Title Pending (Need a quick review before I progress with the story)

Okay, so I had this idea from a dream. I know, its weird, but go with me on this. This is the prologue, read from a third person view at the start, and then having a large first person monologue that explains the background of the story. Please give me your honest opinion, or tell me that this was just dream poop. I will accept either answer, though I may ask why you gave it.

Here is the story:

Title Pending.

“Prologue”

April 26, 2013

“Hey, have you seen that new vampire movie!?”

“The one with the werewolf in it too? Yeah! He was so hot!”

The man turned his head and glanced down the street at the two girls walking together under an umbrella. They walked past him, not looking in his direction of course, and continued their conversation in the excited energy that only human teenagers could muster. Smiling to himself, the man turned back around and walked into the building.

He flicked on the light, and revealed a small room, furnished like an office. On the desk in front of him was a tape recorder, and a book. The man took off his coat, and hung it on the wall hook next to the door, before sitting at the desk.

He slowly cracked his joints, and got comfortable. Then he reached over and pressed the record button on the machine.

“Humans, and I use the term lovingly, are moronic. Let me take a minute here to tell you what Vampires really are. First of all, yes sunlight kills them. For another, not all vampires can throw a man through a wall, just like not all vampires can turn into bats, or other creatures for that matter.

Currently in the world, there are a total of thirty four true Vampires, each of them belonging to one of the three great houses. What determines what House they belong to, depends on their abilities. As I said before, not all vampires can do everything you hear about in stories.

The first House, is called the House of Caine. That name sound familiar? Well, the humans saw him as a man, who killed his brother. Would you like to know a secret? That was actually the first Vampire, killing his first prey. And since then, the House of Caine has ruled the Vampire world. What sets them apart, is their superhuman strength and speed, which Caine used to kill his brother.

The second, is the House of Giovanni. I’m not exactly sure where this house was formed, but it suddenly popped up about two thousand years ago. Members of the House aren’t normally seen in public, preferring to keep to their own territories. Any attempt to infiltrate the house usually end up in failure. Mostly from the fact that the entire house is comprised of Telepaths. That’s right, they read minds. What a joy, am I right?

I digress. The Third house, my personal favorite, is the House of Ravnos. I think they came out from Serbia or Hungary around the time the Romans were still convinced they were the sons of wolves. Well, funny story about that. House Ravnos, in addition to being incredibly well connected, funded, and otherwise politically powerful, could change their shape at will. I really enjoy their style of doing things.

The current state of the world is pretty bad, what with the humans raging about killing each other, and then the Vampires following suit. A Civil War is currently in progress, resulting from someone killing the last true descendent of Caine. That left the throne wide open for anyone to take. If you thought a human war was bad, you would not believe how much damage these super powered beings can cause. And if that wasn’t bad enough, after a couple decades of fighting it out, they decided to bring HUMANS into this…

That’s where I come in. I suppose at this point, you’re wondering how I know all this. Well, if your sharp, I suppose you have figured out I have something to do with these creatures. It turns out, that if a vampire really wants to, he can turn a human into something almost resembling a vampire, but not quite.

They call us Thralls, though we prefer Equitems. Latin, meaning Knight. I know it’s a bit cheesy, but when you think about it, that’s what it comes down to. Also, the Vampires really hate the language. Anyway. Each house has its own “Royalty” per say. The current ruler of the house decides who among his retinue gets to become his Generals, and allows them to infect humans into Equitem. When we make the transformation, we gain the slightly diluted powers of our house. The real kicker for them, is that we don’t require blood, and we can travel in daylight. Thus making us the perfect tools to wage their wars. When the Generals get enough Equitem together, the houses battle it out to decide who is King of all the vampires. This usually every couple hundred years, and normally resulting in the current King getting his head stuck on a pike if he loses. Lovely bunch, right?

Anyway, you may as well settle in, and I’ll you the story of the latest battle…

Oh. I never introduced myself…

My name is Lucian.”

A couple of things - Prologues generally suck. If you're writing a short story or a novel then invite the reader into the plot as quickly as possible. Most prologues are a lazy way of introducing the cast of characters or a huge chunk of historical background. In my experience, any novel that needs a prologue has already set up a barrier between the author and the reader.

Secondly, reading about 'The man' sets up another barrier. Give him a name so we can better engage with him.

Your Prologue? It's well written but it's basically an info dump. You're using the scene to bring the reader up to speed on the history of vampirism. Would the novel suffer if you left all this out and drip-fed us the relevant information as the tale unfolds? Only you can answer that, but trust me. I skipped all the business about different Houses. Not a good sign when you're scanning the first page in search of a story.

Also generalisations like:
The current state of the world is pretty bad, what with the humans raging about killing each other. . .
are too vague to be worth sharing.
The more you explain, the more confused and complicated the plot becomes:
and then the Vampires following suit. A Civil War is currently in progress, resulting from someone killing the last true descendent of Caine. That left the throne wide open for anyone to take.

Then we have Thralls and Equitems. . .
Yawn.

That's when I made my mind up that I'd not be reading the novel itself. The chances are that any other prospective readers will come to the same conclusion - 'The Prologue is impenetrable - is the novel going to be as bad?'
Life is too short to waste time finding out.

H

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hillwalker

Your Prologue? It's well written but it's basically an info dump. You're using the scene to bring the reader up to speed on the history of vampirism.

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This pretty much nails it.

Nobody really cares to hear this character, at this point in the story (or probably ever), spew a bunch of conveniently placed 'history' through a monologue like a laundry list. The reader can totally see the author's hand here. It's as though you're saying Let's just get through this now, so you can enjoy the story later. Doesn't work, though, and the odds of all this information being relevant later (or even remembered by the reader, assuming it's not scanned over in the first place) are pretty slim.





J

I see...So, I should cut out this prologue and reintroduce it throughout the chapters?

You should begin the story with something happening rather than feed us a dollop of background history. Ideally start the story at Chapter 1 and continue writing until you reach the end. You'll probably realise that 90% of this 'History of Vampires' has no bearing on the plot and can be left out. As Jack says - we don't need to know any of it if the story's any good.

H