I've been going back and restructuring my early chapters recently, and I started to wonder if I should remove my prologue. In my prologue, a duke and around 30 bodyguards are traveling to a very remote city called Lafgrad. It is well past dark when they stumble upon an unburnt totem wreathed in flames. A witch appears from the fire and seduces/demonically possesses the party, except for two bodyguards, one of whom is the POV character for the prologue. The remaining two are then killed by their possessed friends. Since the duke never arrived as expected, word is sent to the capital of his disappearance. Around half a year later a group of knights arrive from the capital. They speak to the city councilors and stumble upon a complex political game within the city. One of the councilors was covertly hiring bandits to attack merchants, then claiming that since the capital was not ensuring Lafgrad's safety, she had no responsibility to pay hefty taxes. A rival councilor tells the knights of this and also voices his suspicion that the bandits were ordered to kill the duke to prevent him from enforcing order and the payment of taxes. He also tells them that half the city militia (150 men) disappeared without a trace months ago during the winter when they went to search for the duke. In reality, all of the bandits were possessed by the time the duke was, and the corrupt councilor had nothing to do with it. As the story continues, the knights investigate this bandit threat and search for the duke, but also hear rumors of witches and demons infesting the woods. Eventually the rumors prove true, and after a failed attack by the witch and her possessed minions on some nobles within the city, the knights end up having to lead the remainder of the militia to attack the totem and slay the witch and the demon she serves. That is part one of three in the novel. So all of this unfolds over the course of 23 chapters, with 10 chapters from unrelated characters on other continents intervening for a total of 36. To the characters, the real peril they face unfolds relatively slowly, and I was wondering if it would be better to leave the prologue in so the readers are aware there is a greater danger the knights will stumble upon, or if I should remove the prologue and let the readers discover it at the same rate as the knights.
I think that by default, it's better for the readers to discover the truth along with the POV character(s). That's not to say that there are no exceptions, but I'd want a reason to go the other way.
i agree with @ChickenFreak. beginning the story with a mystery- whispers behind cupped hands and dignitaries contemplating what happened- gives me something bigger to chew on than giving me the play-by-play up front. double bonus that it's shrouded in what everyone assumes to be shady political games. ooooh intrigue! also, i kind of dislike big things happening in the first chapter/prologue unless it's done really well. barring an info-dump, i don't feel anything for the characters yet and don't understand the weight of their circumstances or the implications what's about to occur. so even something as shocking as a mass possession and slaughter may not jar me as much as it could when woven in later in the story. is magic part of your world? could there be some big reveal of what happened that allows everyone to experience the shock as though they were there?
There is a group of a hundred spell-casters called the Ordo Daeii (Order of the Gods) which act as an inquisition. The dignitaries actually meet several Order Serjeants not far from Lafgrad. Unfortunately, the nature of magic in my world is restricted to moderately destructive spells (at least as far as ordinary mortals are concerned) so the Order Serjeants are incapable of clairvoyance, cool as that would be. I do like your idea though, and I might rewrite the "reveal" chapter to include the same kind of mass possession shown in the prologue. Originally in that chapter the witch sneaks into the city with some of her followers to possess a well-connected nobleman to spread her god's influence. She is caught in the act by the nobleman's paige, wife, and a couple of bodyguards... I think it would be easy to just add in a few bodyguards and servants that she could be trying to possess alongside the noble. It would help establish that the witch is capable of the mass-possession it would take to take control of 150 men at once and make her seem more of a threat than if she were trying to possess a single man. Without the prologue I think this is a necessary change.
There is a battle towards the end of part one where the town militia led by the knights is attacked by around 250 possessed men, including the duke and his retinue, the bandits, and the missing militiamen. I'm nervous that the readers will be confused if they are not previously aware the witch is capable of mass possession. The prologue served this role at first- the duke and his 30 men were possessed. But if I remove the prologue, I should shift this revelation of her abilities to a different chapter. It makes sense to make this the "reveal" chapter in which the characters become explicitly aware of the witch for the first time. But the larger picture is that the witch isn't the conspiracy or the big reveal of the overall story. She's a tiny loose thread of a conspiracy it will take 5-6 planned books (300,000 words each), two dozen characters, and four continents to unravel. When the knights and the Order Serjeants defeat the witch and the demon she serves, most of them dying in the process, they only discover that the witch and the demon were but a small puzzle piece of a conflict that has been building since pre-history. So the mystery of that particular witch's abilities pale in comparison to the many mysteries I have planned for the rest of the story.
I just realized I accidentally wrote epilogue instead of prologue in the title... Sorry if that confused anybody. Thanks for the advice, guys.
