Hello, I'm working on my first novel, and I have an issue with the beginning. My idea is to introduce the city from the point of view of a minor character who drives through the streets – establishing the tone of the story, the vibe readers should expect from the citizens (how people act towards each other, themselves) of it, and the system of the city. The minor character, Gabriel, eventually drives to the university he studies at and gets kidnapped by one of the antagonists, setting up a story for the next ten chapters. There are multiple stories going on, actually, but he's the link between all the main characters. Now, I'm using this as a Prologue, but from what I understand, these are not very popular/common anymore since readers usually skip it. Thus, writers start off with the first chapter instead and leave the Prologue out. I'd like to ask you all for your opinion: should I use this introduction as a Prologue, or use it within the first chapter and give him his own character section? To be more specific how I have my novel structured already: each chapter includes a section about a character. For instance, "Chapter I: Ross (we get to see what he's up to), Laura, Diego..." and all of these character sections can interlink. I have a lot of characters in store, and it'd get convoluted if I had to switch between them every other paragraph, which is why I intend to do it like this. Thank you, have a nice rest of the day.
A prologue, as I understand it, is for the author to introduce the back story -- the history of what has transpired prior to the events that make up the story. If this minor character's driving around is part of the events comprising the story, I'd say it should be chapter one, not prologue.
Calling it a prologue but it's an important piece to your narrative will have some readers skipping something important to the story, and confusing them. If it is important to understanding your story or character arcs, then you should have it as chapter 1. If it isn't important to understanding your story or character arcs, you shouldn't have it in at all. It's why prologues are usually a bad idea and why readers skip them, because they're usually not part of the actual story their reading, and usually more for world building (and world building done right is part of your story, not in addition to it)
I would rethink using an unimportant character in your first chapter as a POV character. I especially wouldn't give that character a name. People will assume this is the main character and be confused when he doesn't appear in the next chapter. If you want to describe the city I would do it in bits and pieces interspersed in the action, not as a big block of exposition at the beginning, This is what's known as an infodump and is a real bad habit. You want to hook the readers attention at the beginning, and you do that with action or character interaction or mystery, not exposition.
T F Powys does something a little like this in Unclay (1931) - the first chapter is the pov of a fox being hunted by some of the other characters. There it's a chapter not a prologue. Unclay sort of messes with the idea of having pov characters at all, and there must be better examples, but it points to chapter not prologue. The prologue to Lord of the Rings is an example from the other direction - there's no pov character and the characters in the story are only mentioned in passing, apart from a bit for people who hadn't read the Hobbit (or who had and might remember inconvenient details).
Suggested reading for one of my favorite prologues, Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut. In two parts, it starts as non-fictional telling of a meeting between the author, his uncle, and a prominent labor leader who provided, in part, inspiration for the story. The second part is a fictional story of a fictional incident of nineteenth century labor strife that would affect the life of the MC many years later.
I think it would be more correct to start with a prologue. In the prologue, you can also specify from which character's point of view the description will be (or describe his story if you are writing from a third person). Or you can make an independent prologue without naming characters.
The prologue should not be essential as some readers will skip it. That said, you may ask, why should I include it at all? The purpose of the prologue is to help the reader understand the rest of the novel. It can describe the setting, give backstory or a taste of the style of the novel. A prologue would be important if some readers have difficulty grasping what's going in in the first few pages. If your novel opens with the main character trying to figure out what's going on, then the reader will likely be similarly confused. The first rule of writing is; don't confuse the reader. In this situation, I'd use a prologue.
I'm glad the only thing you're worried about in your novel is whether you should put a text as a prologue or the very first chapter! It looks like you're more or less set for most of the rest of your novel (if not, though, please ignore that sentence and keep on writing). I'll echo what the others have said here that you should put it directly as the first chapter. I wouldn't worry about readers mistaking Gabriel for the main character, as long as you make it clear enough that he won't be "available" for most of the story. It would help in that aspect if you make said minor character less relatable, though, like not giving them a name, limiting their active interactions with the environment and other characters, etc.
IMHO, it's irrelevant that some readers may skip a prologue. Some readers also skip over portions of the main body of a book. A prologue is used to inform readers about the backstory. Perhaps I'm in a minority but, when I pick up a book that has a prologue, I read it. I assume that the author put that information there for my benefit, so why would I skip over it?
I use a prologue in my latest work and I have used them in non-fiction. I think of it as an omniscient point of view. My belief is that it would take a lot of characters to describe the overall picture . Here is a paragraph of my prologue..... The Raven Warriors were a cavalry for hire. Often called upon by emperors and generals to bolster their troops or decimate invading armies and defend the throne when all seemed lost. They intimidated the enemy with their hooded robes cloaked in raven feathers, and black from their horses to their saddles.
