By the way, if I could go back in time and rite 50 Shades of Grey, you're damn right I would. Then I'd quit my job and spend the rest of my life writing whatever the hell I wanted because I'd have more money than I ever needed
Unique means it's not the same as the rest of the book. As in I have a row of marbles. Twenty of them are black. One of them is white. The white marble stands out from the others. It is unique. It's not better or worse, it's just unique. You can pretend it's the same as the others, but it's not. It's not a value judgement or an arbitrary one. It's a fact. It's not the same as the others. I'd advise you to read the article I linked to (that I did not write), if you honestly think just mentioning monkeys once makes it a prologue. The prologue chapter's uniqueness is a characteristic, but not the only characteristic. The chapter has to serve a purpose that makes it integral to the story, while remaining unique—something you won't directly revisit during the course of the novel. I think you know that.
But as @ChickenFreak says, you've already decided to self-publish. So you're not going to be looking for representation. It's easy to stick to your principles when you're not sacrificing anything by doing so. For people who would be diminishing their chances of getting what they want, it makes sense to compromise. I don't think anyone here is telling you what to do with your prologue. This really isn't about you or your book. It's just prologues in general. It's great that you're happy with your book as it is, but that doesn't mean that someone else, with different goals, might not make different decisions based on their understanding of the market and publishing reality rather than your ideals. (And I think everyone's being pretty respectful of your personal choices, without compromising their general opinions. Maybe you could ease off on the "please our masters" and "how badly you want to sell something that isn't actually what you wrote" rhetoric?)
The easiest way to view it, for me, is that traditional publishing is a business partnership. When you're in a business partnership, you make compromises with your partners. When your partners are putting in the up-front capital, you might have to compromise with them even more. As a self-publisher, you're a sole proprietor. You don't have to compromise with, or be accountable to, anyone.
I'm not actually as stupid as I probably look. There is no way I would attempt to get my book published by anybody who doesn't want the kind of stuff I write. As everybody keeps saying, agents and publishers make decisions on the basis of what they think will sell (and don't always get it right, but never mind.) I respect that. What I don't respect is the notion (not from you) that if I'm not writing to please these people and help them earn a living then there's something wrong with me and I should change. There are lots of people out there willing to dance to any tune. I'm not one of them. Nor are most of the writers I personally know, or have met at book festivals, or have read interviews with. Believe it or not, there are a whole slew of authors out there who actually write what they want to write. And sell as best as we can. We accept we're not mainstream. That doesn't make us bad.
You don't have to tell me. I think it makes far, far more sense for writers today to pursue at least a hybrid approach to publishing. Putting all of your eggs in the traditional basket isn't smart, business-wise.
Come on. Who has said you're "bad", or "stupid", or that there's something wrong with you? I can see why you feel justified in the swipes against the rest of us if you really believe that some of us are saying these things about you. But... we really aren't, so, again, the "believe it or not..." comments seem overly confrontational.
Lots of people seem willing to do whatever the market dictates. That's fine, if it's what they want to do. It doesn't mean their writing is bad in any way, and I've never suggested that it is. They will probably make money at their writing. But when the market and its gatekeepers begin to pre-judge work based on what they think it will be, rather than what it actually is, I get shirty.
Whatever? No. Modest compromises? Yes. Your posts seem to be communicating a feeling of contempt about people that want to be traditionally published.
Nobody said I was stupid. That was a bit of a joke (not as stupid as I probably look.) I'm trying to stick to the issue, and suddenly it's all becoming personal? The quote I was responding to (in a friendly way) said: My reply was this: That was confrontational? I don't see it. @Steerpike and I are actually having what I consider to be a useful and friendly debate. Please don't take what I say out of context.
Well, you're not having a private debate. If @Steerpike understands your swipes as being useful and friendly, maybe you could take it to PM, because to at least some of us watching, it seems pretty different.
No. Not at all. I was arguing why I think prologues are a perfectly legitimate way to write the start of a story, and arguing for writing them well rather than ignoring them or calling them something else. This against people who say they usually avoid them, and they are so univerally disliked that folks should call them something else if they want to sell their work. I don't see what else I can say. I guess I should throw in the towel and go to bed at this juncture. Anyway, genuinely thanks for the lively discussion. As with any discussion where feelings are strong, there is always that moment where it's best to quit. I suspect that's now.
Back to the OP - I don't think there's anything wrong with telling. The worry about derailing may be valid, if there's an awful lot of content you need to tell, but I think you can generally get a hell of a lot of backstory into a few sentences, and you can also cut down a lot on the amount of backstory you actually need, in most circumstances. So I don't think this needs to be a choice between a prologue or an infodump-via-dialogue. I don't know your story, obviously, but in general terms, I think most of the time backstory is best spread out through the whole book, fed in little bits only as needed.
Apparently not only am I not a writer I am not even a good reader: I like prologues and even epilogues. I don't usually sit down and read for hours on end, just a few minutes late in the evening, a short chapter or two at best. When a story reveals a complicated (using that word in a very general way) back story in snippets I have a lot of difficulty piecing it together. An author I used to read, Clive Cussler, used prologues a lot and I enjoyed them as much or more than the story itself - which of course ties to what Bayview said many posts back. However in his case the prologue is loosely based on actual history so if I want more on that story I can do some research. Another favorite author is Peter Tremayne and he uses prologues in addition to giving some preface to the story at least in some cases. Michael Crichton used an "introduction" for TIMELINE maybe that would make, I think it was, steerpike happy about the terminology, and I am assuming steerpike would skip an introduction as readily as a prologue. Quite possibly none of these authors used prologues early in their writing career and somewhat likely they are not the standards that some of you would aim for, but they are/were quite successful.
I understood a prologue was from an earlier time to C1 or a different POV. Your link introduces a very arbitrary and nonsensical new rule that I think is BS. I've never heard this vague 'must be unique in some way' thing and it does seem very silly and arbitrary.
Oh, dear. Another Prologue thread. True story. I've been pitching my novel, Rosa's Secret, for a little over a year. The good news is that I've had three agents ask me for the full ms, and three more ask me for significant pages (100+). The bad news is that none of them ever got back to me. So, clearly my query letter and synopsis are fine, but the work itself isn't quite up to snuff. So, I got with my consulting editor and we went over it again. One of the things she pointed out was that, while it's a historical novel about Cuba, it starts with a 13-year-old Irish boy in Queens, NY. She suggested a...now, wait for it...prologue, no more than a page, that places my Cuban family just before the crisis that drives the story, and from the POV of someone other than the title character (who would have been 5 at the time) or the narrator (also five and not there). So, I did it. Batted it out in about 20 minutes. And when I was done, I knew what was wrong with other parts of the book in terms of writing, and I went back and revised the whole thing. Will that be enough to get an agent? I'll let you know. But the point is, it isn't a matter of whether prologues are good or bad, or if you call them something other than prologues (which I've seen done, and they worked, but IMO they'd have worked even if they'd been called prologues). It's whether they serve the needs of the story. Mine does, because my narrator isn't Cuban and my title character can't narrate (for reasons germane to the plot). YMMV.
So you will have an epilogue to Ed's Secret. I hope I get to read your story, I like your style of post wording so I think I will enjoy the story.
Now, having read through the entire thread, I feel compelled to make a few other points. 1) I've recently read three books that used prologues to excellent effect. One is Christina Baker Kline's The Orphan Train, which happens to be one of my comparables. She uses her prologue very similarly to how I use mine (though I wasn't thinking about that when I wrote mine), in that her Chapter One starts with her narrating character, not her protag. In her case, her prologue is in her protag's POV, but in the present, not the past. And she calls her prologue a Prologue. The second is Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves. Her prologue isn't called anything, it's just there, though I don't happen to think that makes it any better or any worse. And it is a description of a painting that is central to the plot. The third is Jessie Burton's The Minitiarist. It's a longer prologue, three pages, and it's so labeled, set at a funeral at the end of the story. It sets the tone for the piece. 2) As a general rule, I would avoid using prologues for backstory. I happen to think that's how prologues have gotten a bad name. If there is backstory that the reader MUST have to understand what's going on, sprinkling it in on an as-needed basis is the way to go. I had a lot of this kind of material to deal with in my novel, and I found that delivering it by way of internal dialogue rather than simply "telling" was a way to go, although "telling" can also be an effective way to telescope time. No one method is best all the time. 3) Agents can be finicky as hell. They have to sift through massive amounts of material in very short timeframes. The first pitch session I ever attended, one writer pitched a story about a theater troupe on a bus tour doing Shakespeare, and another pitched a memoir about working as a chef on a luxury yacht. The agent took the first one (she liked buses) but not the second (she hated boats). There's no way to outguess that. Same with prologues. One of the tendencies that I've had to rein in myself is taking as gospel what one published writer or one prominent agent says. @tonguetied - Thanks. No, there's no epilogue. Just a reflective ending.
@jannert Just thought of a well known title that displays a prologue with the uniqueness you spoke of. Game of Thrones. It's unique feature when compared to the rest of the book, is that the POV character dies at the end of it. All other chapters are named for their PoV characters, and to the best of my knowledge and memory, they all survive to the end of theirs.
Should a prologue always lead into Ch. 1? Or would it be ok if it's not immediately relevant so gets referenced in Ch. 2? I noticed in most popular novels that used prologues they are often referenced in Ch. 1
I've read books where the events of the prologue don't get referenced until much later in the book. If you desire a prologue to begin with, I think you can approach it however you like.
I tried the prologue thing once. The people said scrap it. Perhaps try to bring up past events in the story itself when your characters are not doing anything to exciting, so they can bring up the relevant things.
I agree with Steerpike - prologues often don't slot into the main story until quite late in the book. I do think it's better if you can tie it into chapter 1, so it feels like a continuation of the story rather than starting a new story afresh, but it isn't essential.
