Personally I’m not a huge fan of navel-gazing/philosophical openings. They can be done to great effect, but they’re also REALLY easy to get wrong, and I find most of them to come off more intentionally vague and taunting of the reader with what they don’t know than actually engaging. I think the actual content of yours is good—I especially like the second paragraph!—but I’d appreciate them much more if they came during a breather moment after I got to see some of the things that are making Izabellia think these things.
The passage describing the changes in Izabellia’s friends are good, but they could stand to have more detail. For example, the kids in the gang? Izabellia wouldn’t know them as gang members or stereotypical Latino dudes first; she’d know them as the people who are her friends. Make sure to demonstrate that part, too! Or else, you’re right, they do just come off as stereotypes and that’s something you want to avoid. Same goes for Mr. 4.0—what does Izabellia like about him? Why are they friends? One thing this passage does well is demonstrate that Izabellia isn’t the sort of person to restrict herself to one clique—she’s friends with the star student and the gang members, even though they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum. Going a little further into detail would give you an opportunity to show what Izabellia is looking for in her friendships, because it isn’t the security of belonging to one group.
We don’t need a whole extra paragraph for this stuff. A sentence or two would do it. You’ve even got a great opening to do so in the paragraph about the Latino kids—“I know, they sound like such stereotypes, BUT…”
Really own the Italian. You don’t need to translate simple phrases like this—and it comes off like you’re saying “sorry for not English.” Even a reader—like me—who doesn’t know a lick of Italian can figure out what’s been said from context clues and a smidgen of reasonable guessing. Trust the story to be able to explain itself. And if you want some good examples of primarily English stories that mix in another language, check out Junot Díaz; he’s got it down to an art form, and you can find a lot of his short stories online for free.
Finally, is this prologue something you really need? Does it give us any information that you couldn’t weave into the main story naturally? If not, consider cutting it. Not every story must have a prologue.
If you do decide to keep it, it’s a decent prologue. It does the job of setting up expectations for the story to follow, and gives us a quick glimpse into Izabellia’s character and background. It also does a lot of hinting at future conflict, both with the gang members trying to turn their lives around and (presumably) get out of the gang, and Mr. 4.0 (is that Zander? could be made more clear) going all skinhead on them. And it also, perhaps more importantly, poses questions about Izabellia herself—will she go through a drastic change like that, and will it be for better or worse? So you’ve got all the preliminary elements to put together a good story, here, which makes this a solid foundation to work from. And—even though I’m not a huge prologue fan in general—it’s got me interested to see what comes next, which really is the litmus test of a good prologue.
Points: 5740
Reviews: 71
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