Michael K. Eidson
Archmage
Is there a phobia involving prologues? The irrational dislike of anything labeled prologue, heh heh.
When the dislike is based on five decades of reading, I wouldn't think the word "irrational" appropriate. But as I've been saying, I do think it to be psychological in nature, so "phobia" might not be quite right but not too far off base either.
It's like with kale. My wife wants me to eat more of it, but I've eaten too much of it already, and all she has to do is mention the word, and I automatically want nothing to do with it. She cooked something containing ground kale recently, and I enjoyed the entrée just fine. She told me after the fact that kale was in it, and I was like, cool, I ate kale and liked it.
If the author doesn't call it a prologue, I could be fine with their opening material. They call it a prologue, and they've already asked me to balk at reading it. Not every reader is like me, but some are. I'm not the only one. Some of those readers will read the book anyway. Some of those readers will not give the book a chance. A book having a prologue labeled as such does not automatically stop me from reading it, but it's a huge strike against it, and what author wants to start out a relationship with a new reader with an automatic strike? Actually, it's more like two automatic strikes; one more, and you're out. Is it fair that some readers are this way? Not really. To change how these readers react to prologues, authors need to write good ones, when they write them. In the meantime, I'm not going to use them in my writing.
Just wanted to clarify that that isn't what I said. Only the reason why neither is good or bad is what is similar, not the concepts. They are both tools, and tools aren't good or bad, only the way they're used is.
Go back and closely read your earlier posts on this thread, and you'll see why I thought you were talking about concepts....