Prologues are out of favor these days, one of the “forbidden” (by whom?) writing techniques, yet people keep asking about them because they know intuitively that the technique has enormous possibilities. Quite a few folks go ahead and use them anyway. Sometimes this works brilliantly; other times, not so much…and the problematic usages reinforce the perception that prologues are a Bad Idea.
The first and biggest mistake a lot of writers make, especially in science fiction and fantasy, is to assume that there is no way to get the reader up to speed on the story background except to provide a three-page infodump of all the presumably-critical material right at the start of the story. So the writer starts off with a history lesson or a summary of cultures, and half the people who open the book close it and put it back on the shelf, while 90% of the people who do stick with the story skip the prologue and start with Chapter One…and have no problem whatever understanding what is going on.
Too many writers think that because they know all sorts of background information, said information is absolutely necessary in order to understand the story. It hardly ever is, and even if the writer is correct and the reader ultimately does need to know the tangled history of the United Planets and how various alien races came to join, they usually don’t need to know it in order to have a basic understanding of the opening scene where Bob is trying to book a seat on the shuttle to Betelgeuse. Yes, it will make the scene much richer in nuance if the reader understands exactly why Bob doesn’t want to take a seat designed for Rigelians, even if it’s the only one left, but it’s hardly ever truly necessary. It is, in fact, often much more effective to let the reader presume that Bob is worried about the fact that seats designed for three-legged insectoids aren’t particularly comfortable for humans, and only later work in the political tension…and later still, the historical reasons behind the political tension.
My friend Lois Bujold has a thirteen-plus book series, no volume of which has a “what has gone before” prologue. Yet new readers who pick up the latest book in the series never seem to have a problem understanding and enjoying the story, even if they don’t know all the details of the Time of Isolation, the Incendiary Cat Plot, the names and relationships of every recurring character, etc., right from the start of the story. Yes, some of this is because she is really, really good at working the necessary information into the story, but some of it is also because she is well aware that not all the existing information is necessary for this particular story. And also that readers are smarter than a lot of writers think.
The second big mistake a lot of writers make is that they forget that it is not enough for a prologue to contain necessary information; it must also be interesting to the reader. Too often, even the most necessary prologue presents information in a dry, dull, or utterly predictable manner, with the result that many readers put the book down and don’t pick it up again, and many others skip the prologue entirely.
If a reader can skip the prologue and still understand and enjoy the story, you don’t need the prologue. If readers complain that they don’t understand the story, and you find out that they are consistently skipping the prologue, the author needs to either fix the prologue to make it fascinating or ditch the prologue and find some other way of getting the necessary information into the story.
Which brings me to another point: prologues are not a clever way to dump all the background information, so that the author can start the real book with a slam-bang action scene. If a book has a prologue, the prologue IS the start of the book. It doesn’t have to be full of action, any more than any other opening of a story does, but it does have to pique the reader’s interest so that they’ll keep reading. Fifteen pages of history and/or cultural and worldbuilding detail belongs in an appendix for the truly dedicated reader who is fascinated by such stuff, not at the start of the story.
A prologue is also not a clever way to start with slam-bang action when the story opens with eight chapters of ordinary life and slow character building. Sometimes, this sort of thing happens, but it only ever works if the writer is doing more with the prologue than “Gosh, I’m supposed to start with action…I know! I’ll put in a prologue with a battle scene!” (I’ll get to what else you can do in the next post.)
There’s also the scaffolding problem. There are quite a few writers whose process requires them to warm up or ease their way into a story, and some of them use a prologue for this purpose. Usually, this is not a conscious decision, which is unfortunate, because in this situation, the prologue is not part of the story, it’s part of the writer’s process.
It’s like the scaffolding that construction workers put up in order to build a skyscraper. Once the building is built or the story is complete, the scaffolding is no longer needed and should be taken down. This is obvious when it’s a building, but not always so obvious when it’s a story and the writer isn’t really aware of his/her process yet. The best test for this that I know is the one mentioned above: if your first-readers can understand and enjoy the story without the prologue, you probably don’t need it. (The “probably” is there because, very occasionally, there’s a story that works fine without a prologue, but that is much cooler if one includes the prologue. The coolness factor tops everything else.)
Next time: Some thoughts on doing a prologue right.
I recently started work on a short story set in the same world as my in-progress novel, and I was pleasantly surprised (shocked, really) to find that I only needed about two brief paragraphs to get across the crucial background information for understanding that world. I could fit every little detail about what makes the world so neat in, but isn’t that more fun for the reader to discover the deeper into the world they get? When it’s layered, needing to be peeled back chapter by chapter, as understanding the world is entwined with the story, instead of just dumped on the reader in the beginning?
It was a helpful breakthrough for me.
I’ve been reading a lot of Madeleine L’Engle lately (it IS the Year of the Tesseract, after all), and one thing I especially appreciate about her is how she always assumes her readers are smarter than (maybe) we are, and leaves it to us to soak in the subtler nuances of her world. Makes for much richer stories, and much richer story-telling.
I’ve never thought of it as being part of the writer’s process – but that’s a very interesting thought.
One thing I’m seeing more of is using a prologue, not for world building or back story, but simply to clue the reader in that something BIG will happen later. These prologues usually start with some incident in the future where the protagonist needs to make an important choice or is facing some huge danger. Then chapter one starts with a “three weeks earlier” or something similar and the story goes on from there until the reader eventually reaches the passage where the protagonist is faced with their choice. The reader can tell that that is what’s going on because the wording is exactly the same.
I think these prologues are completely unnecessary because they don’t do anything for the story besides starting it off with a bang. Maybe the book started too slowly for the author/agent/editor/reader? Who knows. But some examples are Twilight and The Carrier of the Mark.
I generally enjoy learning about the world as I am in it, rather than as a history lesson. I’m never one to read the appendixes. Though, I will almost always read a prologue if they have it (that doesn’t mean I always enjoy them though …) I’m interested to see what you think about how authors can do them right!
Right now I’m working on one of those stories with a prologue from what happens later at a climactic part of the book. It’s not actually the climax, it’s the crisis, and I’m beginning to think that although I wrote it first and like how it works as an initial scene, (the feeling of impending doom is always fun), it may end up shuffled back into chronological order once I get there.
If it is just part of the process, I like having it there, because it gives me a touchstone for the feel and the tone that I want the whole book to have. I know where I’m going. I know what will drive my character to her moment of deepest despair.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read books that start at a later point and then switch back in time, drawing you ever closer to the starting place. And I think some of them have worked. But oddly, I don’t recall which books they were. Must research.
I’m really looking forward to hearing how to do a prologue right!
I have the feeling that a lot of people who write unnecessary prologues are doing it “because Tolkien did it.” (Cf. “the work of the third artist”.)
But Tolkien wasn’t writing a “prologue”; he was writing an editor’s preface to what purported to be a scholarly redaction of The Red Book of Westmarch. He was a scholar, he knew how to write scholarly editions, he knew how to write editorial prefaces, and he was also having fun.
And, of course, he was Tolkien and we aren’t.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden has said more than once, “Never tell the reader anything before they want to know it.” Let the questions arise first, then give the answers.
I don’t know why I shouldn’t have fun, just because I’m not Tolkien.
…not that I’ve ever actually done a prologue (or an editor’s preface), but if I ever feel like doing one, I will. So nyah!
Anton Chekov had a rule for writing short stories: delete the first three pages. That rule might well work for novels as well. I’ve certainly read otherwise great books where the prologues could have been thrown out and no one would notice.
Some readers, alas, skip prologues without checking whether they are fascinating first.
You’ve made me see one good use of a prologe.
Step 1: author writes a prologue that includes the necessary info; this may include rewrites as author figures out what is necessary.
Step 2: author figures out how to incorporate this info into the book itself.
Step 3: author deletes the prologue.
I’m realizing now I’ve only ever written one prologue. It was one short and sweet page of the main character introducing herself and her situation…I’ll have to go back and take another look at it, I think! 🙂
And Dorothy, that is a riot,and I must agree.
A new problem with prologues arises with sampling via ereaders. The reader only gets about 10% of the book and the author therefore has to a) win the reader over with the *full* prologue then b) convince the potential reader to change gears for the book itself and c) win the reader over with very few pages of the full story.