THE PROLOGUE OF SNOW: CURSED

December, 2025/ January 2026 (Sorry it’s a little late, LOL. A lot of stuff has been going on.)

Written by Willa R. Finnegan

TOPIC ON THE TABLE: THE PROLOGUE OF SNOW: CURSED

I was recently asked if I wrote the prologue of Snow: Cursed before or after I had written the actual manuscript…and the answer is actually after.

Before I get into my blog for December, I should probably introduce myself in case you don’t know who I am. My name is Willa R. Finnegan, and I am the fourteen-year-old, award-winning author of Snow: Cursed. I wrote my debut novel when I was eleven, got it published when I was twelve, and it was in paperback form for my thirteenth birthday. But that’s enough about me. Let’s get into this story about my prologue!

I vividly remember the moment that I completely deleted the first prologue that I had written for my book. I was on a phone call with my aunt, and we were talking about Snow: Cursed. This was a day or two before I sent the final draft to my publisher for editing. My aunt and I were discussing my prologue and how I felt like it wasn’t good enough, like it didn’t meet my standards. When I first drafted it, I was eleven, and by the time I was sending it out to Page Publishing, I was twelve. That one year may not seem like a big change, but in hindsight it was. The former prologue seemed too immature and childish in my eyes, and didn’t capture the themes central to Snow: Cursed—moral relativism and how good and evil aren’t two absolutes—like I wanted it to.

Here’s a little bit of backstory. In Snow: Cursed’s first draft, the prologue was a lot different, and much more comical than it is now. It didn’t introduce the story extremely well or catch you off guard like the current prologue does, and it explained that Snow was the narrator of the story, which was edited out by the final draft. In the original draft of Snow: Cursed, Snow as the narrator would have little comments in parentheses throughout all the things that happened to her, but I found that as the book wore on I didn’t write those little tidbits as much, which then made the prologue pointless. Therefore, I decided that I wanted to put my best foot forward, so I changed it. (If you’d like to read the original, unedited prologue, stick around until the end of this blog post.)

Anyways, back to being on the phone call with my aunt. As I said before, we were discussing my book and the deep themes in it, and I remember having this light-bulb moment where I knew exactly what I wanted the prologue to sound like. My aunt lingered on the phone, despite the fact that it was getting late and we both needed to go to sleep, and I hammered away at the keys on my computer, the words completely flowing out of me onto the page. Looking back, it was so magical and surreal that I had that experience. When I had finished writing it, I read it to my aunt a couple times, and then we told each other good night, but I will never forget how I sat there thinking: “This is it. This is the prologue.” And a couple days later, I sent the manuscript with the new prologue to Page Publishing, and the rest is history.

In the long run, I am so ridiculously happy that I changed my prologue, because I feel like it’s so much more impactful now, and really, truly encapsulates what the story is all about. I will always cherish that moment of everything pouring out of me so freely, and I'll probably hold onto it until the day I die.

So yes, I did write my prologue after the manuscript was finished. The fact that I knew what happened in the story and had been fighting tooth and nail with Snow, essentially, really caused it to flow the way it did. Everything was already there, and had been running rampant in my mind for a long time…I just had to record it on the page. And changing that one thing made all of it worthwhile.

I hope you enjoyed this blog today! Please join my mailing list for my newsletter. I’ll see you again in January, and if you’d like to take a peek at the unpolished, raw, original prologue, feel free to keep reading. Please excuse the excessive amount of periods used for pauses though. You’ve been warned, LOL.

Prologue:

The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen told you the stories wrong. Little Red Riding Hood was not a little girl going to her grandmother’s, and Goldilocks was not alone in the bears’ cottage. Jack was not surprised by the beans, and Sleeping Beauty did not sleep for hundreds of years. Cinderella didn’t even want to go to the ball, and the Little Mermaid never died. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood were not individual people.

But how could they get it wrong, you ask? Well, because they thought one person could not suffer so much. They thought, why would readers want to hear about some loony girl who’s in all of the stories? One character will surely get old after a while. So they went on their merry way, not caring one bit if they didn’t tell the story correctly. And here’s a newsflash for you: that was the biggest mistake of their careers. They thought, ‘oh, no one will care if we change up the story. It’s just a book.’ But what about this: what if it was your life that they had mistold?

So I am here to tell you that you’d better forget about those versions of my story, and listen to this completely accurate one. And if you’re one of those people who is always asking questions, then you might want to caution against reading some mysterious chapters. Also, if you are one of those people who judges others by their misfortunes, then I suggest you leave and forget all about this book.

I know this is hardly a prologue, but it’s just getting you ready for the real story. The real deal. The main event. Etcetera! Ooooh….jazz hands!

And yes, for those askers-of-questions: this book is going to get weird. But it will also be epic, enthralling, gruesome, lonely, mysterious, and most of all…..it’s one of those books that you will never want to put down until you finish it.

But if you think I’m going to squeeze all of this drama into one thick book, then you are completely wrong. Also, just a heads up: if you see parentheses after something questionable, that probably means that I’m getting super worked up and want to share any thoughts, or connections with you, dear reader.

So sit back and relax (actually you probably won’t be doing any relaxing, and if you do I’m going to haunt your dreams. Like I said: parentheses.) and read this terrifying tale. (Oooooohhhh…..does anyone have some popcorn?)

But really quick, I want to tell you one last thing. If you wonder why I am the narrator of this story, it is completely simple: the main character is me. (What? I didn’t see that coming! Oh wait. Now I feel like a hypocrite.)

And who is me you ask…..that answer is also pretty simple.

Snow White.