Recent content by Incanus

Good to see that someone's been watching Monty Python recently-- A Silly Party Political Candidate, if I'm not mistaken...

Ha! That's hilarious. "Thews" is REH all the way. I think Steerpike may be right about HPL - "Cyclopean" sure seems to pop up a lot. I'm not sure there's a single word CAS uses with that type of regularity, but "cerements" will do. Or maybe - "Funereal." I understand what you mean about...

It should probably come as no surprise that I think CAS explores his ideas quite satisfactorily, with some exceptions. I don't find any of this stuff the least bit depressing. That could be because I'm something of an outsider, socially speaking (I choose to not participate in American society...

Ah, cool. Reading CAS also fires my imagination in a manner similar to Lord Dunsany (a largely forgotten gem). I think one reason CAS resonates with me so much are the elements he emphasizes: original high-concepts, and rich, lush prose. If there is anyone better at these things, I've yet to...

This makes perfect sense to me. Of the books in my collection that use prologues (with or without the term), the overwhelming majority accomplish something like this. And this is why I don't understand people's attitudes towards them. There's something of a gap between what people are saying...

Funny. This subject seems to cause a near-endless comedy of confusions. If agents and publishers are rejecting these kinds of prologues, or making sure they're fixed before publishing, then why the need to skip prologues of published books, where, apparently, these issues have already been...

Not to me, I'm afraid. I'm not following you at all here. **shrug**

@Michael--OK, I re-read my posts, but I don't see why you would think I was saying paragraphs and prologues are the same thing. That's all right, I'll chalk it up to communication breakdown. I'm curious where all these good books with terrible info-dumpy prologues can be found. I have...

Just wanted to clarify that that isn't what I said. Only the reason why neither is good or bad is what is similar, not the concepts. They are both tools, and tools aren't good or bad, only the way they're used is.

Prologues are neither good nor bad in the same way that the concept of paragraphs are neither good nor bad. I'm not sure what the definition of 'the real story' might be, but I've read plenty of prologues that would seem to be where the real story starts. No prologue has ever had a...

So surely there must be examples of great books with poor/useless prologues? I've never seen it myself. Indeed, I can think of one example where the prologue was the best part of the book: The Way of Kings. I acknowledge that people skip prologues, but the reasons given still don't make any...

I guess I'm the odd man out here--I'm unable to follow the logic of skipping prologues or deeming them somehow wrong before reading them (how one determines that it isn't relevant without having read it is quite beyond me). In every argument I've seen against them here and elsewhere, it is BAD...

As a reader I'm indifferent to prologues. Great books have them, or don't have them. Terrible books have them, or don't have them. I've yet to see a prologue that has even the least impact on how much I liked a book. I'm not really sure why some folks get hung up on them. As a writer, I'm...

For my WIP, I didn't even look back at a single word of chapter 1 until after I reached the end of the first draft of the whole thing. I knew full well I wasn't going to use much of it, so I just rushed through. When I went back to it, I ended up doing four rewrites of the first 9-10 chapters...

I guess I'll just have to wait until Christmas...