Beginnings and endings...

So - what happens when your three-year-old American Bulldog breaks your charger, the computer is dead (read: you can't access those handy auto-saved passwords), and the kids keep bringing in viruses faster than the previous ones are exterminated? As my elongated absence may have tipped you off to that answer - no blogging! Alas - such is life. (On the upside, we are 4 days into a week without stitches, broken bones, emergency chiropractic visits, chipped teeth, and/or antibiotics! Go Roses!)


All that being said, I have been thinking about books - specifically their beginnings and endings.


I get obsessed about the order of a book - where to put what part to keep it interesting, but still make sense and flow. I tend to be drawn towards stories that are told, at least a little, out of order. Whether it flips from past to present to future or something completely different, like changing whose point of view is doing the telling - I prefer it. It is, most likely, this bias that inspires me to write in that fashion - making order out of the chaos. 


Prologues. I have yet not to include them - using snippets of something to come that grabs attention, answering questions posed in the first chapters of a book.  I fail to remember the name of the series that I loved as a teenager, but they always started with a prologue that occurred in the characters' distant future. It was like an answer to a question that I would inevitably have at the end of the book, something that brought a semblance of sense to the finale. (I suppose I should research the names of those books, for sake of my avidly reading 13year old daughter.)


Epilogues. I must say that I often use these, as well. They are like a beloved television show's series finale, set sometime after the end of the story, glimpses of what will be. They are closure. The same holds true to some books. Maybe the girl and the guy finally get it together at the end of a story, but what about their futures? Will they get married, have kids, stay together? Seriously, I want to know!


Points of View. To spice it up a bit - reading a novel that tells the same story, but from different points of view, is also appealing. If written in first person, the reader can only guess what other characters are thinking or feeling. However, if who the first person is changes through out the novel, that makes for an insightful difference! Even when written in third person, a change of focus is always refreshing.