-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
Why are you married to a prologue/epilogue?
- Thread starter Leif GS Notae
- Start date
And why would you be "locked" into a POV?
It works for many stories to focus on just one character. Switching POV for just a chapter in the middle of a book can break the flow of the story. Switching POVs for just Chapter 1 might as well be called a prologue, in terms of the function it plays in the story.
Yeah, it can be done that way, but I'd still like to see it as chapter 1 if it is actually part of the story. If it isn't part of the story, then I prefer that the book start where the story starts. Ultimately, there are many effective ways to communicate the information, and the writer isn't locked into a strict POV unless he chooses to be. I haven't come across stories that I felt would only work with that kind of POV, but some authors may feel that way as writing. Ultimately, you have to go with your own vision, but that approach is not my preference.
For the most part I think that you should try to avoid having a disconnected mini-chapter labelled "Prologue" in your book. But if you build up a prologue's content a little and relabel it as chapter 1, I would still call it a prologue in terms of the story structure. It serves the purpose of conveying information to set the mood and foreshadow the story's direction for the reader before focusing on the MC.
Harry Potter started with a prologue in which Harry was left on the doorstep, and then it told the story from Harry's strict POV. Does it's labeling or length change anything? It's highly important to the story, and yet the chapter is still skippable, in the sense that the facts conveyed in that chapter will be repeated for the reader when Harry learns them himself. But I'm not sure readers would be able to capture a sense of the story and be drawn in as quickly without it.
People have mentioned the prologue in Game of Thrones, and it's a different animal. It sets the mood, and the eventual direction of the story, which can be essential for many readers. But it ties weakly into the first half of the book and feels in some ways like it could have been tacked on at the end. In that case I think the prologue could have been better planned so that it would have more relevance to the plotline, but I'm not sure that it wasn't necessary to establish the direction and eventual conflict for readers.
Of course, if the conflict were to start right away, there shouldn't be a need for a prologue, except possibly for the much-hated info-dump variety.
Last edited:
Christopher Wright
Sage
Prologues are fine if you want to use them, and skippable if you don't. Beyond that it all gets to personal taste and general consensus, and the plain fact is, 50 years from now general consesus will change and whatever is popular now will be considered antiquitated, whatever was edgy now will seem trite, and so on.
And since you can't plan for what will be considered good 50 years from now, you can either try to deliberately aim for what you think the modern audience will like and/or expect, or you can just do it however the heck you want and take your lumps however it goes.
And since you can't plan for what will be considered good 50 years from now, you can either try to deliberately aim for what you think the modern audience will like and/or expect, or you can just do it however the heck you want and take your lumps however it goes.
