Prologue for a story I'm writing

[Spoo]

This is the beginning of a book I recently started working on.  Feel free to give out a suggestion for the title, because I'm stumped there :down:.

Spoiler: Prologue

The boy lay in his bed, happy as he could possibly be, with his book in hand and with some milk on his bedside table.  Oliver Mason was one of those rare twelve year olds in Ostend that appreciated books and authors and literature in general.  He appreciated Geoffrey Chaucer more than any others, with his great The Canterbury Tales. 
It’d been a rainy day in Belgium, so most of the other boys mourned because they could not play outside.  Oliver, on the other hand, loved these days.  He could read all he liked and his mother would never come to his room and ask him to go outside and play with the other boys.  It wasn’t that he disliked physical play in itself; more like he hated getting knocked down during tag, not to mention never tagging anyone because of his scrawny legs.  Inside or out, Oliver loved reading more than anything else; while other boys liked playing outside and calling Oliver names. 
Oliver read deep into the night, almost finishing The Canterbury Tales again, but he eventually read himself to sleep, book closed on his small hands.   

 

[shiroun]

I'm not sure what the goal of it is, but if the name of the book is 'The Canturbury Tales', then I would LOVE this book so much. If it isn't, I still like the idea of it.

Either way, keep going and work your way to be the next Harry Potter of [insert Genre here]

 

[candle]

Personally, I think a prologue should be about as long as a full chapter.  Maybe a little shorter.  Also, you should stay away from using contractions in your narrative.  I know most people think in contractions, but i looks nicer with the full words.  That is not to say don't use them at all, just do it only in dialogue, (which happens to not be a word according to firefox).  Other than that, I think it's okay.  Nothing really special about it.

On a side note, it is very hard to find a title for a book just from reading the prologue.  look at Rowling.  It took her a few years of writing before coming up with several ideas on what to call DH, nd then several months to finally decide on Deathly Hollows.

 

[AbyssalLord]

As a rule, a prologue should be longer than 2 1/2 paragraphs.  As Darkfire said, it should probably be about the length of a chapter if not a little shorter.  The first paragraphs seems to jump into the second; I would suggest trying to write a smoother transition.  Also, from your writing style, I can tell you are probably in 7th or 8th grade. 

I'll give you a bit of advice: many people start writing without the whole storyline in mind.  If you are one of those people, stop writing, and think up a complete storyline first.  If you are not one of those people and already know your storyline, just work on your phrasing.  It's evident to someone like me (I'm planning on writing my own book soon) that you have not developed your writing skills enough yet to write a whole (good) book.

Try writing short stories before an entire book.  I'll be happy to tell you what you need to improve on and how to do it.

 

[candle]

I've run into the same problem of writing on the fly.  I would get the premise and form a few scenes, but it all lacked continuity.  To top it all off, I would often get held up with writers' block.  Now I'm making plot outlines before I start writing.  I've got at least five stories in the works now (all of them novel length, and one series), and I've been actively writing for the past two or three years.

It sounds to me that you do have a premise and not much else.  Sit down and think hard about not only where you want the story to go, but also about what you want the story to accomplish and what you want to make the reader feel.  Once you have decided on those, start mapping out the plot.  This is also where you determine how long the story will be.  It could only last a few pages, or it could take up an entire shelf in Borders once finished.

If you realize that your premise won't make a full novel (200-250+ pages), then think about making it a short story (usually no more than 15-20 pages, often less) or a novella (100-200 pages).

Once you have mapped out the plot to your satisfaction, then, and only then, can you start writing.  As you write, be sure to bounce your ideas off of someone every once in a while as well as making sure all new elements you devise fit perfectly and groove with the rest of the story.

NOTE: the numbers given are based on my feeling of how long a book should be.  You will rarely see a full novel being less than 250 pages unless it is intended for a younger audience.  Even then, most are over 300.

 

[HersheyPIe]

Also, keep in mind you do not need a Prologue for abook. You could maybe combine chapter one and Prologue together to give the Reader(us) the background and character information. However, this is only a suggestion.

I suggest you start off by making and outline, and your character's history too. Make a history only for you to see. You dont have to include your character's history in the book. this is mainly for you to realize what type of characters you are creating. Keep them real. An outline is a great way to start, like Darkfire said. I always plan out my stories before putting them on paper. And remember draft writing is very vital.

Keep working at it, its great start!

 

[Spoo]

I have a lot more done than this, now, even into the later chapters of the book.  For the record, this book is fantasy.  Think of The Chronicles of Narnia, and throw in some Bridge to Terabithia elements, and you could see the resemblance.

 

[Despain]

Hey guys, try to focus on helping him with the actual writing, and less so on the length. Here's the general guideline for how long a book or story should be, and nobody can ever refute this: a book or story should be as long as it needs to be. There's no page limit, there's no word count.

That said... the actual writing needs to be cleaned a lot. The general tone and style of this is very... well, Shiroun mentioned that you could write the next Harry Potter. This feels a lot like a weak Harry Potter fanfiction, with a very cliche intro. You start off with the typical "name is this, name is that", and don't really show much of anything.

You have a hook in the Canterbury Tales, which is an interesting one. The "give a little kid an advanced work of literature to read to show that he is a nerd" is one of the most commonly used staples of this kind of fiction. It can work, but you have to really try harder to make it really succeed.

I have a question: are you familiar with Canterbury Tales? Putting aside the fact that the text is in nearly indecipherable Old English (your character could very possibly have a more modern translation), the entire thing is about sex. Yeah, it's deeper than that, but a twelve-year old, no matter how intelligent, would have a hard time reading the Canterbury Tales for the fun of it, unless he's pausing and laughing every time a character farts in another character's face (yes, this happens a couple of times).

 

[Spoo]

Oliver appreciates all of Chaucer's works, as well as many other authors of the renaissance era.  He just happens to like The Canterbury tales in particular.  If that would deem inappropriate to any of the audiences that would read this, I could change it, I suppose.  I know that my beginnings stink.  I'm not good at setting the mood for a book or introducing many main characters without sounding cliche.  As it turns out, I skipped part of the intro and started writing into the real fantasy parts of the book.  My English teacher gave me that suggestion so that it might be easier to complete the introduction later. 

 

[serrated_colon]

I'm not sure whether this really introduces the storyline, but here's a piece of advice(i have said this before but people really need to know this):
Everyline should further the story in some way, develop the characters, or unfold future events.

 

[Despain]

Oliver appreciates all of Chaucer's works, as well as many other authors of the renaissance era.

Chaucer was long before the Renaissance.

 

[Spoo]

Oh...I must've mixed up chapters in my history book, then.  Either way, I just started this story recently, so I'll edit as needed in the final cut.