To Prologue or not to prologue

My planned prologue is like a news broadcast or documentary, showing snippets of what happened before the start of the story.

My work is heavily Like Reality, Unless Noted, but there is a really big note concerning America that needs to get explained in the first few pages.

Personally,I love Prologues. They're a great method of introducing a concept or setting important to the plot without binding it to the main characters point of view. They make for great teasers or introductions.

However, there is a very vocal group of people with an irrational hatred of prologues. I've never quite gotten a good explanation. Fantasy and Sci-Fi readers are generally accepting of prologues, but not so much in other genres.

Well, consider that in Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres the setting is as important (or even more) than the characters, while in, just to name an example, a romance novel set in the current age then you don't need to explain how the world is, and the characters will be kown during the course of the story, so a prologue there would be mostly a way to increase the size of the work.

I wouldn't put a book down just because it has a prologue, but it does increases the chances that I will.

at a few people above

—Two pages is more than I would read of any prologue.

—About the length of Star Wars intro would probably be the best. It isn't long, it's to the point, and a New Hope actually opens up with the first 20 or so minutes in a way that no one gets lost, and it had very little exposition before the movie started.

Ya, Star Wars A New Hope I think would be the best example of how to do it. Just look how big the Star Wars Universe is and how little they used of a prologue to get it going.

However, some of my prolouges have a good amount of action, along with expo-ing, like one of the examples I mentioned above.

If your first chapter can be skipped with no ill effects, don't make it a prologue; kill it.

A prologue should be short, not chapter-length, in my opinion.

It should also differ from the main content of the book in some way.

In ancient days, a prologue was often added to a work significantly after it was written; when the work was new, its context was obvious, but as history marched on, the context of the work might be less clear to an audience, and thus a prologue would be added to explain where and when, and what's going on — the assumed knowledge of the original work.

It shouldn't be so short as to be an epigram, though. Those have their place too, but the usage is generally a bit different.

edited 17th Apr '11 7:31:58 PM by Morven

You're referring to a preface in the third or forth paragraph.

I tend to use prologues as unrolled "fortune cookies" that pertain to the inner workings of the world I place my story in. In effect, they may illustrate the futility of certain intentions and drama may ensue as the pro/antagonists seek to work against the laws of said universe. The prologue might be an in-universe scripture, a dialogue, a speech, an unrelated small scene, a stream of consciousness. I think that is the beauty in the art of writing, being free to use language and its devices in many different ways to different outcomes.

If there is no need to use a prologue, I mostly use a hard opening that just crashes the reader into the story.

Prologue: 3 pages.

The rest of the comic: 80 pages and counting, and I'm still not done with the first third.

Content of the prologue: R-Rated Opening (White House blows up on page 1), War Was Beginning crossed with Washington D.C. Invasion, and an Establishing Character Moment for the villain.

Most of my stories don't have prologues. The exception to this is one of my novels that's establishing how the story we're reading got there. Not so much "I Should Write a Book About This" as it is "You should write a book about this for me because Everybody's Dead, Dave."

edited 3rd May '11 12:39:52 AM by Hermiethefrog

If I am afraid that it may be inappropriate to include a prologue, I just call it "Chapter One" instead, then call the next chapter "Chapter Two", and so on. /does not condone own advice

This is the first time I've heard of prologues being mortally bad. Why would it be there if it didn't somehow tie into the story or matter? Although, I guess it does get in the way of cutting directly to the action if its purpose is background, and that has all the usual problems of starting anything with exposition.

edited 3rd May '11 12:52:36 AM by SPACETRAVEL

To me, it's not necessarily about the fact that it doesn't tie to the story. It's the matter of it essentially being the story.

Some stories that I have read have a prologue that just kinda delves into the action. It's confusing because I'm sitting there thinking, "Why did you call it a prologue and not 'Chapter 1'?" or something like that?

My rule is that if there's a scene that's not at the beginning of the story that would make for a good, tense start, then I make a prologue. Otherwise, I discard it.

I can certainly see why editors/publishers would be somewhat weary of the idea of prologues.

Why?