelude I erroneously used the improper word. I should of said prequel. The way my main characters back story has developed is fairly well a novel in and of itself with separate characters, events and a storyline that exists and ranges some 80 years prior to my current WIP.

This character is the main protagonist not only of my current WIP but I have found myself tweaking my world around her. That said she happens to live or at least exist during many of the key events that shape my world that is basically our reality that diverges into a modern fantasy setting around the 1950s. A setting complete with vampires, werewolves, fae and more: however for the bulk of this divergence she herself is locked in an asylum the subject of experimentation given her own special condition by a group of the aforementioned supernatural entities.

While I can and will certainly have to find a way to slowly tease all of this out to readers through the course of my current WIP as well as pertinent facts about how and why the setting diverged into its current reality as well as the differences I wonder if her story might be unique enough to stand alone. Or perhaps be a novel in and of itself leading to my current WIP.

If any of my ramblings make any sense? Perhaps even prequel is not the proper term and rather a shift in focus to origin story? Though this does bring up the concern about shifting time periods and eras on potential readers. Or am I now being obtuse?

 

[Anne Martin]

Look at other Prequels and decide whether you think they work. (Silmarrillion is one, Star Wars pre-trilogy. Prelude to Foundation. Desination: Void) Often they don't, because if they were as interesting as the main story, they would be part of it. Saying that, finish your main story, write the prequel and hold it back until your series demands it - but only if you are entirely happy with it.