What's the middle bit called?

Glen

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If the prologue is a bit of the story you have at the start, and the epilogue is a bit of the story you have at the end...what do you call a similar bit of story you have in the middle?

Google gave me "interlude" which I don't think is right (I already have them), and an hilarious forum exchange in which someone asked the same question and the first response told them it was a ludicrous question, it didn't matter, and could they please step to the front of the class to introduce themselves! My ribs still hurt from laughing.

Anyway, be creative with your answers, have fun, gold stars to the best answers, and a spell facing the corner for anyone who strays off topic.
 
I would have said "Interlude" as well. But what's wrong with just chapter? you don't even need to call the first chapter prologue, or the last epilogue.


EDIT: I'll be back, I remember an author doing this...


I'm back!


Yes, it is interlude. Russell Kirkpatrick has mini-chapters he calls 'interlude' to show a short PoV from the villain in his Husk books.
 
I'm just having fun with titles is all. Pushing the envelope of what you can do with these Big Bold Slabs Of Text in your ms.

I have many chapters, in all manner of styles.

prologues and epilogues have diff styles tho. You finish the prologue, and think, right now to the real story. You finish the story, sigh, and then get a bit more to think about in the epilogue. I want that feeling for the middle.

It should be like a bit PUNCTUATION MARK in the middle. A milestone, a waymarker. Although I have never, to my knowledge seen one of these things, it seems like a big gap.
 
You could always go with "Intermission" and make us think time has rewound to the days where theatres actually gave you a break to use the facilities and buy more food off them. Never understood why they took that away, wouldn't it be good for business to keep intermissions in?

Then in-between chapters you could have a character bringing around hotdogs and chips for the others to eat.
 
In operas, one may find preludes** and interludes, the former being used where the work is formally divided into sections for which the prelude is an introduction.









** - In German, a prelude is ein Vorspiel. Feel free to call your interlude, Foreplay. ;)
 
Ursa, that's silly.

The lady readers will read it veeeery slowly and the gentlemen readers will just skip the Foreplay entirely!
 
Following on from Ursa and David...

In building, you have a 'course' - damp course, hard course, a course of bricks etc. In the same way, you build your prose.

Now, the accepted prefix for things that lay between is 'inter', as in interlude.

You could combine the two, I suppose.
 
Oh come on! This thread is killing me! Ursa, you make jokes about my mind?! :p

I was gonna say 'intermission' like they had at cinemas, but Warren beat me to it.
 
Being serious, briefly, I think Brandon Sanderson had a few Interludes in Way of Kings.
 
From memory, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow has a couple of chapters contecting up all the multitudes of interludes.

I particularly liked the eternal lightbulb digression in the novel.

:)

Brilliant book, would heartily recommend to everyone, although it's not everyone's banana sandwich.
 
Ursa, you make jokes about my mind?! :p
I needed an excuse for why we had a prologue ... interlude ...epilogue, rather than a prologue ... something-logue ... epilogue.

So, basically, I needed to suggest something... er... lewd. ;):)
 
Well, it's obviously a mesologue. Unfortunately, my dictionary doesn't agree with me, but we don't let details like that phase us, do we?
 
Sounds like you're up for a meso-fight, Chris.

(But at least you shouldn't get into deep water over it. ;):))
 
Can it be in song form? I like it when a wandering minstrel or bard hijacks the prose to give hindsight into the story with some insight on the culture.
 
Full marks to everyone. My conclusion is that while we have had pauses in literature (interludes), and stories between pro & epi logues we have no evidence of the story within the story which is what I am searching for.

I am pleased to say this makes me a pioneer and frontiersman, and I pronounce that I name this section of work...wait for it...the middlelogue. Well, that's what I called it in the ms anyway. I reckon Pro & Epi must be from latin or some such, so if I am able to discover the equivalent prefix for middle I might use that.

As for the sale of albatross in intermissions, and unrequited foreplay - I think they're irrelevant, either African or Asian, not sure which.
 
If logue comes from logos - which my dictionary says is discourse, and assuming pro- and epi- mean before and after,

then what about pausilogue, sort of 'pause in the discourse'

Sounds a bit like a dinosaur though, one that thought a lot before doing anything...
 

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