Prologue vs. Chapter 1

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

If the agent requests the first chapter, send it, don't send the prologue. If the agent requests the first 10 pages, it's your choice. Some agents don't want to see the prologue in the first 10 pages; some do. However, if the prologue isn't about your protagonist or someone who arrives late in the story, you might consider cutting it and reworking the necessary bits into the main story.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

The prologue should only be used if it's necessary to set up the rest of your story. But if it's part of the story, send it. If you start at the first chapter, it's not going to make sense without the prologue. If I have a prologue, I always send it. But that's just me.

I queried a thriller with a prologue. I sent the first chapter as sample pages and then included the prologue with fulls.

If the query tells me about the main character and the pages you send (I request first 3-5) aren't about that character, I'm not very happy.

I'm going to disagree. If they want the first ten pages then send the first ten pages. If that includes the prologue then that is what you send. If you think you can send chapter one but not the prologue than do you really need the prologue in the first place?

This has come up many times -- and you will see some disagreement on this so take this with how much weight you choose -- that many agents dislike prologues. I've seen it mentioned many times on both agent's twitter feed and their blogs. If the prologue is truly necessary then just make it chapter one, but otherwise you can sprinkle in back story in the main part of the book.

Just my two cents.

I recently faced this dilemma. I did a "test run" with my query and samples pages at the beginning of March. I included my prologue, which does involve the main character but takes place 4 months before the start of chapter 1. My request rate was 0 out of 5. (Technically I could still hear back from one or two of those, but I'm not holding my breath.)

So... I rewrote my query and dumped my prologue. I did another test run of 5 queries, and my request rate from that group was 3 out of 5.

Part of the problem was the tone of my prologue was much different from the opening chapter, and much of the book. It was really hard to write a query letter that matched the prologue AND matched the first chapter... like impossible. A very wise agent with sharp teeth suggested if I'm not getting requests, make those things match better. So that's what lead me to dumping the prologue.

I'm not exactly sure what made the difference... if it was the new query letter, if it was simply not seeing the dreaded "p" word at the beginning, or if it was matching the voice/tone better between the query and the pages. Regardless, it's working for me.

So my experience would say not to query with the prologue... but it's hard to know about someone else's book without reading it.

If your opening pages work without it AND your chapter one is as strong or stronger than your prologue, I would NOT send the prologue with the query letter.

If your prologue is stronger than chapter one and the opening won't make sense without it, then I would send it. But I would maybe call it Chapter 0 or Chapter 1 instead since there's so much prologue-hate out there. JMHO.