Restructuring Destiny. What really happened to the prologue?

Destiny was a debut novel in every way. The first draft was written in a manic spurt of energy over a fourteen-day period. It included a prologue (because of course it did). It included exposition. It had inappropriate pacing, and voice, and very sparse atmosphere.

A big part of that problem was the prologue. It began with exposition. Then an essentially unanchored series of scenes from the Federation perspective. Then it drops into a slow day at the office for John.

Yep.

Snooze-ville.

I’m surprised I made it to the end, myself.

The beginning started with this:

Long before humans farmed the land, the Federation was growing and actively expanding the volume of stars under their aegis, not as conquerors but as protectors. Eventually they found us, around the same time that we found bronze.

Where others might have seen only an untapped resource ready to be stripped, the Queens respected all life. They watched us build cities and nations. They wept when we warred and rejoiced when we grew. They followed our progress and did what they could to protect us from predation.

But even the best societies contain malcontents. Those who enjoy the suffering or enslavement of others, or who measure their worth solely in material wealth. Such individuals will always find a way to indulge their pleasures no matter the cost or consequences, and the Earth, with all its resources, remains so tempting.

Pretty words. The problem is they TELL without actually engaging in STORY.

It was even worse. The scenes that followed weren’t connected to the above, at all…

“Mykos! For the last gods-damned time!

“One! You are not trained for secretive work. You are a soldier. The physical support should we need hasty extraction!

“Two! You are more than two meters tall and you — ”

Mykos interrupts in an foreign language, that sounds vaguely Latin, vaguely Greek, vaguely asian. It’s obvious that he’s whining at least a little.

“Nay lad! A basketball player? You have nigh on 300 kilos! A trifle plain, is it not? Our primaries are all recent lines like myself. It’s also a fine tradition for those of us who are otherwise maligned as lesser! We are non-descript. But you are most easily noticed!”

Kaera looks at him while he grumbles a bit more. “Three! You speak no current tongue! Nay! Hellenic Greek is not current! I care not a whit that your matriarch told you otherwise! Perchance when they were a power, two thousand years past, but not today!

‘STruth! My own English is heard in naught but historical plays, and that in but three hundred years! This once! Pray thee! Hold thine alarums and do thine work!”

I doubt a reader has any idea what’s happening, other than one person (Kaera) is in a Shakespeare play, and the other (Mykos) is a bruiser who wants to be a basketball player.

The other problem, structurally, is that it’s all present tense. Immediate. Which can work. But really doesn’t, here. It also spans more than a few weeks (a few years in parts). Immediate makes that… clunky at best.

Worst of all, you still have absolutely no idea what the story is about!

So how did I go about fixing these structural challenges?

Find out over on my Patreon page where the full essay is available FREE as a first month bonus.