Question on Thumar

[Tim Murray]

I had a thought, since the battle scene is reviewed by a meeting of Admirals, Captains and Vip's to figure out how to deal with the Terelian threat in a future chapter, does the prologue have relevance? Would it be better to start the book out with Derak?

The space battle still has to be dealt with, so I am not escaping that.

 

[Hex]

A couple of quasi-random thoughts:

First, the conventional wisdom is that agents (and editors) tend to shy away from prologues. Not sure how general that is, but your prologue does need to be working for you if you're going to include it. Thinking about it -- why's it a prologue rather than a first chapter?

Second, what will provide the tension in your scene with Derak if you remove the prologue? Structurally, your first couple of chapters work nicely -- dramatic space battle/ ship comes down (I think?)/ chap having coffee gets news... and everything swings into action. Without that, how will you make the breakfast scene engaging?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

What Hex said. Espcially about making it chapter one.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Darn, beaten to it again. Hex and Jo were up and at it earlier than me this morning!

I think the battle scene will be a great opening, but you might as well call it Chapter 1, especially as it seems they manage to limp back into space dock.