Poll - do you read author's notes or prolouges?

I would participate in this poll, if prologues and author's notes weren't lumped together as if they're the same thing. My answer would be 'Prologues - always.' 'Author's notes - sometimes.'

That's set up the same as if you were to ask: Do you read Chapter One and Footnotes? The answer isn't necessarily going to be the same for both.

 

I've read the posts. And I still haven't seen any proof from you. This does not astonish me.

 

And the reasons for this particular "rule" (or "rule wannabe") is hearsay. Which is why I challenge it, each and every tired time it comes up.

 

Totally agree. If you're not going to write it well, if it doesn't add to the quality of the story, don't write it. Just like any other part of the book.

 

You misread the posts, and I don't intend to spoonfeed you if you can't make an effort. Whether you're being intentionally obtuse or just can't help it is irrelevant. It's one or the other, since others don't seem to have suffered the same defective reading of the thread.

 

Yes, I'm very pro-prologues, in the right place—but you may well be correct about dumping yours. A holy book doesn't sound like a riveting read to me.

Maybe you could start each chapter with a short quote from the holy book? That might be one way to incorporate it. You could also maybe do a prologue on how the holy book got written, who wrote it, why it's important or how it's been used? If you make this personal (maybe from the point of view of somebody who uses the book on a daily basis, like a priest) that might work as well.

 

Yeah - if you have a pseudo-biblical text, using excerpts throughout probably works better than dropping it up-front. My examples always tend to come from Azimov (guess what I've read recently) but he does this very effectively in the Foundation stories. The books are divided into vignettes that hop through the history of a civilization (the First Foundation), and every vignette opens with an entry from a future edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica summarizing why the character or event you're about to see was important (and since the Foundation's stated purpose at it's founding was to compile all human knowledge into the Encyclopedia Galactica, the fact that the book exists in completed form, centuries after the action, is a hint that the grand plan works out eventually)

 

It implies that you're moralizing. Wow, like there isn't enough of that in the world already for things that actually do answer to the paradigm of moralizing. How cold is it up there at the top of that alpine slope of a nose down which you are looking? Brrrr.....

BTW, this causticly judgmental entry of yours into the thread is where this thread started to go shaky. Feel free to exit.

 

Respectfully suggest your interpretation of my statement is faulty. It actually implies that writers get too caught up in such things, whereas readers don't. I would also respectfully suggest that if you want to invite people to leave this thread, you look at Steerpike's reponses to my comments. Unless of course, those personal attacks are okay because you hold the same opinion of prologues.

But yeah - outta here. Wouldn't want to upset anyone by asking for facts.

 

Nice try. You're rarely here, and when you are you're never not involved in some shit. Own yourself, ffs.

 

True, my comments weren't appropriate to the thread either.

So to take it back to the actual source of the disagreement, my issue is more with your misrepresentation of what was said (or, I suspect, just not actually reading what I posted because you're in a hurry to argue with me). I think if you're going to take up a contrary view, you should at least read and think about what other people have said. You're clamoring for proof of my assertions, so lets look at post #24 in this thread to see what the assertions are.

I said "some" agents don't like prologues. That seems clear enough, so no problem there.

I then posted some quotes by agents who don't like them, all of whom work for established agencies and at least one of whom has for more than 30 years, and for Dell and Random House before that. So that establishes the claim that some agents don't like prologues, and one of those agents who is experienced in the field says 'most' don't like them (which may or may not be true).

Next, I posted an excerpt from a blog by an author who was able to get an agent. He is in SF/F, and he said his experience was that 'most' agents don't like prologues.

Then, I clearly stated that this was all anecdotal, and that no one knows (from what I've seen) what percentage of agents like them or don't like them.

All of that evidently went over your head, or was missed in your haste to post a contradictory point. So the response received from you was to demand proof of something that wasn't asserted as fact, and that no one in this thread knows the answer to. Except you, apparently, because you said it is balderdash, which you could only know if you knew that 'most' agents were fine with prologues.

So, to recap, you've been making categorical statements, arguing with anyone who doesn't accept them, and setting up strawman arguments to knock down. I've posted statements by people, actually pointed out that we don't know how representative of all agents and editors those statements are in the same post where I made them, and then provided my personal view of prologues.

Is it hard to see why it doesn't look like you're reading the thread or else being intentionally antagonistic?

 

If I buy a book, I read every page.

With that said, I don't mind prologues; I don't think I've ever read a prologue I didn't like--but that's probably because most prologues are in front of books that are 15+ years old these days and did them correctly.

I can't think of a modern fantasy novel with a prologue. (Off the top of my head anyway.)

While I don't write prologues, I can see why someone else would, and I am all about writers using all the tools at their disposal--whether that is a prologue or italics or whatever.

But, I do agree that if some readers and agents are going to skip them because of some silly preconceived notion that the prologue is going to be garbage and useless, you may want to reevaluate your prologue plan.

 

Brandon Sanderson's "Way of Kings" (which I have not read but which is referenced constantly in his podcasts) opens with not one but three prologues. But Sanderson is an established author and that particular book was intended as salute to epic fantasy as a genre - it was purposefully written to be bigger, longer, grander, and more epic.

 

It's a good book. I listened to it in audio form. I had an initial negative reaction when the prologue came up, and didn't care for the prelude. The prologue was interesting, but it wasn't critical to understand the rest of the book - if you skipped it I think the rest makes sent just fine. He also has "interludes" between sections of the book (Book I, II, III, etc but all part of the same novel), and a couple of those were interesting and most were flat out boring, and I remember tuning those out as my mind wandered until he got back to the damned story

 

I always read them. I often find them endlessly fascinating.

 

See the funny thing is I'm guessing I probably would have had the same response - I wouldn't be thinking "he could have just axed the prologue," I'd be thinking "WHAT ABOUT THE STUFF FROM THE PROLOGUE?" ... and both of those statements a valid and not mutually exclusive, just a matter of how one views prologues as part of the larger work.

 

The prologue provided a historical context. So it was essentially a bit of world-building from long, long before the story itself takes place. Having read the prologue, you can see how those events tie into the action of the story, so it's not like it just didn't make sense. But even if he axed the prologue the story would have worked just as well, in my view.

I should noted that I'm not a huge fan of Sanderson to begin with. I've tried to start Mistborn half a dozen times. But I liked this book and its sequel quite a bit, though at times they really dragged on and became too long because he was dramatizing stuff that didn't need it.

 

David Gerrold did something similar in his War Against the Chtorr books. As I understand it he was heavily influenced by Starship Troopers in which similar interludes are presented as regards presenting a particular kind of citizenship indoctrination training. At times interesting, at times frustratingly pedantic and sermon-like. I wanted to get back to the story.

 

There's a part of me that WANTS to start reading Sanderson because I'm addicted to the Writing Excuses podcast he co-hosts - but I have very little reading time these days, don't generally enjoy the themes in epic fantasy, and am terrified of getting into such a thick book. The funny thing is that for as many times as I've listened to that podcast (I used the archives as curriculum when I decided to buckle down and write my novel, and a lot of the episodes I've listened to like three times for subject matter review) - I've not read anything by the authors that host it, and three out of four of them write in the genres that I find hardest to relate to...Sanderson in Epic Fantasy (not a fan of magic and dragons), Dan Wells in Horror (I really don't like being scared), and Mary Robinette Kowal in Regency-era historical fantasy (yeah, not enough action for me in Pride and Prejudice). Yet I hear these books referenced constantly as examples, so I eventually I'm going to have to read them as source texts because the creative process and characters sound interesting.

 

One of the reasons I skim or skip prologues is because sometimes I feel like the writer has an agenda that could actually spoil the reader experience ( not in their mind, I'm sure. ). Any of you that have read Lolita know it has a forward that includes major spoilers and a first chapter that behaves a lot like a prologue. ( not that I skipped it. ) But I'm glad I read the book first and the forward last. Maybe I spoiled Nabokov's set up in how I read it. Then again maybe he knew some readers read the forward last.

Flowers in the Attic did something similar. The prologue was a little indulgent and basically it tells the reader three things - that the heroine survives, that she's done something shameful and she hopes her book will execute some kind of revenge. The last 2 were fine for sparking an interest but the first dulls some of the books suspense. No matter what danger the author puts the heroine in we know she survives. Something I don't want to know when opening a thriller.

I know Nabokov being the trickster he was included the forward as part of his puzzle and I'm only guessing that V.C. Andrews
put hers in to possibly reflect the tell-all confessionals that were being sold at the time. Still both prologues weaken each stories suspense.

But is that reader expectation for genre or a lousy use of prologue.

 

This is a fascinating discussion. I admit, I'm one of those who didn't realize that people didn't read the prologues. I always read them. Author's notes, meh, sometimes. But I guess I never thought about the necessity of a prologue.

It's making me question my own novel now. In the past, I think only my very first novel had a prologue, the rest just began straightaway. This one, however, I included a prologue because I felt the backstory it conveyed was, well not necessary for the reader experience, but interesting and enriching. I guess I wouldn't mind if they did skip it, but it's personally my favorite scene in the entire novel so I would hope some would read it and understand why I included it. I guess if/when the story is ready for query, I'll see how the prologue's existence affects my ability to get it published.

 

Yes, a prologue may well say 'backstory here." But that doesn't make it bad.

There is nothing wrong with 'backstory' if it's necessary to the plot AND presented in a well-written prologue. Some authors choose to tell their stories that way. It means the reader knows as much as—or more than—the characters know when the main story starts. Nothing wrong with that. Seriously. It's one of many time-honored ways to tell a story.

If backstory is presented as a dry, fact-ridden history lesson, it will probably be boring. If it's presented as an event occuring 'now,' with functioning characters, jeopardy and a story arc within the chapter, it will be just as satisfying to read as any of the rest of the story. It's called Prologue simply to signal to the reader that there will be a deliberate time break afterwards (and possibly location/character break as well) between it and Chapter One.

 

Now I'm considering naming the beginning of my and @T.Trian's WIP 'Chapter 0'...

Kidding aside, my favorite novel has a prologue which shows a shocking future event. After that, the story jumps back in time and tells the protagonist's story chronologically. I had no problem with the prologue, especially because when I first read it, I didn't know much about writing, so as a reader I didn't know to be wary of them. I don't know how many reader-readers react to them negatively. If lots of agents don't like them, it sounds like a business decision to me.

I don't usually skip prologues, but I rarely read author's notes. I can't say I as a reader feel one way or the other about their (prologue and notes) significance, though. As a newbie writer, I might take a more wary approach. You want to give yourself the best possible chance to get your MS noticed and published, and if it seems lots of agents in your genre react negatively to prologues, perhaps consider modifying your beginning just to be super on the safe side... Or maybe replace the word 'Prologue' with 'Chapter 1' . Although, if that fix works, then your prologue is either redundant -- or agents are fussing over nothing. I'm guessing the former.

 

Interesting topic! I would say I've always read prologues, except I'm sure I've skimmed some that didn't quite convince me of their importance (in the case of a library book, though, the time is what is being spent, not money for every word); perhaps the authors weren't super-convinced of that either. Authors' notes? If I liked the book- or in the above-mentioned case of historical fiction, to draw the lines. Though if it's like this, who won't?

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; personas attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

-Notice at beginning of Twain's Huck Finn.