To prologue or not to prologue?

A prologue, properly written, is not "distracting text".

 

This thread needs an epilogue.

 

And a whole new fight breaks out!!

 

The reader has a choice to read a prologue or not. I'd rather have it there and give the reader that choice. Besides, a prologue can also be the hook to get the reader to care about what happens next.

 

Could you name an example of a 'properly written' prologue? (It has to be something available on the internet as getting English books isn't so easy where I am.)

I have in fact seen prologues that I consider to be good and minimally distracting. It's just that none of them seem necessary. The events could have been explained more effectively in the main storyline.

Prologues usually foreshadow important plot points or twists, and can contain vital information. So no, it really isn't optional.

That's kind of dishonest, seeing as the reader is expected to follow a different timeline or character throughout the story.

 

Normally anti prologues as I don't read them. Unless I get half way through a book and now really have no idea what it going on, at which point I do go back and read them... I don't really see the point of them. They are normally not actually that relevant to the story, if they were then they would be worked into the main body of the work not as a few pages in the beginning.

Having said that.... there have been a few introduction sections in books that are brilliant at drawing a reader in. The poem in the beginning of the LOTR's for example. Who doesn't get goose bumps when reading that? It sets the mood within the reader exactly write for the rest of the novel.

 

Well, I already mentioned Christina Baker Kline's The Orphan Train. I would also add Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves. I believe both are available in eBook form.

 

Yes, it is optional. they don't have to foreshadow anything and don't have to contain vital information. My first one didn't contain information vital to the plot. It simply gave a two minute look at my main character and her siblings. it showed, in less than three pages, what each of the three siblings were like in terms of age relation to each other and their level of emotions without me saying:
Sal, eldest of three, bully.
Alexandra, middle and only girl, fighter.
Dante, youngest, very emotional, people pleaser.

Yes, all those things could have been part of the main story but there was nowhere in the main story to get these simple points across to the reader. They get it anyway during the story but I wanted them to start with these points there in the background.

 

Here is a website that deals with the differences between Forewards, Prefaces/Introductions and Prologues. I feel, having read through this entire thread, that many folks here are confusing these terms—especially Preface and Prologue—and many are rejecting Prologues out of hand because they think they aren't necessary to the story. They are.

http://www.patmcnees.com/the_difference_between_a_preface__foreword__and_introduction_52536.htm

A Foreward is usually written by somebody other than the author, and deals with all sorts of things related to the book. This is often very interesting to read, but again, it can be skipped or read later on.

A Preface or Introduction is usually written by the author, typically stating its subject, scope or aims of the book. It may provide a hook to get the reader interested in reading on, but it is not part of the story, and can be skipped ...however, it also might be worth reading, either before or afterwards.

"A prologue starts the action and is PART of the action, though it could take place in the middle of the action — it often focuses on a pivotal moment."

 

So why don't editors/publishers like prologues?

 

Some don't, others don't mind at all—books with good, relevant prologues do get published in today's market—but for some reason this notion has caught on, and now lots of new writers see it as gospel. Don't write a prologue if you want to get published, or if you do, disguise it. Call it Chapter Zero. Call it nothing. What a shame.

Writers should learn what a prologue is for, what it can do ...and then write a good one, if it's what their story needs. Pandering to the anti-prologue brigade does nothing to enrich literature or the variety of our reading experience.

I really detest any misconceived 'rule' that boxes a writer in and dictates how they must tell their story, or what kind of story they must tell. We are all the poorer for it.

 

I agree. This is one of the reasons why I self publish, so I can tell the story the way I want to tell it. Complete with prologues, epilogues and a final 25 year later snippet.

 

OMG. An EPILOGUE! Surely you could have worked it into the story somewhere else, or called it Chapter Umpteen.

 

I know!

How wicked of me!

 

I say no, don't prologue, its a bad idea. Don't wanna risk agents throwing out your work cause of it.

 

Having pitched my novel for more than a year, attending writer's conferences, reading the specific rejections (i.e. not just boilerplate), I feel completely confident in saying that no matter what you do, how you structure your story, what style you use, whether you use past tense or present, 1st person or 3rd, prologue or no, epilogue or no...the vast majority of agents are going to throw out your work because of it.

I think Murphy's Fourth Law says it the best - If you try to please everybody, somebody won't like it.

 

Yeah but, I don't think prologues/epilogues do anything to enrich literature.
A story shouldn't begin, or end so neatly.

 

Me personally, I'm not confusing Preface or Forward with Prologue. I know the difference. If ever I object to a Prologue is when it fails to make good on the definition given in the above quote. The definition gives the ideal, what it should be, but often this ideal is not achieved. It's not never achieved (sorry for the double negative) but often enough to lay suspicion for many of us.

 

I agree it can be misused ...many times because people don't understand what a prologue is actually for, or mistake them for Forwards, Introductions or Prefaces. But to argue that we should stop writing them because some people misuse them is not a slidey slope I want to go down. Should we stop using apostrophes because so many people constantly misuse them? It's the same kind of thinking.

The solution is to reject any bad prologue you see, along with the author's book. But give every prologue a chance, along with the author's book. It's not hard. Really, it's not. If we are forced to narrow our creative options because of what people often screw up, this is not going to end well. We're losing language, reading and comprehension skills faster than I ever thought could happen. We can pander to that trend, or we can fight it. I know which one I'll be doing.

 

I don't think I've ever seen someone confuse a preface/foreword/prologue. Can you indicate some posts where that happened?

 

Yes, I could. However, I have no intention of trawling through this thread or any other, and singling people out—which would cause mass mayhem. Some on this thread mention prologues that give extraneous or technical information, distracting text or information that is outwith the story. Others wonder if they should write one at all. The title - to Prologue or not to Prologue - indicates indecisiveness about the issue.

While these commenters are not prologue-haters themselves, they are pointing out exactly what my last few posts were about. There are WRITERS out there who get prologues confused with prefaces and introductions, which is why I included the definition of the terms. (There is nothing wrong with writing a preface or introduction, by the way. As long as it's not titled "Prologue.") If a writer's information is extraneous, or is about the story rather than part of it, or is an extended history of the story's world, or is 'not needed' or—skippable—this stuff belongs in a preface or foreward, not a prologue. Any good prologue actually starts the story. It can't be skipped without hurting the story flow.

I've heard people and seen people referring to a prologue as 'an introduction' over a period of years, and complaining that they just want to get straight into the story. This is the point I'm making. A prologue should never be 'an introduction' any more than a chapter one is an 'introduction.' A good prologue starts the story—in a different time or place, or with different characters. It should never be skipped, any more than Chapter One should be skipped. Nor should it be IN ANY WAY boring.

My position on every thread in this forum that deals with prologues is that we (ourselves as writers, and agents, publishers and readers) should be prepared to give each prologue a chance, and not automatically reject every book that contains one. I'm not saying this will happen; I'm saying that it should.

I am totally against the position that prologues should be rejected by any sensible market-oriented writer because many people refuse to read them because some writers have wrongly used the title of 'prologue' to convey a lot of boring and extraneous information. That's putting the blame in the wrong place. We accept that constriction—okay, you win, I'll never write a prologue—and our writing and reading life loses a very valuable tool that some stories need.

 

With this ongoing debate, maybe I should check Goodreads again for reader sentiment on the matter. When the subject came up not long after I joined here in 2014, I went over there to see how the recipients of our efforts regarded prologues. I found some threads on the question and overwhelmingly the Goodreads members said they liked them fine.

But given the pressure Out There to reject the form, I wonder if opinions have changed now.

 

Like @Wreybies said, I don't think these people are confusing what a prologue is - they're just talking about bad prologues. In the same way you scoff at renaming a prologue Chapter 1, renaming a bad prologue Preface isn't going to fix it - it'll still be a bad prologue!

I'm happy with the position that it's sensible to avoid prologues if you want to sell your work. Maybe that's why I find these prologue threads mountains out of molehills for the most part; the solution seems really simple to me.

 

Well, we'll need to agree to disagree on the mountains/molehills aspect of this argument. For those of us who need prologues (like I did) to get my story off on the right foot, this is far from being a molehill. It's an important issue that affects the structure of my story. I won't be going for traditional publication because of the length of my novel, but if it had been a shorter novel I would be damn mad if I was told I shouldn't begin it with a prologue because some people don't like prologues. This may be a molehill for you, but it's not a molehill for people who want to frame their story that way.

I think I didn't make my meaning clear about the confusion, though. I meant WRITERS sometimes confuse prologues with prefaces and introductions, in that they ask if it's okay to write a piece about the history of their world, etc, and call it a prologue. No, that would probably be an Introduction.

 

I did a prologue in 'The Rose Orphan,' simply to set up how the main character ended up where she did and to give basis for the history of the world she's coming into. I may have gone a little overlong on it, but I felt most of what was there was important.