Patreon Online May Writing Class: Prologues with DongWon Song
May 29, 2023— 8:00pm Eastern to 9:00pm Eastern
Mary Robinette teaches or hosts writing classes, once a month, for her $30 Patreon supporters. The topic rotates, depending on what folks want to know about. In May here is what we will focus on:
DongWon Song joins as a guest instructor to talk about prologues. Prologues are a hot button topic in writing circles. Folks love to hate on ‘em. But then why do we keep seeing them in stories over and over again? What’s the use of a prologue? How do you execute on one without it feeling formulaic, boring, or pointless? We’ll unpack some examples and talk through the care and feeding of a proper prologue.
DongWon Song is an agent at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency representing science fiction and fantasy for adults, young adult, and middle grade readers as well as select non-fiction. They were formerly an editor at Orbit, a product manager for an ebook startup, and has taught at institutions including Portland State University and New York University. They have a newsletter about the business at publishingishard.com. DongWon is Korean-American, trans, and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Find more about them here.
Structure (all times in Eastern)
- 8:00 pm Chat for 5 minutes as people get settled.
- 8:05 pm Begin recording
- 8:45 ish Open the floor for questions from the chat
- 9:00 ish Stop recording near the hour and switch to Q&A for any questions that you didn’t want to be recorded.
- Later ish MRK will open the breakout rooms for anyone who wants to stick around for writing or social time.
