FifthView
Vala
That seems more like a framing device than a prologue per se.
Edit: Or a preface, introduction .... albeit, fictional.
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So Prologues Are Bad
- Thread starter Xitra_Blud
- Start date
That seems more like a framing device than a prologue per se.
Edit: Or a preface, introduction .... albeit, fictional.
Mectojic
Minstrel
If you want some example of complex, I suggest you take a look at the Looper movie. There is so much to explain about time travel in all that, but it works. Why? The monologue descriptions throughout the film. Not all put right at the start.
I recommend, for the most critical point, that you put it in a prologue, like they did at the start of Looper: Time travel has not yet been invented. But twenty five years from now it will be. Once the technology exists, it will be relatively cheap and available to the public at large. And so. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations. And then only for a very specific purpose.
Later on, more gets explained. Your prologue need only be 300 words. Or 400. It can be part of a reader's illusion, to be honest. If they see only 1 page of prologue, they're ok. If it's 2 or 3, they might get bored.
I recommend, for the most critical point, that you put it in a prologue, like they did at the start of Looper: Time travel has not yet been invented. But twenty five years from now it will be. Once the technology exists, it will be relatively cheap and available to the public at large. And so. It will be instantly outlawed, used only in secret by the largest criminal organizations. And then only for a very specific purpose.
Later on, more gets explained. Your prologue need only be 300 words. Or 400. It can be part of a reader's illusion, to be honest. If they see only 1 page of prologue, they're ok. If it's 2 or 3, they might get bored.
Acolyte
Russ
Istar
Funny timing on me seeing this thread.
So I just came back from a vacation with some friends, two of which are very successful fiction writers and both of which teach writing and are known to be quite good at it.
Anyways one of the chaps really is against prologues because he feels that are almost always a slow start, tend to be infodumps, and are often a sign of a writer who has not developed enough craft to weave the information into the narrative etc. He teaches that writers should not use prologues.
The punch line is that almost every one of his best selling books has a prologue.
He will tell you that the way his books are structured, and the way his subgenre works that it is impossible for his books to be written properly without a prologue.
He suggests (and I agree) that a prologue should only be used where the reader will be totally lost in chapter one without it, or if the "initiating event" of the book takes place some time before the events of the book and must be explained before the book starts. He also suggests that those circumstances are quite rare, and many prologues are just lazy.
Many editors also don't like prologues and the don't add to the chance to sell your book to a traditional publisher most of the time.
Personally I agree that the book that really needs a prologue is quite rare and it is not a good place for world building.
So I just came back from a vacation with some friends, two of which are very successful fiction writers and both of which teach writing and are known to be quite good at it.
Anyways one of the chaps really is against prologues because he feels that are almost always a slow start, tend to be infodumps, and are often a sign of a writer who has not developed enough craft to weave the information into the narrative etc. He teaches that writers should not use prologues.
The punch line is that almost every one of his best selling books has a prologue.
He will tell you that the way his books are structured, and the way his subgenre works that it is impossible for his books to be written properly without a prologue.
He suggests (and I agree) that a prologue should only be used where the reader will be totally lost in chapter one without it, or if the "initiating event" of the book takes place some time before the events of the book and must be explained before the book starts. He also suggests that those circumstances are quite rare, and many prologues are just lazy.
Many editors also don't like prologues and the don't add to the chance to sell your book to a traditional publisher most of the time.
Personally I agree that the book that really needs a prologue is quite rare and it is not a good place for world building.
@Russ
Quite rare, if they truly exist. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "needs a prologue." If your first chapter is such that the reader will be completely lost without a prologue, I think the first thing to look at is chapter 1, to figure out what's wrong with it. Particularly since many people seem to skip over prologues. You'll end up with bad reviews etc. from people who don't understand the story when such things could likely have been avoided.
Quite rare, if they truly exist. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "needs a prologue." If your first chapter is such that the reader will be completely lost without a prologue, I think the first thing to look at is chapter 1, to figure out what's wrong with it. Particularly since many people seem to skip over prologues. You'll end up with bad reviews etc. from people who don't understand the story when such things could likely have been avoided.
Incanus
Auror
At the risk of being a pain in the butt, LOTR does not have a prologue. It has a 'forward'. The story starts with chapter 1.
Demesnedenoir
Myth Weaver
Bingo! If a prologue is an info dump it's bad, IMO, because any info dump not weaved into the narrative is bad or iffy at best. However, I would take exception with "explained", which connotes telling, the prologue should show what happened.
The primary reason IMO for the prologue is to Show the inciting event (or an otherwise important event) in order to avoid an info dump... If I recall correctly, Game of Thrones, the prologue opens north of the wall where we see people killed by White Walkers, and the guy that Ned Stark eventually beheads is a guy who escaped from that and fled the Wall. Without that prologue, we as readers would not be in the loop on the story's beginning and would be subjected to more info dump than we already get from Martin.
In my WIP the prologue does a similar thing... it shows what happens that gets the MC involved (who is a couple hundred miles away) in the story and what launches the entire plot. It is the best way to start the story, because I don't want Chapter 1 opening with a non-MC. So what the prologue then achieves is being able to open in res media rather than blah blah around either an info dump, or setup chapter with the MC before swapping to the event.
C
Chessie
Guest
Prologues are just like any other scene. Try approaching it that way and you might start to see which stories could use them/not. The above advice about them cluing the reader into events that happen before the book starts is one to heed. Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold is an example of a proper prologue. In it, he provides motivation for the entire story line for the main characters. It's active, informative, and emotional. It didn't dump a bunch of stuff about the world, it didn't give me 2000 years of history. It spoke volumes about the story I had chosen to read.
Drakevarg
Troubadour
I think the best use of a prologue is as the cold open. It's a good way to set the tone or the underlying mythos of the world without just being an opening narration. The classic horror movie cold open, for example, is having some random nobody fall prey to whatever the chief antagonistic force is, thereby quickly establishing in broad terms what the threat is and what the actual protagonists will be getting into. If it weren't for those kinds of prologues, for the first twenty minutes or so of most slasher films you could be forgiven for thinking you'd accidentally put in a bad teen comedy by mistake.
Another decent example of a prologue is the opening to Dark Souls - it's nothing much, basically just the creation myth - but it supplies the underlying assumptions about the world you're about to enter as one that has reached its current status for a reason, not just because you're starting out in a generic zombie-filled ruin. Thanks to the story's rather understated approach to exposition (i.e., "figure it out yourself from the context") almost everything we know about the world is based on linking it to the prologue, the one clear picture the game ever gives us.
Another decent example of a prologue is the opening to Dark Souls - it's nothing much, basically just the creation myth - but it supplies the underlying assumptions about the world you're about to enter as one that has reached its current status for a reason, not just because you're starting out in a generic zombie-filled ruin. Thanks to the story's rather understated approach to exposition (i.e., "figure it out yourself from the context") almost everything we know about the world is based on linking it to the prologue, the one clear picture the game ever gives us.
