Susan, could you, just for the space of this intro, get into the head of a regular soldier and tell it from his point of view? Either a hard-bitten vulgar old veteran with no love for officers, or a young recruit, a replacement only just attached to this unit and trying to stay alive long enough to learn. You can drop his POV as soon as the intro is over, and never use it again. Although it would be nice if sometime later in the book you have a callback--one of your main characters could meet him out of uniform on a street and nod absently, or something. They wouldn't know who he was but your reader would, if you describe him well enough.

I understand that you want to make clear that the captain isn't a hero, or even a sympathetic character. But if you don't want to put any emotion at all into the scene, maybe you could have--I don't know, a priest? Or a minister or someone read a newspaper account of the ambush. That would provide a lot of distance and not alienate your reader.

Because, to be completely honest, if the first thing I read on opening a book was that introduction? I'd put it down and have not the least inclination to read further. I'm not your target audience, but that's my reaction.

Hmmmm. The problem with that, Bev, is that if she writes that properly, the audience will want more of him. And I'm not a believer in crafting throwaway characters; I think they're unfair to the reader.

True. I'ma just back out of this one. I think the account needs to grab the reader's attention, but I'm stuck as to how to do that and maintain the distance she wants.

But Susan, I'll be more than happy to line-edit for you any day. This is why I don't crit content.

I think the account needs to grab the reader's attention, but I'm stuck as to how to do that and maintain the distance she wants.

Yep. Our minds, they are as one.

(Argh, this is so frustrating! I'm all, "Dammit, I thought I'd fixed my book, not broken it even worse!")

Beverly, would you have the same reaction if the first two paragraphs were clearly labeled as a prologue, written in italics, or otherwise set apart from the rest of the story? Something to make it clear that this is information you need to know, but not to expect the rest of the story to be in the same style?

Deb, here's how it reads with the segue into the first bit of the first real scene:

CHAPTER ONE

Spain, June 1811

The mounted patrol, a group of British dragoons in their dusty but gaudy fur-trimmed blues, turned for camp. They had been out scouting for days without seeing so much as a hint of a Frenchman, and now their thoughts turned toward hot dinners and bedding their women, perhaps even in that order.

Perhaps weariness and the sheer uneventfulness of the patrol had dulled their wits, for they were utterly surprised when shots rang out from a scrubby little copse on the hill to their north. A blond captain, tallest and handsomest of all the officers in the regiment, fell from his chestnut gelding, his forehead shattered by a musket ball.

#

“Now, that’s a pleasant sight, ain’t it, sergeant?” Private Bailey said.

Jack Wilcox followed his gaze to a woman in a light green dress standing in the hospital doorway. “Best I’ve seen all day.”

He watched idly as she went straight to an artillery lieutenant’s cot. His wife, maybe? Even so, there was no harm in admiring her from across the room. She was a little thing, around five feet tall, but there was nothing slight about her. Jack searched the fancier part of his vocabulary, the words he’d picked up from books or heard from some of the officers, and concluded that voluptuous was the only way to describe her. But she didn’t flaunt herself. Her dress was high-necked and long-sleeved, and she had an unconscious grace and dignity that made Jack immediately conclude that this was a lady, one of the Quality.

“Is she his wife?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Private Bailey replied. “That’s Mrs. Arrington. Her husband is a captain in the dragoons. She comes to the hospital most every day. Asks us how we do, talks to us about our homes, writes letters for them that ask. A real kind lady. She promised to write my ma for me today.”

Jack grinned. “I’d planned to offer to write any letters you needed, but I’m sure you’d prefer her services to mine.”

“Yes, sir. Not that I’m ungrateful, but…”

“You’d rather see her face bending over your bed than mine? Of course you would.”

Bailey laughed and nodded.

Mrs. Arrington left the lieutenant and moved on to the next man, an infantry private. Jack noticed a certain weariness in her posture he had not detected at first. It quickly disappeared behind a bright, sweet smile as she greeted the soldier, but he knew had not imagined it. “She looks sad” he commented.

(Incidentally, I just cut a bit long paragraph from the above scene describing the barn that had been converted into the hospital, the nature of Private Bailey's wound, and why Jack is there visiting him, because most of it is revealed by the end of the scene anyway, and one of my contest judges rapped my knuckles for a bad habit of telling, then showing. But let me know if the above needs more context to make sense, and I can put some of it back in.)

I love that part, Susan. I'm there.

But the prologue is still ...off-putting.

Could you have someone who was there report it to a superior officer, a bit later, after this nice chapter opening you have? I'm not understanding why it needs to come first, unless it's just to dispense with an unliked and unwanted character. If that's it, then I'd think you could embed it in the story without giving the character more importance than he deserves, or than you want him to have. But you seem to be telegraphing your dislike of him to the reader. Wouldn't you want your reader to figure it out herself?

Well, Anna is going to find out her husband is dead before the end of the chapter, probably about 20 manuscript pages in, and I could just have that be the first we know of it. But, dammit, I like having the reader know before she does! I think it adds a certain painful twist to all her reflections on what a mess her marriage is and how she wishes she hadn't been so romantic and impulsive as to rush into it.

I like the reader's knowledge before Anna. I think that's fine. Keep working the passage. It'll shake loose.

General agreement over here; I very much like the way the main scene runs, and I do understand your desire to have the reader know before Anna does. I'm just not sure it's necessary. Because frankly, I'd rather you showed me, through her reactions, why I should care about the guy who's just been shot at the beginning. I think I'm trying to say that, if you paint it properly, the poignancy of the situation (or irony) will come to me through her, rather than through a faceless narrator. And as a reader, I prefer it that way.

Argh. Not certain I'm being clear. Pinched nerves on both sides of my neck and the pain is clouding things.

This may be crazy talk, Susan, but have you thought about writing the prologue from the point of view of the shooter?

Something like, "A scouting party of Brits (whatever the slightly offensive French nickname would have been at the time), dragoons by their gaudy fur-trimmed blue uniforms now muted with with dust, rode over the hill....

"He sighted his rifle at the tallest of the officers, a blond captain. 'I bet the ladies like him,' he thought as he pulled the trigger."