DeathAndTaxes
Eris Adderly
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2011
- Posts
- 123
So the story I'm working on now has a brief prologue that takes place 10 years before the events of the main plot line.
Do you think it's "cheating" to insert a line at the beginning of the prologue that says something like:
And then have another similar notation at the beginning of the story proper?
Or would it be preferable to just let the reader figure things out for themselves as other details are revealed by which they could deduce the current year and chronology of events? I mean, those details are going to come out later in the story anyway, but the reader won't have them right away otherwise, so it may take them a while to put the pieces together and understand that the prologue was 10 years earlier. This particular prologue is meant to be a teaser so that the reader will get to figure out as they go how it ties in to the rest of the plot.
Somehow I feel like this type of line denoting locale and date is a device used in movies, but I don't know if I like it for a story. What do you guys think?
Do you think it's "cheating" to insert a line at the beginning of the prologue that says something like:
[City], [Country], [Year]
[Prologue text...]
[Prologue text...]
And then have another similar notation at the beginning of the story proper?
Or would it be preferable to just let the reader figure things out for themselves as other details are revealed by which they could deduce the current year and chronology of events? I mean, those details are going to come out later in the story anyway, but the reader won't have them right away otherwise, so it may take them a while to put the pieces together and understand that the prologue was 10 years earlier. This particular prologue is meant to be a teaser so that the reader will get to figure out as they go how it ties in to the rest of the plot.
Somehow I feel like this type of line denoting locale and date is a device used in movies, but I don't know if I like it for a story. What do you guys think?