To prologue … or not

I’ve had three people ask for more on prologues, so that’s what I’m talking about this week.

Actually, I’ve had quite a lot of people ask about prologues over the years, mostly wanting to know why editors say they dislike them, why people skip them, and why their crit group wants them to take out the one they wrote. I have never once had a writer present me with a writing problem for which the obvious or necessary solution was to write a prologue.

I think that’s telling.

What it tells me is that a lot of writers like the idea of writing a prologue, but they don’t have a clear idea of what a prologue is, or how to use one most effectively.

A prologue is a short-ish bit at the start of a novel that does something that’s really important to the story, something that the writer cannot make work in the main part of the story without violating one or more major storytelling conventions (such as viewpoint, or chronology). If it lacks any of those points, it isn’t a prologue; it’s Chapter One.

There are very few things that actually fit that description. The first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone appears to tick most of those boxes, yet it’s still “Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived” rather than “Prologue: The Boy Who Lived.” The book flows along just fine – in fact, more smoothly than it would have, had there been that extra little speed-bump created by calling the opening a prologue instead of calling it “chapter one.”

Calling something a prologue sets it apart from the rest of the book. It implies that this information or this scene is outside the main story in some way – it happened before the “real” story started, or, more rarely, after the story ended (for instance, when the author has both a prologue and an epilogue that act as a frame story in which Grandpa is telling the main story to the grandkids).

Sometimes, that is exactly the effect the writer wants – the whole idea is to get the reader to step back and see the main story from a different angle (as with Grandpa and the grandkids). More often, though, the writer isn’t thinking about that part; they’re just grabbing for a technique that’s familiar from years of watching the “teaser” openings of their favorite TV shows.

The result is that prologues get misused. A lot. Science fiction and fantasy novelists info-dump imaginary histories or treatises on the politics of their invented worlds, or provide “creation myths” that the reader doesn’t have the context to understand yet. Horror and mystery novelists write prologues showing the monster or the serial killer’s first murder, which, again, the reader has no context for. Literary novelists write long, lingering descriptions of gothic mansions or lonely beaches “to set the atmosphere.”

What all these writers forget is that if you write a prologue, THAT is the beginning of the story. Whatever scene or summary makes up the prologue needs to intrigue the reader as much or more than the beginning of Chapter One. And then the writer has to hook the reader again at the start of Chapter One, because the readers who started with the Prologue hit the speed bump effect when they have to switch gears at the start of Chapter One, and the readers who skip the Prologue (and there are a lot who do) need to be caught for the first time.

The opening scene of a novel – and again, if the book has a prologue that’s where it starts – needs to engage the reader and draw them into the story. Most prologues don’t do that. This is the fundamental reason why editors and agents react negatively to prologues (and why some readers automatically skip them). Also, almost all of the info-dumps could be conveyed more effectively during the main story using flashbacks or plain old worldbuilding. They don’t need to be in a prologue where they slow down the story.

Many writers fall prey to the idea that all the fascinating political intrigue they’ve made up is information the reader has to have immediately in order to understand what is going on in a scene. I recently read a novel that included roughly four pages of “current political situation” up front, as set-up for the first scene, which involved convoluted political negotiations. However all the reader had to know for that scene could have been covered by having the viewpoint character think, “The Duke will never do that – not when his brother might invade any minute. He needs to keep his soldiers here.” The brother’s convoluted political alliances became important later, but as far as that first scene went, the prologue was unnecessary. And once the potential invasion was established, there were plenty of places the alliances could be mentioned … and they’d have been a lot easier to keep track of if they’d been handed out in more digestible chunks.

When I re-read a novel that has a prologue, I almost always start with Chapter One. I read the prologue the first time, so I have the pertinent information, and it just isn’t interesting enough to read the second time through. If a prologue is that easy to skip, it probably wasn’t necessary in the first place. The exceptions tend to be intriguing frames, or extremely short, or both (e.g. “Professor Walker: I found these letters in the ruins of Pompeii. Can you send me a translation? – George.  George – Here’s your translation. If this is a hoax, it’s the most elaborate one I’ve ever seen. – Professor Walker”).