# For those dislike prologues



## glutton (May 15, 2013)

It seems that many people assume a prologue will be an infodump and skip it automatically. However in my case the 'prologue' in my second book is a scene with action featuring the MC, which I originally labeled as Chapter 1 but renamed to 'Prologue' because there's a 4 year timeskip between it and the start of the main story and a beta reader commented it should thus be called 'Prologue' instead of 'Chapter 1'. If it's skipped, the reader misses out on some setup for stuff that happens later, and characterization of the heroine.

Questions - would you skip this simply because it's labeled as 'Prologue' and if so, do you think I should change it back to being called 'Chapter 1' in spite of the timeskip?

BTW, the 'Prologue' along with some of the next part can read here with the 'Look Inside' feature here - Iron Flower (Legend of the Iron Flower): Billy Wong: Amazon.com: Kindle Store


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## Steerpike (May 15, 2013)

Glutton:

If I buy the book, I won't skip the prologue just because it is called that, though to be honest I will skip it if I get a paragraph or two in and it seems to be representative of the reasons I don't like prologues.

To be completely honest, the place there the prologue has the most effect for me is when I'm buying the book. If I'm trying to decide between a handful of books, then all other things being equal, the ones with prologues are going back on the shelf first. 

Also, I don't read the blurbs for books so my buying decisions come from doing a bit of reading (Chapter 1, or the book sample for eBooks). When I'm deciding whether to buy a book, I usually skip the prologue and go straight to Chapter 1, so if the prologue is your hook at the expense of Chapter 1 (as some have suggested on the forums) then I'll probably end up putting it back on the shelf.

My thought is that if the "prologue" is indispensable to the story, it might be better to call it Chapter 1 simply because readers do, in fact, skip prologues. 

Also, I can't think of a single way in which calling it Chapter 1 hurts you, but given the predisposition some readers have against prologues, I can see how it can hurt you. So on balance it seems calling it Chapter 1 would be better, because there's no harm done. 

Others may disagree with that take.


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> Also, I don't read the blurbs for books



Wait how do you know what the book is going to be about, or do you not care about that that much?


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## Steerpike (May 15, 2013)

glutton said:


> Wait how do you know what the book is going to be about, or do you not care about that that much?



I don't really care. I hate spoilers, and I stopped reading blurbs around ten years ago after I came across one too many that spoiled something that happened 100 pages into the book.

I'm not much to be bound by genre or story line when I'm reading. If a book is good, I'll enjoy it. It could be a romance, fantasy, science fiction, horror, western, thriller, mystery, classic, or whatever. I read all of those, and I'm fine with it. I'd rather be surprised by the story than get spoilers for it. So I'll pick up books with interesting titles or covers, or by authors I know, etc., and I'll read the first few pages of Chapter 1. If that does it for me, I'll buy it.

I'm probably odd on the not caring about genre or story line, I admit. I'm the same way with movies or music. If it is good, I'll listen to it or watch it, I don't really care about the style or genre. 

Of course, there are times when I feel like a certain genre. I might feel like reading a horror novel, or feel like listening to a heavy metal album, or like watching an action movie, etc. But the vast majority of time I just want something that is done well, and the rest of that is secondary.


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## T.Allen.Smith (May 15, 2013)

I'm not 100% against prologues. I've read a few good ones that, in retrospect, were necessary. However, I've found that the vast majority of prologues...ones that every author claimed were vital to the reader's understanding of this or that, could've been released throughout the story in clever ways. In my experience, prologues that I read in crit groups are almost always written to ensure the reader "gets it" or "doesn't miss this important detail". That's making the author's job easier & doubting the intelligence of the reader which can damage the reader's participation. 

I'm not saying yours isn't one of those rare cases. I haven't read it nor do I know the story. However, I'd suggest exhausting your creative abilities, trying to figure out a way to avoid the prologue before you label it "necessary & unavoidable".


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I'm not saying yours isn't one of those rare cases. I haven't read it nor do I know the story. However, I'd suggest exhausting your creative abilities, trying to figure out a way to avoid the prologue before you label it "necessary & unavoidable".



But is a prologue by definition to you an infodump and necessarily not an active scene? It kind of sounds that way and if so, is that something inherent to the term 'prologue' or just a reputation prologues have picked up due to the commonness of those that are non-active backstory-giving ones?


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## Devor (May 15, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> My thought is that if the "prologue" is indispensable to the story, it might be better to call it Chapter 1 simply because readers do, in fact, skip prologues.



In my story, the prologue is a character who goes out, causes problems, and shortly afterwards brings the problems back with him.  I don't know if it's "essential" that readers read this prologue because the main characters still have to learn about the conflict, but it makes everything more clear, showing it instead of telling it.

The prologue is the only thing from this character's POV, so I refer to it as a prologue.  But do you think I should label it as a prologue or as chapter 1?  My concern is that readers will expect more from this character if I call it Chapter 1.


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## A. E. Lowan (May 15, 2013)

Devor said:


> In my story, the prologue is a character who goes out, causes problems, and shortly afterwards brings the problems back with him.  I don't know if it's "essential" that readers read this prologue because the main characters still have to learn about the conflict, but it makes everything more clear, showing it instead of telling it.
> 
> The prologue is the only thing from this character's POV, so I refer to it as a prologue.  But do you think I should label it as a prologue or as chapter 1?  My concern is that readers will expect more from this character if I call it Chapter 1.



Honestly, I would call it Chapter 1.  To me, a prologue is one of those long-winded pieces that some writers feel compelled to stick at the beginning to stuff in world-building info.  Anne McCaffrey's prologues to her early Pern books leap to mind as an example of this.  I read and loved the books for YEARS without reading the prologues, and even then they didn't make much sense to me... turns out that explaining her dragon-riders were actually interstellar colonists wasn't essential to the story for a very, very long time.

If you have action which is essential to the plot, characters doing stuff and affecting your world, then that is Chapter 1.  Remember, some would call the first chapter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone a prologue because it happens 10 years before the next chapter (I think you're actually the one who pointed this out in another thread, Dev), but it's not.  A time gap between chapters does not a prologue make.  In this chapter of Harry Potter, characters are engaging in action which is essential not only for the book, but for the series as a whole.

So, if you're concerned about readers expecting more out of this poor trouble-stirring schmuck in your first chapter, I would try to make it clear at some point that we won't be seeing him again.  Maybe kill him off, on or off stage, or just have the MC's ask who started all of this, and someone who knows says, "Yeah, him.  He hightailed it to Tahiti at the first opportunity."  Something like that.  I have a character kind of like that popping up in our Seahaven series periodically.  He's a homeless street musician who shows up, points people in the right direction, and then disappears for the rest of the book.  Later in the series, he becomes a major player, but at the beginning he's basically a plot device waiting in the wings to come on stage.


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## Addison (May 15, 2013)

Hmmm....no. I wouldn't skip it as long as it hooks me in. And just because there's a time jump doesn't mean it has to be a prologue. There was a ten year difference between the first and second chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. All you have to do is either think of a chapter name or trust the reader. They won't care about the time jump between chapter one and two so long as you got them hooked.


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## Devor (May 15, 2013)

aelowan said:


> If you have action which is essential to the plot, characters doing stuff and affecting your world, then that is Chapter 1.  Remember, some would call the first chapter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone a prologue because it happens 10 years before the next chapter (I think you're actually the one who pointed this out in another thread, Dev), but it's not.  A time gap between chapters does not a prologue make.  In this chapter of Harry Potter, characters are engaging in action which is essential not only for the book, but for the series as a whole.



Thanks, I'm thinking about it.

But to me it's easy to say skip the prologue if you only call it a prologue when it's done badly.  You could skip the first chapter of HP1 and not have a problem.  Everything else is told from a tight POV, and readers could learn everything when Harry does.  That's true for the first chapter of HP1, HP4, and the first two chapters of HP6.  What would you call that if not a prologue?  Even if it's not labelled a prologue, it is one from a literary sense, isn't it?


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## A. E. Lowan (May 15, 2013)

Devor said:


> But to me it's easy to say skip the prologue if you only call it a prologue when it's done badly.  You could skip the first chapter of HP1 and not have a problem.  Everything else is told from a tight POV, and readers could learn everything when Harry does.  That's true for the first chapter of HP1, HP4, and the first two chapters of HP6.  What would you call that if not a prologue?  Even if it's not labelled a prologue, it is one from a literary sense, isn't it?



You make an excellent point.  Perhaps Rowling could have tightened up a bit, and the books would probably not have suffered too much, but I think in her case there is a lot to be said for setting the scene and tone.  In these early chapters she generates a lot of questions - who are these strange people?  what's a "muggle?"  what's going to happen now?  Things that a traditional prologue actually fails to do.  The point of those is to answer questions the reader isn't even asking yet, and that is the problem - if the reader isn't asking questions, they don't care what the answers are.  They just want the story to start.  And if your story starts 10 years before the action, then that's where your story starts, and that's Chapter 1.


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

I changed the prologue's heading to 'Chapter 1' so that a scene with action and nice (IMO) characterization won't be assumed to be a boring infodump just because it's labeled 'Prologue'. Still think it's silly that assumption is so readily made though, just because some authors do infodump style prologues.

Hope nobody who already got the book skips the prologue and misses the MC's characterization in it...


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## Sinitar (May 15, 2013)

The reason most people have a dislike for prologues is not really the info dump. Sure that plays a role in it, but for the most part, a prologue will overwhelm the reader through sheer amount of information. Most of the prologues I encountered fall into this category. They have magic casters whose magic I can't understand, a piece of plot that has a bunch of characters that I don't know(and will find out by the middle of the book for sure), or a scene where something important happens that leaves me baffled. What do all these have in common? My lack of information. And as you know, readers tend to get frustrated with works they can't understand.

If your prologue has relevant information in it that *starts slowly* and *builds up to something of interest for the reader *(It has to happen in the prologue; Plot hooks are useless if you discover what they are about after 6-7 chapters), then you can get away with it, in my opinion.


> so that a scene with action and nice (IMO) characterization won't be assumed to be a boring infodump just because it's labeled 'Prologue'



I understand your concerns, but that intense action scene and that beautiful characterization will not mean much to the reader. It's the first chapter; we have no idea who fights, why they fight, who they are. Without knowing what the story is about, I'm afraid I can't enjoy that action scene as well as I should.

I may be wrong though. If your prologue has a good pace, then you may very well demolish the myths concerning them.


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## tlbodine (May 15, 2013)

I wrote a blog post on this topic once: T.L. Bodine: The Great Prologue Debate

If the book needs it, include the prologue.  That's my opinion. Be very honest with yourself and decide if the book DOES need that information in that place, or if you can skip the scene entirely, refer to it later via flashback, display it in a different way, whatever.  Quite often, I think people have the tendency to include prologues because they start the main story in the wrong place -- either too early or too late.  

But if you rule all of that out, I say, go forth and write a prologue.


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

Well, I'm never having another 'prologue' again, from now on whatever is in the beginning will be labeled 'Chapter 1' no matter what since I don't want it to be affected by any of the common preconceptions brought about by the use of the term 'prologue'. 



> I wrote a blog post on this topic once: T.L. Bodine: The Great Prologue Debate



BTW, the former 'prologue' actually does follow the MC, but in an earlier part of her life than most of the story... is a prologue actually defined as _not_ following the MC?

Maybe it shouldn't have been called 'Prologue' in the first place since it was originally 'Chapter 1' and I changed it to 'Prologue' based on what the beta reader said...


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

Sinitar said:


> The reason most people have a dislike for prologues is not really the info dump. Sure that plays a role in it, but for the most part, a prologue will overwhelm the reader through sheer amount of information. Most of the prologues I encountered fall into this category. They have magic casters whose magic I can't understand, a piece of plot that has a bunch of characters that I don't know(and will find out by the middle of the book for sure), or a scene where something important happens that leaves me baffled. What do all these have in common? My lack of information. And as you know, readers tend to get frustrated with works they can't understand.
> 
> If your prologue has relevant information in it that *starts slowly* and *builds up to something of interest for the reader *(It has to happen in the prologue; Plot hooks are useless if you discover what they are about after 6-7 chapters), then you can get away with it, in my opinion.
> 
> ...



The thing is though, it becomes completely irrelevant whether or not a prologue is 'good' or if it avoids the common problems *if it will be skipped purely because it carries the term 'prologue'*. Hence my new policy never to use the term again even if it would be more technically appropriate than calling it Chapter 1.


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## Steerpike (May 15, 2013)

I can't think of any example where you 'need' a prologue. That's an absolute term. I've read good prologues and bad ones (more of the latter), but none that were absolutely necessary in the writing of the book. Can anyone think of an example where you _have_​ to have a prologue?


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> I can't think of any example where you 'need' a prologue. That's an absolute term. I've read good prologues and bad ones (more of the latter), but none that were absolutely necessary in the writing of the book. Can anyone think of an example where you _have_​ to have a prologue?



Well, in an _absolute_ sense you could probably cut out the first chapter of a book and fill the reader in on what happens in it in flashback...


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## Steerpike (May 15, 2013)

glutton said:


> Well, in an _absolute_ sense you could probably cut out the first chapter of a book and fill the reader in on what happens in it in flashback...



Sure. Which gets back to the point of doing what is most effective, which is the way I think a writer should go. So I suppose we agree that there is no such thing as a _necessary_​ prologue, in any strict sense, from the point of view of the writer while writing the book.


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## Ireth (May 15, 2013)

This may or may not hold water, but in fiddling with the first scene of _Winter's Queen_, I received this response after writing a mock-up prologue to introduce the villain:



Leif Notae said:


> There you go. You needed a prologue. This works because it allows your villain to do the "heavy lifting" of an opening and allows you to do what you wish with the first chapter with your protagonist.


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## Steerpike (May 15, 2013)

Ireth said:


> This may or may not hold water, but in fiddling with the first scene of _Winter's Queen_, I received this response after writing a mock-up prologue to introduce the villain:



I don't think it demonstrates that the prologue was absolutely necessary. What this basically tells me is "Yes, having a prologue works, and here's why." But a prologue is only strictly necessary if there were no other way to write the story than to include it, and I doubt anyone will be able to cite such an instance


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

Ireth said:


> This may or may not hold water, but in fiddling with the first scene of _Winter's Queen_, I received this response after writing a mock-up prologue to introduce the villain:



Well, judging from the responses in this thread it would likely be wiser to label the part with the villain 'Chapter 1' if it's intended to be the opening since, you know, some will skip it automatically if it's labeled 'Prologue'.

It feels almost like racism to me, not that it's nearly as bad or serious as real racism of course but it's like a form of literary discrimination or prejudice - ah, there's the word I was looking for - based on a term (prologue) that isn't actually defined by the negative traits that have become so associated with it.


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## Ireth (May 15, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> I don't think it demonstrates that the prologue was absolutely necessary. What this basically tells me is "Yes, having a prologue works, and here's why." But a prologue is only strictly necessary if there were no other way to write the story than to include it, and I doubt anyone will be able to cite such an instance



Very good point. I am still attempting to make chapter 1, scene 1 able to hold up the beginning on its own, since as far as I know publishers and the like receiving samples like to start there, not with prologues. It's still proving difficult.


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## Ireth (May 15, 2013)

glutton said:


> Well, judging from the responses in this thread it would likely be wiser to label the part with the villain 'Chapter 1' if it's intended to be opening since, you know, people will skip it automatically if it's labeled 'Prologue'.
> 
> It feels almost like racism to me, not that it's nearly as bad or serious as real racism of course but it's like a form of literary discrimination or prejudice - ah, there's the word I was looking for - based on a term (prologue) that isn't actually defined by the negative traits that have before so bound to it.



Well, the trouble with that is that the "prologue" is a single scene only 1.5-2 pages long, so it's hardly justifiable as a "chapter" compared to the rest, which range from 15-25 pages each. I have seen books with teeny-tiny chapters (one was even a single sentence!), but it doesn't work for me when it comes to my own writing.


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## tlbodine (May 15, 2013)

Prologues in books are like nonessential clauses in sentences.  You don't *need* them, but good ones will change the meaning.  

We can all agree grammatically that "The woman, known among the villagers for her love of eating babies, submitted her nanny application" contains a nonessential clause.  You can pluck the center part right out of the sentence and the sentence still makes perfectly good grammatical sense:  You've got a subject, a verb and an object.  It's a perfectly valid sentence without that clause.  

But you can't deny that non-essential bit is pretty darn essential to the _meaning_, at least for the person receiving that application.


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## glutton (May 15, 2013)

Ireth said:


> Well, the trouble with that is that the "prologue" is a single scene only 1.5-2 pages long, so it's hardly justifiable as a "chapter" compared to the rest, which range from 15-25 pages each. I have seen books with teeny-tiny chapters (one was even a single sentence!), but it doesn't work for me when it comes to my own writing.



I'd personally probably just have it as the first scene in Chapter 1 at this point.


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## Ireth (May 15, 2013)

glutton said:


> I'd personally probably just have it as the first scene in Chapter 1 at this point.



Which is what I've been considering.


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## Steerpike (May 15, 2013)

tlbodine said:


> Prologues in books are like nonessential clauses in sentences.  You don't *need* them, but good ones will change the meaning.
> 
> We can all agree grammatically that "The woman, known among the villagers for her love of eating babies, submitted her nanny application" contains a nonessential clause.  You can pluck the center part right out of the sentence and the sentence still makes perfectly good grammatical sense:  You've got a subject, a verb and an object.  It's a perfectly valid sentence without that clause.
> 
> But you can't deny that non-essential bit is pretty darn essential to the _meaning_, at least for the person receiving that application.



Yes, but the idea that a prologue is the only way to convey that meaning is not convincing to me.


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## Devor (May 15, 2013)

Sinitar said:


> I understand your concerns, but that intense action scene and that beautiful characterization will not mean much to the reader. It's the first chapter; we have no idea who fights, why they fight, who they are. Without knowing what the story is about, I'm afraid I can't enjoy that action scene as well as I should.
> 
> I may be wrong though. If your prologue has a good pace, then you may very well demolish the myths concerning them.



This happens, too.  It all depends - action doesn't have to mean a sword fight, and some characters will make you care about them quickly.  But I understand it's a pet-peeve of many editors and agents (and to me, sometimes, too) to have a big fight in the prologue or the first chapter, when you don't care who the characters are.


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## T.Allen.Smith (May 15, 2013)

glutton said:


> But is a prologue by definition to you an infodump and necessarily not an active scene? It kind of sounds that way and if so, is that something inherent to the term 'prologue' or just a reputation prologues have picked up due to the commonness of those that are non-active backstory-giving ones?



No. It doesn't have to be an info-dump. Although most wind up rather "info-dumpy" as a standard. Even those laced with action tend to diminish the active role of the reader...their discovery. Other than the potential to info-dump, that lessening of the reader's role is the main reason, in my opinion, why people don't like prologues.  I'd guess about 95% of the prologues I've read, in crit groups, are filled with details that could be subtly woven into the story main without the need to shine a spotlight on them & make them stand out right up front.

"The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer." - Billy Wilder

EDIT: The only reason I can think of where a writer may NEED a prologue would be where they are dealing with a work of monstrous proportions...say 250k words plus. I can understand a decision to write a prologue for something that is occurring behind the scenes of a story in order to avoid adding onto that word count.


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## Feo Takahari (May 15, 2013)

Just to discuss my personal experience:

I wrote a story about people whose problems came from being willfully blind and refusing to acknowledge the world around them. This of course meant that I could only show a larger world through subtle hints that they were missing something, and these sailed right over my beta reader's head. (The most spot-on quote in the resulting email: "It's like the only people in the world are these characters, and the only thing they do is fight monsters.") I went back and added more hints, but these still didn't feel like enough. Rather than make one of the characters self-aware (which would have interfered with the plot to some degree), I just added in scenes with another character who did notice a bit of what was going on.

These scenes (a "Prologue", a few "Interlude"s, and an "Epilogue") don't further the plot in any way. The story could proceed from beginning to end without them. But barring rather more skill at dropping hints than I demonstrated, they seemed to be the best way to work around the weaknesses of the main character's POV.


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## SeverinR (May 16, 2013)

I usually avoid Prologues, have yet to read one that was interesting. (And thats even in books I loved)



Steerpike said:


> I don't really care. I hate spoilers, and I stopped reading blurbs around ten years ago after I came across one too many that spoiled something that happened 100 pages into the book.
> .



I hate that in movie blurbs too.  They tell you something that the movie slowly reveals.  Hard to not read a movie blurb when renting, or when deciding to go see it in a theater.

With that:
Would the opening rolling words be a Prologue of Star wars? "In a Galaxy far,far away...." Or was that part of chapter 1?


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## Ophiucha (May 17, 2013)

I suppose, if I could pinpoint my problem with prologues, it is their very nature. Before the story, literally. (Well, quite literally, 'before words', but let's not bring Greek into this.) It may enhance the story, it may foreshadow the story, it may simply give you a little flavour or context. But if it happens before the story, then it's not part of the story, and I'm the sort of author and reader who prefers people to trim the fat. Which may seem odd given who some of my favourite authors are, but I think excess can be seasoning instead of gristle if you want an extended food metaphor. Prologues, generally, aren't. If a prologue is necessary for the story, then it probably should be brought up during the story - and generally speaking, it is.

Which I guess is my main problem with prologues? Like, the information will be reiterated, sometimes even told again as a little story, despite us having to read it ahead of time. In _Lord of the Rings_, they have conversations about the rings of power later on and talk about all of the characters who ever touched it and talk about specific instances that were part of the prologue again as we meet the characters who were there/descended from them. It's got some nice flavour text, it sets the tone a little, but it's just making a short story out of the pieced together flashbacks and exposition we get a few chapters later.

Like, prologue: woman running through the rain, struck down by big bad's henchman, baby is abandoned on the doorstep of loving family. Chapter one: "John, your mother and I have been meaning to tell you this. You're adopted, found you crying in the rain on our door one night in summer." Chapter three: some guy comes into town and reveals that he knew John's mother, eventually revealing her reasons for running away. Chapter six: John meets the henchman who killed his mum, who reveals that fact (maybe not right away). By the end of the book, every little fact of the prologue will be repeated at least once, which just sort of makes the whole thing seem... pointless?


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## Ireth (May 17, 2013)

On the topic of details being repeated, I think there's something to be said for situational irony -- that is, when the readers know things the characters don't. Your prologue is one such example. The reader might read that and go "ooh, a foundling. I wonder how he'll react when he finds out?" That will add some flavor to the scene in which the adoptive parents mention it, rather than having it come completely out of the blue, as it were.


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## Addison (May 17, 2013)

Prologues can double as spoilers, which is a poison to the rest of the story.


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## tlbodine (May 17, 2013)

Ireth said:


> On the topic of details being repeated, I think there's something to be said for situational irony -- that is, when the readers know things the characters don't. Your prologue is one such example. The reader might read that and go "ooh, a foundling. I wonder how he'll react when he finds out?" That will add some flavor to the scene in which the adoptive parents mention it, rather than having it come completely out of the blue, as it were.



Situational irony is *the* purpose of successful prologues, as far as I'm concerned.  

The prologue in Game of Thrones:  Sure, we could've started right away with Ned beheading that Night's Watch run-away, but would the scene have been the same if we hadn't known that he *really did* see the Others?  And doesn't it change the way we read the entire rest of the book, knowing that the Others are alive and well beyond the wall?


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## skip.knox (May 17, 2013)

Prologues are a plague peculiar to fantasy fiction (nice alliteration!).  I have a theory (don't we all?).

So many fantasy stories start slow. You know, farmboy discovers he's actually a king or a wizard or a wizard king. So we have to start in the damned farm or blacksmith shop. Everything is strictly small potatoes for a while (unless you start with the Conan gambit, of course).

The prologue becomes a way to make the story Epic from page 1. Hey, everybody, this is a tale with dragons and magicians and blood splatter. Stick around! Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

This isn't to say that a prologue is necessarily bad, only that it seems to be unusually necessary in epic fantasy.


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## Steerpike (May 17, 2013)

I think that's probably true as to why people use them, slip.knox, but I think that should also be a warning sign to people. Like I said earlier, if you're looking at your chapter 1 and it looks slow, or uninteresting, or fails to grab the reader's attention, the answer isn't "Hey, I'll add in an attention-grabbing prologue." The answer is to make chapter 1 good.


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## T.Allen.Smith (May 19, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> I think that's probably true as to why people use them, slip.knox, but I think that should also be a warning sign to people. Like I said earlier, if you're looking at your chapter 1 and it looks slow, or uninteresting, or fails to grab the reader's attention, the answer isn't "Hey, I'll add in an attention-grabbing prologue." The answer is to make chapter 1 good.



Or...to discover a better starting point for your story.


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## ThinkerX (May 19, 2013)

I don't normally go with prologues - mostly because my stories tend to be on the short side anyhow. 

Yet, I've been contemplating something for a while.

'Labyrinth' is looking like two separate stories, of long novella to short novel length. The second takes place about 15-20 years after the first.  

The first story is told in journal form (somewhat like Glen Cooks 'Black Company' if that helps any).  

I am considering a short prologue for the first story where the MC in the second story finds the journal.  Hmmm...

Prologue for Book One: MC 2 finds journal

Book One: MC 1's journal

Book Two: MC 2's reaction to journal and subsequent adventures


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## Jess A (May 19, 2013)

glutton said:


> ...However in my case the 'prologue' in my second book is a scene with action featuring the MC, which I originally labeled as Chapter 1 but renamed to 'Prologue' because there's a 4 year timeskip between it and the start of the main story and a beta reader commented it should thus be called 'Prologue' instead of 'Chapter 1'. If it's skipped, the reader misses out on some setup for stuff that happens later, and characterization of the heroine.
> 
> Questions - would you skip this simply because it's labeled as 'Prologue' and if so, do you think I should change it back to being called 'Chapter 1' in spite of the timeskip?
> 
> BTW, the 'Prologue' along with some of the next part can read here with the 'Look Inside' feature here - Iron Flower (Legend of the Iron Flower): Billy Wong: Amazon.com: Kindle Store



Hmm...

Our books have that in common:

Chapter 1 in my book introduces my character and an action scene (etc) plus two other major characters. Chapter 2 is set three years later. I still went with calling them chapter 1 and 2. I had some help from people on this site recently, actually, which was fantastic. I don't think it matters that chapter 1 is set 3 years before chapter 2, depending on how you write it.

Since your chapter 1 seems to be Rose's story and chapter 2 reveals it to be a story (told 4 years later), I think stick with chapter 1 and 2. 

On prologues:

Seeing prologues in books does not turn me off the story, usually. Not generally in fantasy novels. Sometimes I don't even read what it says at the top - prologue, or chapter 1.

What I hate about some prologues is when they just dump endless information about the character's back story and the world when I can learn this through the novel in a more tactful way. I picked up a book that someone recommended me some time ago, a fantasy book. And the prologue was not only long, it was an absolutely boring and over-dramatised account of some powerful faerie king's tragic sob-story past. Strangely, for all the info dump, I still didn't know what the setting was supposed to be. And since the faerie king had no personality during the book, I didn't feel sorry for him. I didn't care about him despite the prologue's attempt at context. 

Boring.

Generally prologues don't bother me - I liked the way Feist did his prologue in...Silverthorn? ... I forget. Somewhere across the world, the villain was doing something evil. Only problem was I then proceeded to forget about the villain completely as the story proceeded, because he didn't return for ages. On saying that I suppose the entire prologue could have been cut off and it wouldn't have ruined my experience.


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