I can't for the life of me figure this out.

Okay, so i started writing a novel, and the main character's name is something which, in another language, means Shadow. I need a small prologue poem, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to make it sound... I don't know. The setting is somewhat medieval, but the way I write it.... ugh. I either seem to make it sound wayyyy too grandiose, pretentious and melodramatic, or just plain cliche, like i'm emulating someone who emulated someone who plagiarized someone who got inspired by someone who copied Tolkein. Here it is so far. (Don't laugh.)


Shadows in the night,
Moving, drifting, changing.
Fluid like water, like fire, hiding great secrets within.
One man lurking.
One man to live in them, One bright man,
Destined for something else
The power within him concealed,
But yet
And as light chases away all others,
He the only Shadow remains.


I am just godawful at writing poetry. Does anyone have any writing tips?

Well, I don't write novels or medieval fiction or poetry, but I could try. I think a rhyme scheme might improve it... make it sound more prophesy-like or whatever. Also, maybe add some more imagery and less one-man-destined-to-save-us-all. You could save the "one man" part for the end, or even the last line.

I hope that helped a bit!

Why must there be a prophetic poem, or even a prologue? Just because a lot of other books have that sort of thing doesn't mean your story has to. ;P

In any case, I strongly recommend you read some medieval poetry. For starters, poetry of that time was very structured, so there was a rhyme scheme in addition to other patterns within the poems. The ballad form was quite common, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, I'm ditching the poem. X) I just have no skill in poetry, and no desperate desire to practice.

The reason why I want a prologue is because before I launch into the 1st person action, I'd like a bird's eye view of the situation the characters are in. Not long, maybe One, one and a half page.

Most people can skip that fairly easily. It can completely and utterly kill tension to have a prologue like that, especially if you rely on any sort of in medis ras for the MCs— or even if they don't know something at the beginning of the story, and have to learn it all over again. It would be fairly annoying to read the prologue, discover that was just for reader convenience, and they're going to end up with the same information filtered through to them in first person.

I've had it happen in a book where the first line (what grabbed me in the first place) was completely murdered by the prologue. The prologue revealed that the tension was somewhere else than the initial conflict, and after reading the prologue, I wanted the prologue's conflict. I didn't want to sit through an already explained conflict. I have yet to read this book, even though I've read another book from the author and enjoyed it. I don't want to read this one because of the bird's eye view of the situation.

What if the prologue was from the 'other side' so to speak?

Briefly, my story is about a young thief who appeared out of nowhere one day and started robbing the gentry and nobility of his king blind. Not for profit, but to continuously embarrass them and undermine the authority of the king.

My plan was to give a brief view of the befuddled lordships trying to figure out what's going on and only hearing vague rumors from the common folk in a sort of prologue thing. Then flash forward to 1st person, some months/weeks later, to an event during which our thief gets caught.


SHould I cut the prologue out altogether then? I have a good plan for the novel but I just don't know where to start. :/

99% of prologues add no value to the story. Several people who are far more read than I say the only prologue they know worth reading is to A Game of Thrones. I've not read very far into the book, but that prologue had a purpose to it. And read like a first chapter in the book, with a few exceptions (read the prologue then chapter 1 of A Game of Thrones to see what I mean. I'm not about to spoil).

What it does is add a sense of dread to the book. You have some idea what is going on (key word: some), and there's a sense things are about to go very, very wrong.

I'm probably not doing it justice.

What I've noticed with prologues is they often set up a conflict that doesn't get resolution until the book has basically set it up already. Try skipping prologues when you pick up a book, then read the prologue after you're done. Does it add anything to the story, at all? Did you feel like anything was missing as you read? Is there clarification after you read the prologue?

If the answer is 'no', then the prologue never needed to be written in the first place.

What if you rote it like this?

Shadows in the night,
Moving, drifting, changing.
Fluid like water, like fire,
Keeping secrets out of sight.

One man lives,
Born into the shadows,
Destined for something else.
His own light concealed ,
Protected from the gallows.

But yet,
As light burns the other shadows,
He, the only shadow, remaines.
The essence of night itself,
Invisible.

Thank you, that's good advice. I'll do some experimenting then.

Going back to what Rosey said about A Game of Thrones' prologue, all the books in A Song of Ice and Fire have prologues, and the only reason those prologues aren't the first chapters of their respective books is because they are told from a different viewpoint than the rest of the books. This works because the ASoIaF novels already have multiple viewpoint characters, and also because the prologue acts as a way to keep track of one-shot viewpoints versus the regular viewpoint characters.

From what you've said, your prologue sounds pretty decent since the readers will connect the thefts to the capture of the thief, which will give the capture more immediate significance. Just be careful not to give too much away in the prologue, otherwise you'll kill the tension and make the book predictable. I've lost count of the number of stories I've read with prologues that completely gave away the plot for the story because of heavy-handed foreshadowing.