Twelve years ago, during one of my many trips to Hawaiʻi, I had the great pleasure of meeting William Keala Kai, a crew member of the Polynesian voyaging canoes, Hokuleʻa and Namahoe. He and a local astronomer were giving a talk at Poipu Beach Park at the southern end of Kauai. Only a small group showed up, and my wife and I stayed after to share “talk story” with him. Sitting around a fire, we spent hours sharing our mutual love for blue water navigation. I had sailed ocean-going sloops, navigated submarines, and piloted aircraft throughout my life and always had a keen fascination with navigation, especially celestial navigation. So, Keala and I really hit it off.
What struck me the most about our time together was how Keala continued the tradition of Polynesian wayfinding across the Pacific, on voyages of thousands of miles, only guided by the wisdom of their kūpuna, or elders.
A story grows
Years later, I wrote “The Wayfinders,” a short story about a Polynesian navigator sailing to Hawaiʻi in 1054 CE, I came back to it over and over again. It eventually became the prologue of the first draft for Mauna Kea Rising, my debut novel published last January. I had thought it might offer an excellent context for the science fiction book. One of my favorite authors, Arthur C. Clarke, did this to great success. He took his 1948 short story, The Sentinel, and developed it into the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, A Space Odyssey. He then adapted and expanded the 1968 film into an award-winning novel.
Sometimes novels need a prologue, even at the risk of damaging a little of their subtext. These may be scenes that offer complicated backstories that must be explained upfront in order for readers to understand what’s going on later in the book. They may also add to world-building in science fiction and fantasy novels. In Clarke’s 2001, A Space Odyssey, the prologue takes place millions of years before inciting event. It works because it provides the subtext for the story’s premise: human encounter with alien technology in the 21st century. The introduction also provides an important setup crucial to the main character’s arc.
Yet, “The Wayfinders” didn’t fit well into my novel for many reasons. The 15,000-word prologue was bloated and forced readers to begin the story twice. The prologue started with two characters a millennium before the main plotline for Mauna Kea Rising and had little to do with the novel’s premise, a single mother’s struggle to survive the aftermath of an epic solar storm. It grabbed readers with a “fake” hook, wasting their time with extraneous material instead of allowing them to get into the real story right away. Despite my love for the story, I had to cut it. “Kill your darlings,” right?
Gone for good?
Well, not so fast. Although I dropped the prologue, I included a few of its ideas in Mauna Kea Rising as part of a frame-story technique—a story within the story. It became a plot device that prophesied the dangers faced by the main character. I also went back and edited the story, adding more conflict, shortening it to 5,000 words, tightening the character arc, and adding a twist at the end. This month, Torrid Literature Journal published “The Wayfinders” in their Summer edition. So, never throw anything away. You just don’t know when your old material might become useful.
