A few weeks ago I posted a question about prologues, about whether or not they should be included as part of a book, and readers of this blog had a lot of different opinions! Well, I because I recently finished a book with a good epilogue, I'd like to know if people out there generally take a kinder attitude toward epilogues than they do toward prologues.
As a reader, when I come to really care about the characters and feel invested in their stories, I like to find out by way of an epilogue what happened to them after the close of the book. How about you? Are you an epilogue person?
Sometimes. It really depends.
ReplyDeleteI usually find epilogues to be entertaining.
ReplyDeleteI usually enjoy them, though I'm leery about including them in my own stories. I hate to wear out my welcome. Maybe it's a confidence issue!
ReplyDeleteIf I feel strongly about the characters, they can be great for adding some nice happy ending feelings. If I don't care about the characters, that's a different story :-)
ReplyDeleteI feel similar about this as I do to movies that just stop after the climax. I always ask myself what happens next, and it just irritates me if the story ends right after the climax. Novels that have epiloges I find on a whole are good when the epiloge helps to round out the stories and catch those last few threads. I also like to use epilogues in my work to help set up the beginning of the next work if its a series.
ReplyDeleteI go back and forth on this, sometimes I feel it is necessary to wrap things up, but sometimes I believe it should be left open-ended. Each story should be treated differently, at least I think so :)
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