@EdFromNY "BTW, @shadowwalker, I love the Zelazny quote in your signature." Agreed. Myself finding in that state of "wanting" rather than "acting". It's crushing at times, isn't it.
The question Because I've no evidence at all it's true. I've yet to hear of an agent or editor who has said, "Yeah, love those prologues. Lay 'em on me." If you hear of one, please let us know.
It's your personal choice. I have a prologue and it is for back story. It's a snippet into the life of three siblings which happens 14 years before the main story starts. It sets the personas for each of these three characters and goes some way to explaining why these people are the way they are. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want a prologue, have one, if you don't, don't. As we've seen, there is no evidence to prove either way whether an agent will want one or not and if you do get an agent who wants your story but without the prologue, then it's up to you to decide whether to 1) remove the prologue, 2) remove it and make it part of the main story, 3) convince the agent that if he wants your book, the prologue stays or 4) walk away and take your book somewhere else.
The question is not whether or not certain agents or editors "love prologues". I would be just as wary of those people as those who say they hate them. Why? Because they've already made up their minds without reading it. Any agent/editor who is that set in their way is not one I would want to work with. And if you have no evidence that only "some" dislike prologues, logically you must have evidence proving that all dislike them. Let's see it. That's all I'm asking.
FWIW, here are comments from Kristin Nelson, who has had her own literary agency since 2002 and in that time (according to her bio) has represented over 35 NYT Best-selling titles: When reading requested sample pages, every agent I knows skips a prologue when reading the sample. The top three reasons why: 1. It’s an info dump of “must-know” backstory. A good writer incorporates these elements as the story unfolds. 2. It’s often lazy world-building (a first cousin to info dump). 3. Prologues often have a different voice and POV from the rest of the novel, so it’s not a good indicator (to an agent or editor) of how the story will unfold or how good a work it will be. Tips from Kristin: 1. Eliminate prologues or limit them to one or two paragraphs 2. Don’t try to cheat and call a prologue chapter one. Agents and editors immediately recognize the difference. Agents and editors I've worked with tend to run in similar circles. Kristin may be using hyperbole when she says every agent she knows skips the prologue when reading the sample, but it's something I've heard repeatedly from editors, including one editor who said that if you must use a prologue, don't put anything essential to the story in it (or at least not only in the prologue) because a lot of agents, editors, and readers will skip over them. Again, anecdotal based on what this editor was saying, but it happens to fit into my own experience because I skip prologues at times or just give the book a miss entirely. I guess the question that comes to mind is this: if there's nothing essential in the prologue, should it even be there? The problem that you run into is this - even if Kristin is exaggerating, and let's say it's only some agents and editors who roll their eyes at prologues (you see it mentioned enough I begin to suspect it is a majority, but without polling them all, I don't see how you'd know), I've never heard of a single editor rejecting a story for lacking a prologue, or any editor or agent even saying they'd ever do that. Since publishing is often an odds game in many ways, then it seems to me a prologue is more likely to hurt your odds than help. This is particularly true when the prologue suffers from the first two reasons mentioned by Kristin, above - it's just a bunch of backstory, or it's just a lazy way of throwing in a bunch of worldbuilding. You can tell prologues that are just backstory or worldbuilding pretty quickly, and I almost always skip those if I'm going to continue to read the book. As I've mentioned before, the very fact a prologue is included means the author knows damn well the story starts somewhere else but has decided to heap this other information on us nevertheless.
Doing a quick google search for agents talking about prologues, there do seem to be a good number of agents who hate prologues. There are a few who reject flat out, a few who skip prologues. Virtually all who comment on the subject say that the vast majority of prologues they receive are a bad idea. Given that there are limited enough number of decent agents working in a given genre that some people manage to get rejected by all of them, then some agents hating prologues IS going to make a difference to your chances of being accepted. Maybe they'd have been the ones who'd have liked your work enough to represent it otherwise. It's hard to quantify how much it will affect your odds, but it seems significant enough, that I'd need a really good reason to include a prologue. I do wonder since the internet if there is a spiral of this getting more extreme. Some agents publicly say they dislike prologues. Some writers see this and find ways to avoid prologues. The writers who see these comments will generally be those who do spend effort researching how to get published. From what I hear, the worst half the slush pile seem to come from writers who don't do enough research into craft or the industry and make all sorts of silly mistakes. They don't hear about agents disliking prologues. Thus a higher percentage of slush pile submissions with prologues are from people who make all sorts of mistakes. More agents realise that most slush pile prologues are terrible and start getting biased against them. And the cycle continues.
I'll be perfectly honest. If I see the word "Prologue" when I open book I sit and debate with myself for a good minute or so whether or not I'm actually going to read it, or if I'm just going to skip ahead to the first chapter. I know it's a bad habit but there's just something about the idea of prefacing that instantly bores me. I just want to dive right into the meat of the story, screw the starter salad. Most often I'll end up begrudgingly reading it, but I find it hard to connect with because I'm just trying to get through it quickly in order to get to the true start of the story.
I debate about reading it as well. Actually, if I'm in the bookstore there is a decent chance I'll just put it back on the shelf.
Yeah, I do wonder how much 'hatred' of prologues comes because people think they ought to hate them. It's just as easy to write a bad Chapter One as it is to write a bad prologue. Perhaps we should all skip Chapter One and just skip on to Chapter Two? It makes just as much sense. A prologue signals ONLY that this part of the story will differ from the rest of the story in some way—NOT that it isn't a vital part of the story. It might take place in different time frame, a different POV character, a different location. There is NOTHING to say it's not necessary to the story or a full part of the story. Often the end of the story ties in closely with the events of the prologue. I do not respect people who decide ahead of time how an author should present their story. I fully support anybody who reads, or starts to read a prologue and stops because it it dull, full of infodumps, etc. But I cannot support in any way people who refuse to read them on principle—and that goes for agents and publishers. That's like saying an author has to tell a story a certain way OR ELSE. What a dull world it would be if everybody did everything to somebody's idea of formula.
It doesn't make just as much sense to skip Chapter 1. With a prologue, even the writer is acknowledging that he is st as trying somewhere other then the beginning of the story, which is why it is labeled "prologue."
I actually don't "hate" prologues, as long as they are not used in the manner that @Steerpike outlined above. As for agents who reject works that utilize them, I can only say, "It is what it is." There is evidence of an antagonism toward prologues in the industry that the first-time writer ignores at his/her peril. You don't have to like it. But to tell aspiring writers that such a bias does not exist when it does, in my mind does a disservice to those writers who dream of becoming commercially successful and look for advice on how to succeed. I agree with @jannert. I don't like the way that the business is run these days. I don't like that agents look for reasons to say "no" rather than reasons to say "yes". In fact, I don't like the fact that agents are the first line of defense of the publishing industry. Moreover, I don't like that once agents have succeeded in finding an acquisition editor interested in a ms, that editor has to go through multiple levels of approval before the ms can be accepted. But that is the current state of traditional commercial publishing as I understand it. And we as writers have a choice - we can play the game, or not. If we choose to play the game - and I have chosen to do so - then we have to accept the rules by which the game is played. To me, the issue of prologues is a bit like the issue of word count. There may not be an absolute, but there appears to be a herd instinct. There are probably agents out there who would not be put off by a prologue, just as there are agents who won't be put off by a high word count. But for most, the harder you make it for them to sell an editor, the more they will have to absolutely LOVE your ms for it to have any chance at all. My approach is to try to make it easier for agents to say yes, not harder. Someone else may decide to stick to their guns and do it the hard way. That's their choice. But I won't have it forced on me.
I read books. Prologues, etc, have no bearing on that whatsoever. If someone wants to explain to me what is going on or exists beforehand, I do not mind in the slightest. I don't know a single TV series that does not do some sort of "last time on X", and yes, that bores me because I probably watched X less than a week ago, but if it was the first time I had seen this show, great. No problem with prologues at all.
I find a lot of the stuff I read has a prologue, or something that acts as a prologue just without actually being called a prologue. I can understand that publishers are wary of prologues for certain reasons, but if they are done right, they are perfectly acceptable in my opinion. They're great hooks to grab the readers attention.
Yeah. I just read a great book. It is called Worlds of Wonder by David Gerrold. I learned things in that book that helped me a lot. I have finished my first draft that I worked on for seven years. Now, I must work on the second draft. It is a science fiction work, but i have to cut the prologue, work on character development, and get rid of my run on sentences. With school and friends, I find myself really distracted. I am trying to work on small goals like 2,000 words a day. Sometimes I manage it and other times I do not. Then, I had an idea. If I join a forum specifically for writing. I will feel more motivated to accomplish my goals! So here I am! I hope that the book will help!
If I think my story will be enhanced by a prologue, it will have one. If I think a prologue won't add to the enjoyment of the book, it won't have one. If I write the prologue as well as I do the rest of the story (and why the hell wouldn't I?), it will grab the agent/editor/reader as quickly and securely as Chapter 1. As to the "all the editors I know do X" business - well, yeah, we've all made statements along that line. I've heard it a million times Then we actually put our brains in gear and remember all the people we know who didn't "X". Of course, that weakens our argument so we tend to 'forget' them. Funny, that.
You just said exactly what I feel, but more economically than I did. But @EdFromNY is also right. If you want to go for traditional publishing, you have to jump through the hoops ...all of them. Word count, query letter, instantly sellable stories, preferably something that can be marketed within a genre, etc. If you don't want to do that, then thank goodness we have the self-publishing option. Otherwise, as writers we would need to rein in our visions to fit into a mold. And as readers, we'd struggle to find something other than cookie-cutter stuff to read. Reckon I'm wrong? How many query letter formats tell you to find an agent whose other clients write books very similar to yours? Despite what they say, these folk aren't looking for the next great book. They're looking for an easy sale, based on their last great book. Read the cover blurbs as you browse a bookstore. Very few of them fail to mention some other book. That says it all, really. Write something similar to some other recent bestseller, and you're in like flynn. Write something the publishing industry can't readily categorise, and you'll struggle to even get your work looked at. It has NOTHING to do with the quality of your writing.
Well, okay, maybe that was a bad example—although to me it makes sense. I've known people who skip over parts of a story that aren't dialogue. Myself—I get fed up if there is too much unbroken, banal dialogue or I struggle to follow who is saying what to whom. I often skip these parts. My sister often used to read the last chapter first, just to see if she wanted to read the rest of it to find out how the characters 'got there.' If it was a sad ending, she didn't want to read the whole book. I mean ...how many damn hoops do we need to go through here, as writers? We are writing a story, as we see fit. It's up to the reader what they want to skip or not skip. Should we start telling painters they can't use colours, because gallery owners have decided they prefer minimalist grayscale works? Jesus. It's art. You produce art, and people either like it or they don't. It sells or it doesn't. But to tell somebody that they shouldn't use green or yellow because people prefer grey? Bah! This issue goes way beyond prologues. It boils down to this: do we tailor our stories to appeal to a mass market? Or do we tell the stories the way that works best for us, and conveys what we want to say? It's an issue each writer needs to decide for him/herself. There is no 'must' or 'must not.' It's flipping Art.
Considering the vast amount of books that don't have a prologue, why would anyone think that you HAVE to have one?
At the pitch conference I attended, every agent and every editor I met with asked what my "comparables" were. It's virtually a mandatory component of the pitch. So is your "platform" - the base of knowledge and experience from which you are writing, including any published materials, etc. Yes and no. Think of it as tumblers inside a lock. One tumbler is the agent's or writer's personal preferences - genre, style, etc. These things are either pass or fail. Lots of strange little things can be nesting in this tumbler (like the editor who rejected a memoir because she didn't like boats). Another is marketability v. cost - word count, subject matter, comparables, platform. They exist on something of a sliding scale - which is to say there may be some elasticity in the tolerance of word count if there is a payoff somewhere else. The third tumbler is the quality of the writing itself, also on a sliding scale. The key (pun intended) is to be able to flip all three tumblers.
You don't HAVE to, of course. But it's fun to keep them writing. Prologue 1, prologue 2, prologue 3. Something distinct. Something separate from the main storyline. Personally, I call them the "0" chapters, the "bonus" chapters, the "-" chapters. Like, you know. Before chapter 1 there's ought to be chapter -1, right?
Sure. Everyone should write their story they way they want to, and with self-publishing being a perfectly legitimate way to go, people can do just that and not have to worry about hoops. My comments are in the context mainstream commercial fiction via traditional agents, etc. I doubt the same even applies to literary fiction published traditionally. What I've heard and read about prologues has come from agents and editors who deal with mainstream commercial novels, and a lot of it has been negative. Plus I tend not to like prologues myself. I think everyone should write what they want without regard to rules, and without regard to conformity. But barring the occasional breakout exception, people seem to like the same types of things over and over when it comes to mass market entertainment. To follow up on your painting analogy, Thomas Kincaid doesn't sell tons of art because masses of people are clamoring for something that breaks the mold.
Me either. But I've got a few things I will take the traditional route on and the rest will be self-publishing and I'll do whatever the hell I want to
For me, it's the finality of "Don't write prologues if you want to get published." And yet, books with prologues get published. They really do. To me, it's the same as not sending a romance story to an agent who only handles SciFi. Okay, this particular idiot agent will not even consider a book with a prologue; my book has one. Well, duh. I don't send it to that particular idiot. Instead I'll send it to an agent who's actually looking for a book that will sell. Seems like a no-brainer to me. This whole idea of "You shouldn't do this or that if you want to get published" - it's mainly bull. Authors who do exactly "this or that" get published. It may have taken them longer, but they may have gotten picked up on the first go. Just like someone who didn't do "this or that". Chuck Wendig had a great blog on the whole advice thing - a reminder that, like with critiques, you don't just accept everything you're told. http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/05/12/dear-writers-none-of-us-know-what-the-fuck-were-doing/
