prologue - advice\and age gap/pipe smoking

[AnyaKimlin]

As a reader I don't mind them. It's a specific one I'm ruminating on.

I'm working on a historical mystery thingummy thing...

Cece Garrett is seventeen years old her dad's not happy she was involved in suffragette direct action when some shops are damaged. There are then some murders and then not got that far...

I would like to include a prologue which is her son complaining about her arrest nearly sixty years later so then it is very much her looking back on her life and the eighty year old Cece Garrett-Fierce can provide some commentary. It also lets the reader know where the relationship between her and the Inspector is going which I think improves the story.

Two downsides are:
At present it is YA and I do not want it to be anything else. Would an older narrator change that?
And whilst the prologue enhances the book and so do the asides, the whole elderly lady wryly listening to her son doesn't have the same impact as the prim nervous teen with angry father. The latter is a better beginning.

Any thoughts welcome. This story is almost completed its first draft and I have a good feeling about it.

Next question: Cece is seventeen. The Inspector by necessity is older. How much older can I get away with? I don't intend to start a relationship until she is older. Largely because WWI is looming and I can get rid of him easily if I need to.

Final question: I would love to give her a pipe to hold but can she be a YA heroine can she smoke?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

In my experience if it's a YA story, publishers like it to start with the YA character, so I think you're taking a risk. But my experience is limited...

 

[tinkerdan]

If you take for instance a book like Fried Green Tomatoes by Fannie Flagg and you look at how that sort of goes from a nursing home and then into the past and back and forth like that throughout and then the fact that I'm not sure what target audience there was for that, but the point is that's not exactly what you are proposing. So I guess that could be a plus.

I would guess if the beginning were brief enough it might add what you want and then starting into the story with the young adults would target your group.

What I'd be a bit leery about would be any footnotes from the future that look like reminiscence of the past because that might take the reader closer to the feeling in Fried Green Tomatoes. That might not be what you want unless someone has some hard figures that that book and subsequent movie was targeted at young adults.

 

[Juliana]

I agree with both springs and dan; start it with the age you want your readers to identify with. Can you add the prologue as a flashback-type thing later on? Is it absolutely necessary?

Re the pipe smoking, I would think thin ice. Can you give the pipe to a secondary character, and not to your main?

 

[Helix]

I think you could get away with an older character in a prologue, as long as you eventually end up in the YA gap for the main story. To readers I don't think age is as important as it's made out to be, but editors probably know more then I do.

For that relationship, how much older? Is it within the story that this takes place or just background for when things tie up? Tread careful, it could get weird.

And I'd nix the pipe tbh. Give her another habit. Like chewing pencils, cracking her knuckles, or clinking a metal puzzle over and over as she thinks.

 

[tinkerdan]

I think with the pipe smoking you might get away with the pipe if her father is a pipe smoker and she might pick the pipe up now and then as a curious connection between here and her pop.

I wouldn't have her directly smoking it unless once she might choke on the smoke when she realizes that the pipe is still smoking.

I think that both having the pipe in her mouth and perhaps working with the tamper would be acceptable without actual smoking.

If she smokes when she's older she might perhaps make reference to the fact that she doesn't really know exactly when she started really smoking.

I could see going from chewing pencils to chewing on the pipe.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I might make the prologue an epilogue but I'll have to take the reminiscences out as well.

The relationship I think he has to be in his late 20s/early 30s. It wasn't that unusual age gap at the time.

I'll just take the pipe out --- it was more her attempt for equality than a nervous habit.

 

[tinkerdan]

It is almost like a dichotomy that it is nervous habit and still a bit of rebellion. Not so much a means of gaining equality but a means of expressing freedom.

I'll just take the pipe out --- it was more her attempt for equality than a nervous habit.

Woman and children have long been oppressed by the simple process of being over protected. This over protective nature of a father and then for a woman of a husband, seemed perfectly normal, but over time became a means of exacting oppression with a simple turn of phrase as in it's not being lady like.

The same goes for drinking alcohol and then suddenly extends to taking a walk alone in the evening. And this same oppression extends to all children, which makes rebellious teens almost an imperative in some families if only to escape the oppression. The act of the rebellion thrust the rebel into a world where there are no protections and the closeness of their own self destruction becomes their banner of freedom.

Thus we wave our banner's in all their smoke-y glory daring any brave soul to try to take our freedom back from us.

 

[Juliana]

Anya, by the way, I totally get the pipe thing, seeing as my grandmother was a cigarette-smoking, pants-wearing lady in the 40's. Its just that an adult audience would probably get the smoking in context with the whole suffragette movement, but a YA audience not necessarily. So a publisher might be wary, since smoking has such a bad image now.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

This is 1910. The story starts with her arrest for direct action(suffragette). She is expelled from school as a result. Her father has an unusual choice as chauffeur/driver and bodyguard: a petite lady from the Carribean. The chauffeur wears male livery and eats uncut sandwiches with the crusts on. My MC is a prim and prissy seventeen year old who wants to be the next Elizabeth Barrett Browning and has an obsession with Sherlock Holmes.

Her father is a self made man and thinks she has forgotten her roots. So he places her in the care of his chauffeur and cook. The chauffeur teaches her mechanics and some fighting skills whereas the cook has her working as a scullery maid. During her time in the kitchen she discovers a pornography ring and then some murders occur.

I can't give her a deerstalker as Sherlock didn't have that until late 30s. Before that it was just a close fitting cap. He did have a pipe. Maybe she can have a violin instead.

 

[Juliana]

Ooh, yes, do give her a violin. Then she can really annoy her father.

It sounds like a great story, have fun!