Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell Page A

J.D. Salinger does here:
    If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
    â€”
The Catcher in the Rye
    Grab your readers with judicious use of the methods outlined above. You still have a long way to go to keep readers turning the pages, but at least you’ll be off to a good start.
Prologues
    The use of prologues is a venerable one, used by all sorts of writers in many different ways. But the most effective prologues do one simple thing — entice the reader to move to chapter one.
    All of the rules we talk about in this chapter apply to prologues as well, with one primary exception: The prologue does not necessarily
have to
introduce your Lead character. It does, however, eventually have to connect to your main plot.
    The primary ways prologues are used are as an action hook, as a frame story, and as a teaser.
Action Prologue
    With the
action prologue
, a staple of suspense fiction, we start off with some sort of big scene, many times involving death. This sets up the tone and stakes right away. Chapter one will begin the main plot, and what has just happened will hover over the entire story.
    Sometimes the Lead character is involved in the prologue. In
Final Seconds
, by John Lutz and David August, the prologue involves a bomb scare in a New York public school. Harper, the Lead character, is a grizzled veteran of the New York Police Department’s bomb squad. He arrives on the scene with his young partner. Tension builds as Harper tries to defuse the bomb. Finally, left holding a bit of explosive, Harper is almost there when …
boom
. And his hand is mostly blown off.
    Chapter one opens two-and-a-half years later, with Harper going to see his partner — who was at fault for the accident. Harper is no longer with the NYPD.
    Thus we get a prologue of incredible excitement and suspense, and as chapter one begins, we wonder how Harper has handled life after this traumatic experience.
    Another example is Harlan Coben’s
Tell No One
. The narrator, David Beck, opens by recounting an anniversary trip with his wife Elizabeth to a romantic lakeside, a place of good memories. Eventually they go swimming in the dark lake, make love, and lounge on a raft.
    Then Elizabeth steps onto the dock. Beck stays on the raft. He hears a car door slam, and Elizabeth is gone.
    Beck swims to the dock, shouting his wife’s name.
    He hears her scream. As he gets out of the water, he’s struck by something and topples back into the lake. He hears her scream again, “but the sound, all sound, gurgled away as I sank under the water.”
    That’s the end of the prologue. Chapter one begins
eight years later
.
    More common is the prologue involving characters other than the Lead — characters who may or may not show up in the main plot.
    In Dean Koontz’s
Midnight
, we are introduced to Janice Capshaw, who, as we know from earlier discussions, likes to run at night. As she jogs through the foreboding darkness, Koontz gives us some of her background, building up identification and even sympathy.
    Suspense starts to build as Janice gets the feeling that someone — or something — is following her. How right she is. And at the end of the prologue, she is killed by some mysterious, horrible creatures.
    The first chapter begins with Sam Booker, the Lead, arriving in the little town where the killing took place.
    Which offers up this rule: If you do not introduce your Lead in the prologue, make sure you do it in chapter one! Readers want to know whom they are supposed to follow.
    Note: Koontz labeled this prologue chapter “1” and the real opening chapter, chapter “2.” That’s a choice you can make if you so