The idea struck me after reading a topic about naming problems. Or being stuck by giving names to things in your story. So, I decided to make a quick post about how I tackle the naming question, and maybe some of you will find it useful.
Those who can't be bothered, don't be afraid to use a site like Fantasy Name Generator. It has multiple options you can choose and generate names to your heart's content; it's up to you. Those who want to be a bit more 'original,' do continue reading!
Characters:
Creating new names
This is my most used method. How do I do it? I simply create a word that comes to mind that is easy to say out in my head and has maybe two maximum three syllables and no meaning. I try to keep it simple and short. When doing so, I most of the time start with the first letter and repeat it over and over until the name I come up with sounds fine.
Example: I have a character named Kawu. I first knew I wanted him to have a name that starts with K. Then I started spitballing. Koon, Kima, Khashur, Kawan, etc. I was just putting letters together until I thought about Kawu. I liked it; it fit his personality in my head, and that was it.
Transforming names
This is my second most used method. When I can't be asked. I take a real name and change up letters, syllables, or vowels. I changed it in a way that it can be pronounced and seems legible.
Example: Kyaranin. It is a name I transformed from Kyaradain, which is an artist's name I know of that is also already a transformation of the name Carradine. See? It just works.
Using real names
This is a method that I usually go to when I have a name that I like the sound of, and I think can fit the story. I also tend to play little games that go above the head of most readers, at least until they are familiar with other languages... which includes using foreign words as names.
Example: In one of my books, there was a demonic faction led by a tiger. I named him Harimau, which simply means "The tiger" in Malaysian. Case closed. I had many more like this, naming my demonic characters by looking up their animal names in other languages like Mongolian. Of course, if it just didn't fit, I transformed it using my second method, but still. It was fun doing so.
Those are my three main methods when it comes to naming characters. So far, never failed me.
Items, locations, etc:
Same. If you want something unique, just do it the same way. Maybe your city is at the cross of two rivers? Look up a word for river, bridge, valley, or something in another language and use it as its name. Give landmarks a name that describes them. For example, I had a place named "Swordscar Pass," which was a deep canyon that looked like a scar left behind on the earth. Simple.
What to avoid:
Overcomplicating. That is stupid. You may think it's cool, it's unique, it's smart. No. It is pretentious and stupid. You will only make it so your readers roll their eyes and move on. Giving something/someone a long, convoluted, or absurd name is a bad choice. Also, try not to mimic Chinese and Japanese naming, okay? Especially if you don't know what you are doing but copying from Google. You are just becoming your own enemy with that. It's like wearing a tattoo of "chicken soup."
Using unique or extra-long names is only valid if it reinforces some kind of joke or gets acknowledged in the story for how stupid it sounds. Most readers, and I mean 95%, want a name they can read on the first try and can remember easily. If not, they would skip it, forget it, or simply move on with the story, and now you managed to alienate a possible reader base. Not good...
Extra:
The same is true of using other languages in your work. Let me explain with an example: In my story, there was an ancient, long-gone empire with a different language. I used my own native one for that. It was presented as a little nudge, a joke, writing one or two sentences only, which made the MC and her group dizzy and annoyed for not figuring out what was going on and what it could mean.
It is fun to use things like this now and then, but don't go overboard. Constantly doing it is bad, mmmkay?
I have seen many times the same topics, asking for advice on how to grow your reader base and get people interested in your book. So, this part will be about me explaining my experience. This one is totally subjective, and I am only describing what I went through and what it seemed to work.
Also, please note that I reached this stage in a year's time, being active every day. Otherwise, it won't happen. Here are my current stats for reference so you can decide how much weight you give to my words:
My History
I started out on Webnovel in early 2021. I wrote my first English book, Mad God, there. It was a year full of anticipation and pretty high goals on my part. First things first, aiming high is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it is needed to succeed. I am not ashamed to acknowledge that I set out with the single goal in mind to get successful within a year, get offered a contract, etc. In hindsight? Thank god it did not happen!
Anyway, what I want to say is that it is good to start with a goal. It is okay to believe in yourself that you can be just as successful as others, and you can do this even better! It is what started me to write my stories and not just let them sit in my brain, never seeing the light. Just don't be a dick about it, and don't start boasting, as that turns it from a healthy confidence into being an arrogant asshole.
So, back to the topic. I started out with a clear story in mind and got to writing. My first goal was to get noticed by readers. How do I do that? Well, I picked a genre I knew was popular, so I wrote a cultivation novel. Although I did transform it to my taste, forgoing most rules and tropes, turning it into something I liked. I simply abandoned all the stuff I hated from xianxia novels and replaced it with what I thought was fun. So here is point one:
Pick a genre that is popular.
Next came the hard part. Writing. At first, I didn't have any regularity in posting chapters, or how long one chapter should be, so it was sporadic. But I knew one thing back then, too: Consistency is key. I made sure I had a chapter out every workday. Why? It gave me a rhythm, something that, if it gets done long enough, becomes a habit. So here is the second point:
Have a fixed schedule.
That way, people can get used to when your book is available when they start looking for your story to update, and just as it becomes a habit for you to write, it becomes a habit for them to read. Of course, this is the hardest part because, for a long, long time, you won't get any feedback. You won't know if you are doing it well, right, or if it is even interesting to read. You will be in the dark, so don't get disheartened. Get used to it instead. So point three should be:
Don't stop or give up.
I always sat down, every Monday through Friday, and wrote a chapter for every day. Sometimes, they were 1800ish words, sometimes 3000 words. Soon, around month 3 or 4, I got into the habit of writing 2000 words per chapter. But to reach that, I had to PUSH myself. There were many days when I just felt like I didn't know what would happen in the story or how I would write tomorrow's chapter... But I pushed on. You have to, and believe me, sooner or later, it will feel natural to write daily. When it happens, you will feel it becoming much easier to keep up the schedule.
Now, I need to mention for the next half a year or so, I rarely got any comments or feedback. I was around 100+ chapters when the first "Thank you" messages started coming in. It was elevated to see, and on Webnovel, I started getting Powerstone votes, too. Sometimes, I managed to break into the top 1500ish stories but usually hovered between 1500 and 2000. Seemingly, I hit my plateau. I couldn't break out, but I was happy as I had a steady reader base.
Note: You can't delete a story from Webnovel, so I simply removed all chapters after moving to SH. Why? I dislike Webnovel and its practices.
Fast forward a year, and now it is 2022; I finished Mad God after writing it for a little over a year. I began my second story, Detective Everlong. Wanting to change the direction, it was an alternate history, demon-horror story. Here is where reality came knocking.
My new endeavor was a total failure. No readers, no growth, and no interest in it by readers. None. Zero. (Update: As of 2024, I removed the story as I have no desire to continue it. Maybe a 3rd rework. But not very likely)
If I said it didn't bother me, it would be a lie. It did. Very much so. You could say it hurt.
A lot. Which brings me to the fourth point:
Failure is inevitable.
It was then I started looking for options. The goals I started out with morphed and changed through the year, and now my new goal was to get myself a reader base that reads my stories, not just because my story is something of a popular genre. (That is still one of my main goals to this day.) A simple yet difficult goal. Amongst my searches is when I stumbled here, in 2022's October. A year ago. First, I decided to start publishing Mad God, and now I have an advantage. The book was completed. This, in hindsight, was what made me reach what I deem as success sooner than all my one-and-a-half years prior put together.
Consistency
I was, this time, publishing two chapters per day, every day. One in the morning, one in the night. I was taking advantage of having the whole story completed, and I could keep putting them out consistently. I tried the first-chapter feedback threads without much success, so I quickly gave up on it. So, if you ever get disheartened by one, don't be. Keep going. I did, and it worked out.
Still, don't expect feedback to come in imminently! My first comments here came around the 60th chapter, and it was a long criticism from someone who binged it. So here is our next point:
Don't get defensive about it.
It was something I so very much needed. Those who go through so many chapters and then leave their criticisms are good to listen to. It also shone a light on one of my (many) grammatical flaws back then. But, thanks to it, instead of getting angry when my work was given harsh criticism, I realized the mistake. It was game time.
I had 300 chapters ready, a completed book, so I had a new goal. Fix it. I not only went back and fixed the already published 60+ chapters, but every new chapter got an edit instead of just copying them from my Google doc. Did I make them perfect? No. To this day, they are not perfectly fixed up, but the most glaring mistakes are gone. Whenever someone leaves a correction under a chapter, I go in and edit it. But... the story is in a place where it is, going by the reviews, well-liked because I listened. It improved my writing, and my currently running story has fewer flaws, thanks to it.
From the time I wrote its first chapter to now, where it stands to this day, more than two years have passed.
But finally, I feel I can be proud. There were many times when I wanted to stop. Where I felt like this was not for me, or I was going nowhere with it; hell, come 2024, it will be three years since Mad God's story formed in my mind... yet it is still like I just wrote it.
What I want you to get out of this all is... don't give up. Writing and succeeding with it has three major points:
Determination
Consistency
Luck
And you can't do much with the last one, but you can influence it. With what? With the first two. Chose a topic that is popular, have a story that gets regular updates, and never turn away from or turn on those who give criticisms. You can't run away from trolls; they will find you. Ignore them. One-star reviews are bound to happen; they always will. But those who have points in them, even if it hurts to read/hear? Don't sleep on their advice. I had someone who changed his 3-star review after commenting and fixing the problems. Never be the enemy of your readers; it won't end well.
And more importantly, don't be afraid of failure. It will happen. My Detective story is still a flop, yet I even attempted a rewrite of it. This is how things are. Some, no matter if you have a following ready, regular readers who write to you and become part of your community... some stories are just not meant to become successful.
I have seen many times the same topics, asking for advice on how to grow your reader base and get people interested in your book. So, this part will be about me explaining my experience. This one is totally subjective, and I am only describing what I went through and what it seemed to work.
Also, please note that I reached this stage in a year's time, being active every day. Otherwise, it won't happen. Here are my current stats for reference so you can decide how much weight you give to my words:
My History
I started out on Webnovel in early 2021. I wrote my first English book, Mad God, there. It was a year full of anticipation and pretty high goals on my part. First things first, aiming high is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it is needed to succeed. I am not ashamed to acknowledge that I set out with the single goal in mind to get successful within a year, get offered a contract, etc. In hindsight? Thank god it did not happen!
Anyway, what I want to say is that it is good to start with a goal. It is okay to believe in yourself that you can be just as successful as others, and you can do this even better! It is what started me to write my stories and not just let them sit in my brain, never seeing the light. Just don't be a dick about it, and don't start boasting, as that turns it from a healthy confidence into being an arrogant asshole.
So, back to the topic. I started out with a clear story in mind and got to writing. My first goal was to get noticed by readers. How do I do that? Well, I picked a genre I knew was popular, so I wrote a cultivation novel. Although I did transform it to my taste, forgoing most rules and tropes, turning it into something I liked. I simply abandoned all the stuff I hated from xianxia novels and replaced it with what I thought was fun. So here is point one:
Pick a genre that is popular.
Next came the hard part. Writing. At first, I didn't have any regularity in posting chapters, or how long one chapter should be, so it was sporadic. But I knew one thing back then, too: Consistency is key. I made sure I had a chapter out every workday. Why? It gave me a rhythm, something that, if it gets done long enough, becomes a habit. So here is the second point:
Have a fixed schedule.
That way, people can get used to when your book is available when they start looking for your story to update, and just as it becomes a habit for you to write, it becomes a habit for them to read. Of course, this is the hardest part because, for a long, long time, you won't get any feedback. You won't know if you are doing it well, right, or if it is even interesting to read. You will be in the dark, so don't get disheartened. Get used to it instead. So point three should be:
Don't stop or give up.
I always sat down, every Monday through Friday, and wrote a chapter for every day. Sometimes, they were 1800ish words, sometimes 3000 words. Soon, around month 3 or 4, I got into the habit of writing 2000 words per chapter. But to reach that, I had to PUSH myself. There were many days when I just felt like I didn't know what would happen in the story or how I would write tomorrow's chapter... But I pushed on. You have to, and believe me, sooner or later, it will feel natural to write daily. When it happens, you will feel it becoming much easier to keep up the schedule.
Now, I need to mention for the next half a year or so, I rarely got any comments or feedback. I was around 100+ chapters when the first "Thank you" messages started coming in. It was elevated to see, and on Webnovel, I started getting Powerstone votes, too. Sometimes, I managed to break into the top 1500ish stories but usually hovered between 1500 and 2000. Seemingly, I hit my plateau. I couldn't break out, but I was happy as I had a steady reader base.
Note: You can't delete a story from Webnovel, so I simply removed all chapters after moving to SH. Why? I dislike Webnovel and its practices.
Fast forward a year, and now it is 2022; I finished Mad God after writing it for a little over a year. I began my second story, Detective Everlong. Wanting to change the direction, it was an alternate history, demon-horror story. Here is where reality came knocking.
My new endeavor was a total failure. No readers, no growth, and no interest in it by readers. None. Zero.
If I said it didn't bother me, it would be a lie. It did. Very much so. You could say it hurt.
A lot. Which brings me to the fourth point:
Failure is inevitable.
It was then I started looking for options. The goals I started out with morphed and changed through the year, and now my new goal was to get myself a reader base that reads my stories. A simple yet difficult goal. Amongst my searches is when I stumbled here, in 2022's October. A year ago. First, I decided to start publishing Mad God, and now I have an advantage. The book was completed. This, in hindsight, was what made me reach what I deem as success sooner than all my one-and-a-half years prior put together.
Consistency
I was, this time, publishing two chapters per day, every day. One in the morning, one in the night. I was taking advantage of having the whole story completed, and I could keep putting them out consistently. I tried the first-chapter feedback threads without much success, so I quickly gave up on it. So, if you ever get disheartened by one, don't be. Keep going. I did, and it worked out.
Still, don't expect feedback to come in imminently! My first comments here came around the 60th chapter, and it was a long criticism from someone who binged it. So here is our next point:
Don't get defensive about it.
It was something I so very much needed. Those who go through so many chapters and then leave their criticisms are good to listen to. It also shone a light on one of my (many) grammatical flaws back then. But, thanks to it, instead of getting angry when my work was given harsh criticism, I realized the mistake. It was game time.
I had 300 chapters ready, a completed book, so I had a new goal. Fix it. I not only went back and fixed the already published 60+ chapters, but every new chapter got an edit instead of just copying them from my Google doc. Did I make them perfect? No. To this day, they are not perfectly fixed up, but the most glaring mistakes are gone. Whenever someone leaves a correction under a chapter, I go in and edit it. But... the story is in a place where it is, going by the reviews, well-liked.
From the time I wrote its first chapter to now, where it stands to this day, more than two years have passed.
But finally, I feel I can be proud. There were many times when I wanted to stop. Where I felt like this was not for me, or I was going nowhere with it; hell, come 2024, it will be three years since Mad God's story formed in my mind... yet it is still like I just wrote it.
What I want you to get out of this all is... don't give up. Writing and succeeding with it has three major points:
Determination
Consistency
Luck
And you can't do much with the last one, but you can influence it. With what? With the first two. Chose a topic that is popular, have a story that gets regular updates, and never turn away from or turn on those who give criticisms. You can't run away from trolls; they will find you. Ignore them. One-star reviews are bound to happen; they always will. But those who have points in them, even if it hurts to read/hear? Don't sleep on their advice. I had someone who changed his 3-star review after commenting and fixing the problems. Never be the enemy of your readers; it won't end well.
And more importantly, don't be afraid of failure. It will happen. My Detective story is still a flop, yet I even attempted a rewrite of it. This is how things are. Some, no matter if you have a following ready, regular readers who write to you and become part of your community... some stories are just not meant to become successful.
This is just a quick tip for any of you starting out right now. Take your first writing as gaining experience. Handle it as if you are writing not for the public but for yourself. Treat it as if it were a story that you would write and then forget it inside your drawer. Look at it as something that is meant for yourself more so than for others.
What not to expect:
Comments
Reviews
Any type of feedback
This is my best advice when starting out. Why? Because if you go in expecting any of those three, you are working against yourself. You will simply hurt your own motivation and chase yourself into abandoning it. It is a dangerous cycle as it could easily devolve into starting new stories again and again, hoping for that sweet reader interaction. But then... nothing happens. Why? Readers would see you abandoning story after story and having a backlog of nothing but half-made books. They wouldn't invest their time into your stories just so then they would be left hanging in the middle of an adventure. Having finished books in your portfolio is a much better boost for your future endeavors.
So, anybody starting out, go in with no expectations and just focus on starting and finishing the book.
Oh boy... I will be quick and concise about it because this is a heated topic on this forum. I never knew that so many people hated prologues. I disagree with all of them, but that is a different topic for a different thread; this is my tip for those who want to hear my opinion about it.
Should you write a prologue?
Does it add to the world-building or to the story? If yes, then do it. If not, you don't need it. If a prologue is well-crafted and enhances the reading experience, it is a good one. On the other hand, if it feels forced, disconnected, or burdensome, it is best to be omitted. Prologues can be overused or misused. From what I gathered, people here feel that they skip prologues altogether or find them unnecessary as they don't directly contribute to the main story.
And that is the fault of the writer, not the fault of the prologues.
All my first chapters are prologues.
Yep. At least, I know it is a great filter for my work. I don't want to argue with readers who can't take the time to read what I present to them properly.
How do I structure my prologues?
They are introductions to my world. They set up the background of the main plotline and the world, things that I won't keep constantly reiterating throughout the story, only expanding on it. Did you skip the prologue? Too bad. It is there for a reason: to establish the foundation on which my whole story stands.
My Mad God book's prologue was the event where the MC states his purpose and his goal; we get to see what exactly the end goal of the story is before he is killed and reincarnated, and then the story starts. By chapter 2, you know who he was, what he wanted, and what the story would be about. Simple & clean.
Same with my House of Amarin book. The first part of the 1st chapter is the introduction to the world of Meriath, its history, and the main problem the characters will face. After that, I only expanded later on the history of the land, but without a laid foundation, it would always feel like an asspull, in my opinion.
My thoughts about prologues are as follows: It is to lay down the rules of your story. Yes, you can introduce them as the story goes on, but I always feel like those are being pulled out of nowhere.
I may be wrong, but nothing can convince me that prologues are bad. They are just written badly. The two things are not the same, so we are not the same.
Oh boy... I will be quick and concise about it because this is a heated topic on this forum. I never knew that so many people hated prologues. I disagree with all of them, but that is a different topic for a different thread; this is my tip for those who want to hear my opinion about it.
Should you write a prologue?
Does it add to the world-building or to the story? If yes, then do it. If not, you don't need it. If a prologue is well-crafted and enhances the reading experience, it is a good one. On the other hand, if it feels forced, disconnected, or burdensome, it is best to be omitted. Prologues can be overused or misused. From what I gathered, people here feel that they skip prologues altogether or find them unnecessary as they don't directly contribute to the main story.
And that is the fault of the writer, not the fault of the prologues.
All my first chapters are prologues.
Yep. At least, I know it is a great filter for my work. I don't want to argue with readers who can't take the time to read what I present to them properly.
How do I structure my prologues?
They are introductions to my world. They set up the background of the main plotline and the world, things that I won't keep constantly reiterating throughout the story, only expanding on it. Did you skip the prologue? Too bad. It is there for a reason: to establish the foundation on which my whole story stands.
My Mad God book's prologue was the event where the MC states his purpose and his goal; we get to see what exactly the end goal of the story is before he is killed and reincarnated, and then the story starts. By chapter 2, you know who he was, what he wanted, and what the story would be about. Simple & clean.
Same with my House of Amarin book. The first part of the 1st chapter is the introduction to the world of Meriath, its history, and the main problem the characters will face. After that, I only expanded later on the history of the land, but without a laid foundation, it would always feel like an asspull, in my opinion.
My thoughts about prologues are as follows: It is to lay down the rules of your story. Yes, you can introduce them as the story goes on, but I always feel like those are being pulled out of nowhere.
I may be wrong, but nothing can convince me that prologues are bad. They are just written badly. The two things are not the same, so we are not the same.
Does it add to the world-building or the story? If yes, then do it. If not, you don't need it. If a prologue is well-crafted and enhances the reading experience, it is a good one. On the other hand, if it feels forced, disconnected, or burdensome, it is best to be omitted. Prologues can be overused or misused. From what I gathered, people here feel that they skip prologues altogether or find them unnecessary as they don't directly contribute to the main story.
Yep. At least, I know it is a great filter for my work. I don't want to argue with readers who can't take the time to read what I present to them properly.
I don't use prologues all that often, but it's more because I see a prologue as something outside the story.
If I'm doing first-person perspective, WHICH I HATE, but I have gotten jobs where I had to write the story in first person present. HOLY CRAP DO I SUCK AT FIRST PERSON PRESENT. That all said, First Person torpedos any use of the omniscient 3rd person narrative commenting on the story as it unfolds.
Enter the prologue.
The prologue, epilogue, and the occasional chapter that is completely outside the story become the narrator's info dump by giving you a chance to do an entirely different story that is outside the first-person PoV. World building shit. I cannot talk about how the mines on the third moon of Bargal-4 have a complex social structure because the MC will have nothing to do with Techno-Nobility, but if I have a short story about someone and what he sees and experiences, that then becomes an info dump as to the background I couldn't give the reader through a first-person perspective.
I always saw these as being short stories set in the same setting, but for the most part, disconnected from the main storyline. For that reason, I have no problem with someone skipping these sections. They are background info that is unneeded to enjoy the story, but brings clarification should the reader wish it.
I do use it in 3rd person omniscient perspective when I want to do foreshadowing for future stories. For example, the prologue for HKN is a story about the drivers of Truck-Kun and how he Isekai's the MC. The way it is done is to make the reader think it's only two people hit by truck-kun, but if you get to the end of book 1, you can go back and re-read it and go, "OH! Goddamn it, he all but TOLD ME FLAT OUT that they hit THREE PEOPLE." Because everything makes sense if you realize there were three Isekai'd victims, not two. All the strange actions, all the misunderstandings become obvious with that one clue.
And I tell you in the prologue.
However, not all stories lend themselves well to the use of Prologue for this purpose. I don't think it would help in Hotrod Lantern or I Was Summoned. However, In retrospect, I think the first chapter of FTS is a Prologue, now that I think about it. I suppose using it as the "inciting incident" chapter to streamline the story works, but only for certain types of stories. All Isekai's have a cookie-cutter plotline and the Prologue could easily be used to go:
OKAY, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT AN ISEKAI IS. HERE'S THE BULLET POINTS OF HOW THIS ISEKAI WORKS AND THE VERY FEW CHANGES I HAVE TO THE PATTERN.
1. MC Hit by X (Truck, Check).
2. A God Handles The Transmigration, Yes/No: Yes
3. God is a dick/Not a dick? (God is dick)
4. MC Gets Cheat (Power to control lint)
5. MC gets new body (Starts at age 15)
6. Starting location: In a forest full of monsters near a princess getting attacked by Wolves.
However, I am not in agreement that all stories need or even would benefit from prologues. I find them very specific in use. To include a prologue would often be a detriment because you DO want the Reader to start at Chapter 1. That first line is what gets the reader. If you screw that one lineup, you can lose your audience.
When you have a prologue, you have a chapter whose purpose is to get the reader to read until the first chapter, THEN the first chapter is to get the reader to want to read the whole story. That's an extra step. Every extra step is a chance to lose a reader. Less is more in writing.
YOU ARE ASKING THE READER TO PAY YOU IN TIME.
Every word, every sentence, every period, every ellipse...
All these take time to read. Time the reader will never get back. You may want to share all these wonderful ideas with the reader, but the old saying is true: The Story That Has Everything Has Something The Reader Won't Like Reading.
Which is to say, if you include too much in a story, you will waste the reader's time and he will stop reading to do something else. Now, I write knowing this, and my stories are DEEP, WIDE, and VAST. There are many people who cannot stand HKN. However, if you are into Deep, Wide, and Vast, HKN is a story you will Love because the more you read, the more you will realize, "Oh wait, that had a double meaning. Oh wait, everything just changed. Oh wait, that was set up 80 chapters ago."
If you are looking for a light novel, HKN ain't for you. If you love nightmarish levels of complexity, HKN gets high praise.
Adding a Prologue adds complexity.
Depending on who you are trying to appeal to, complexity is bad. I love complexity. I love balancing a story that I release every three days. Why? Because if you read it as it is released, you will get a different experience than if you read it all at once after it has all been published, which will be a different experience than reading it knowing the ending.
Now, I wrote a book 287k words long that, if you wished to get the full experience, you should read at least twice.
Of COURSE, it has a prologue.
So I would disagree with "There are no bad prologues, just bad writers." There are bad "fits". Many stories would not lend themselves well to a prologue. I used to work the bodice ripper grind back in the day. We never had prologues and they do not work. People don't want background and complexity when they are reading soft-core porn with 80 pages of foreplay, one sex scene, then marriage with a "10 years later, look at all the babies" epilogue. They paid 2.95 to grab something to read in the lobby of the bus stop because the cover has a woman getting ravaged by a shirtless man with a god-damn 8-pack and 0% body fat so they can read porn without feeling guilty because it only has one sex scene and the ML and FL get married.
Epilogue? Yeah. They all had Epilogues. But prologues? The reader just wants to get into the crazy drama like... NOW. A prologue just gonna slow things down.
However, I am not in agreement that all stories need or even would benefit from prologues. I find them very specific in use. To include a prologue would often be a detriment because you DO want the Reader to start at Chapter 1. That first line is what gets the reader. If you screw that one lineup, you can lose your audience.
When you have a prologue, you have a chapter whose purpose is to get the reader to read until the first chapter, THEN the first chapter is to get the reader to want to read the whole story. That's an extra step. Every extra step is a chance to lose a reader. Less is more in writing.
Not with the include or don't include the prologue. It is up to the writer.
You don't write your prologue to capture your reader? What are you writing then? A phonebook? What is wrong with you then? If you can't write a captivating prologue then it is a writer problem.
There are no extra steps here. Write your damned prologue to be captivating just as your whole story.
If the prologue is part of the story, just make it the first chapter.
If the prologue is a side story or something else, then you are making someone read a story before the story.
If it's an anthology, then call it an anthology. If it's one story with one extra story, then I have to sell two stories.
And as I said before: If your Story has everything, there is something the reader won't like.
FOCUS YOUR STORY.
I write very broad stories, but I also make sure to pair them down as much as possible. No word can go to waste. Every second I am asking the reader to spend on my story MUST be worth that much more than any normal story. A reader will forgive fluff and waste much easier with a 100 page book than a 1000 page book. I know, you'd think it would be the other way around, but nope. The reader will quit reading depending on how many pages are left and the quality of the book.
If I got 50 pages left, but the book is Meh, I'll finish it just to finish it.
If I got 950 pages left and the book is Meh, I'll quit. I got better things to do with my time.
A prologue has a very specific use. It's like using a General HE shell on a tank when you have a short barrel. Ain't gonna do shit. You want a long barrel for maximum velocity with a super dense shell, rather than something jam-packed with HE. Like an opening chapter streamlined for penetration, just like A Tank needs to be hit with something made for penetration. General HE is for infantry and civilian structure elimination. To whom it may concern, rather than something for a specific audience.
Every second I am asking the reader to spend on my story MUST be worth that much more than any normal story. A reader will forgive fluff and waste much easier with a 100 page book than a 1000 page book. I know, you'd think it would be the other way around, but nope.
Oh, and I'm using dark mode activated, so if the colors are hard to read on bright mode... then join the Dark Side. Aaaaand, if you are on mobile, browse this thread in landscape mode as I formatted it on PC. In portrait mode, it gets all wonky and bad to read
This is going to be quick, short, and pretty obvious. Rest is important even though this is not physical work. Duh. Everyone could tell you this. But here are tips from my personal experience to avoid getting to a point where you burn out yourself.
I will assume you have a rhythm already. Writing X amount of chapters per week. Even if you are only writing three chapters per week, I am probably right in assuming that you spend the days when you don't do that thinking about it, which is good. When I am also inspired and totally in the groove, I can only think about future scenarios all the time. But this state won't last forever.
If you can, make use of it, get ahead of yourself, rack up advanced chapters, etc. But be ready that sooner or later, the feeling will be gone. To not let the pendulum swing completely to the other end and end up in a total writer's block, here is what I suggest to you:
Select days for yourself when you won't write, won't think about scenarios, won't even think about your story.
I have been writing continuously for 3 years now, and when I mean continuously, I mean Monday to Friday + half Saturday, avoiding a moment when I would feel like I hit a wall. Yes, there were days when a chapter took longer to finish or get it out in a way I was wholly satisfied with, but I managed to avoid a block or burnout. The reason is simple: I made sure that the majority of my Saturdays and especially my Sundays were off. I don't write, I don't think about the plot, if I can help it, I don't even check comments. That's it. Simple.
Of course, it isn't surefire. But it helps a lot. I had only 2 times when I had to ask my readers to be patient while I took a few days off for rest between volumes, which were never longer than a few days or a week at most. Which is also a very valid option, so don't be afraid of using it. The important thing is to communicate this to your readers; never just disappear. Tell them what happens and why, and they will understand it.
Well, I think that is it for this short one. Keep safe, everybody, and don't forget to rest your mind and fingers!
This is going to be quick, short, and pretty obvious. Rest is important even though this is not physical work. Duh. Everyone could tell you this. But here are tips from my personal experience to avoid getting to a point where you burn out yourself.
I will assume you have a rhythm already. Writing X amount of chapters per week. Even if you are only writing three chapters per week, I am probably right in assuming that you spend the days when you don't do that thinking about it, which is good. When I am also inspired and totally in the groove, I can only think about future scenarios all the time. But this state won't last forever.
If you can, make use of it, get ahead of yourself, rack up advanced chapters, etc. But be ready that sooner or later, the feeling will be gone. To not let the pendulum swing completely to the other end and end up in a total writer's block, here is what I suggest to you:
Select days for yourself when you won't write, won't think about scenarios, won't even think about your story.
I have been writing continuously for 3 years now, and when I mean continuously, I mean Monday to Friday + half Saturday, avoiding a moment when I would feel like I hit a wall. Yes, there were days when a chapter took longer to finish or get it out in a way I was wholly satisfied with, but I managed to avoid a block or burnout. The reason is simple: I made sure that the majority of my Saturdays and especially my Sundays were off. I don't write, I don't think about the plot, if I can help it, I don't even check comments. That's it. Simple.
Of course, it isn't surefire. But it helps a lot. I had only 2 times when I had to ask my readers to be patient while I took a few days off for rest between volumes, which were never longer than a few days or a week at most. Which is also a very valid option, so don't be afraid of using it. The important thing is to communicate this to your readers; never just disappear. Tell them what happens and why, and they will understand it.
Well, I think that is it for this short one. Keep safe, everybody, and don't forget to rest your mind and fingers!
This is my most used method. How do I do it? I simply create a word that comes to mind that is easy to say out in my head and has maybe two maximum three syllables and no meaning. I try to keep it simple and short. When doing so, I most of the time start with the first letter and repeat it over and over until the name I come up with sounds fine.
Example: I have a character named Kawu. I first knew I wanted him to have a name that starts with K. Then I started spitballing. Koon, Kima, Khashur, Kawan, etc. I was just putting letters together until I thought about Kawu. I liked it; it fit his personality in my head, and that was it.
Transforming names
This is my second most used method. When I can't be asked. I take a real name and change up letters, syllables, or vowels. I changed it in a way that it can be pronounced and seems legible.
Example: Kyaranin. It is a name I transformed from Kyaradain, which is an artist's name I know of that is also already a transformation of the name Carradine. See? It just works.
Using real names
This is a method that I usually go to when I have a name that I like the sound of, and I think can fit the story. I also tend to play little games that go above the head of most readers, at least until they are familiar with other languages... which includes using foreign words as names.
Example: In one of my books, there was a demonic faction led by a tiger. I named him Harimau, which simply means "The tiger" in Malaysian. Case closed. I had many more like this, naming my demonic characters by looking up their animal names in other languages like Mongolian. Of course, if it just didn't fit, I transformed it using my second method, but still. It was fun doing so.
Those are my three main methods when it comes to naming characters. So far, never failed me.
Interesting, creating names was something that annoyed me at first. My solution was basically to look through classic literature, history, fairy tales, mythology, etc; and pick a name that can be loosely tied to the character arc i have planned for said character. As a bonus, it also helps my mind keep immersed on their personality and traits.
Of course, i try to keep them consistent to the world, and will on occasion disobey this 'rule' (it isn't really a rule) depending on the circunstances, or my feelings.
