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Prologue or no prologue?

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Iforgotthis

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Okay, hear me out with this, it's not a simple 'are prologues a good idea?' question.
At the beginning of my ms the mc is 13, however for the rest of the book he's 22. AT the moment I've got it so the first chapter is when he's 13 and then the next chapter moves forward to when he's 21.Is this better than a prologue?
I've got a nagging feeling that what is currently the first chapter should be a prologue. However, I'm also aware that quite a few people tend to skip over prologues (heck, I've done it a couple times myself). There's some important stuff in the first chapter, and I don't want people to skip over it and be confused.
So which is a better idea, an eight year time skip between chapters 1 and 2 with no prologue, or an eight year time skip between a prologue and the first chapter?
If it's of any relevance, the first chapter/potential prologue is only 1,505 words long.

Thanks for your time! :)
 

pandaponies

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I would say cut the prologue, cut the entire section of 13-year-oldness, and weave whatever information that section contained throughout the rest of the narrative. If it's some kind of dramatic, life-shaping event, especially, it will certainly be recalled/referred to later naturally. Not all important information needs to be offered up front, IMO.
 

robjvargas

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Where does the story begin? That's chapter one, IMO.

Here's the thing: As a reader of fantasy and science fiction, I don't like being patronized, and prologues seem to assume I'm not going to get something if the author doesn't tell it to me up front.

BAH!

I'm not going to give you a rule here. For me, Story is first, second, and third priorities. What does THE STORY demand? Not what I think would be good to know. What MUST the reader know? And if the reader MUST know it, is there a way to bring that information into the story itself without interrupting the story?

I make no secret that I don't like prologues. Of course, I've never been published, so what right do I have to tell you what to do? Well... I'm a reader, too. And I know some very successful agents who are tired of reading prologues that aren't necessary, to the point that some of them say they don't read submissions with prologues.

Pay attention to The Story. It will tell you the right answer, if you listen.
 

Bufty

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The passage of time alone between chapters is irrelevant to whether the first chapter is re-named a prologue or not: all the reader needs is an awareness that time has passed between chapter one and chapter two and that is easily indicated in many ways.
 
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rwm4768

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Just make it apparent that time has passed between the chapters. I've seen similar sections called prologues by some authors and chapter one by authors. So I'd err on the side of not calling it a prologue, as some readers do skip when they see the word prologue.
 

guttersquid

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I always read prologues. I figure, if the author wrote it that way, and the publisher accepted it that way and published it that way, then it must be worthwhile.

However, knowing that some readers do skip prologues, and yours contains "important stuff" readers need to know, then using a prologue would be taking a major risk. So my advice is to heed the truth of Bufty's post and lose the prologue.

I would not take pandaponies advice to "cut the entire section of 13-year-oldness and weave whatever information that section contained throughout the rest of the narrative." That could end up being a lot of telling instead of showing, depending on how you do it. I'd much rather "see" that section than be told about it later.

(No offense, pandaponies.)
 

shadowwalker

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I have nothing against prologues at all, but if the only "pertinent" difference between this section and the rest of the book is the age of the character, I would say you probably don't need one.
 

pandaponies

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I would not take pandaponies advice to "cut the entire section of 13-year-oldness and weave whatever information that section contained throughout the rest of the narrative." That could end up being a lot of telling instead of showing, depending on how you do it. I'd much rather "see" that section than be told about it later.

(No offense, pandaponies.)
None taken, but I stand by what I said, though I can admit it would depend on the information being shown. It doesn't have to mean 'telling' at all.

Take, like, Speak - the entire novel was based around the event of a rape, but it didn't start out with the rape, it showed the aftereffects and gradually referenced then finally eventually showed/revealed it. I've seen so many freaking sci-fi/fantasy novels start out with a prologue of a Giant War or a Weapon that Destroys Everything and then skip years into the future (into the World After), and I'm like "Jesus H, just start in the World After, I can infer that a giant war took place via setting/dialogue/etc., I don't care about explosions on the first page that provide nothing but backstory for a story that takes place 10 years later."

Prologues tend to be just backstory infodumps, when you get down to it. Tend to be.
 

s.cummings

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I've seen so many freaking sci-fi/fantasy novels start out with a prologue of a Giant War or a Weapon that Destroys Everything and then skip years into the future (into the World After), and I'm like "Jesus H, just start in the World After, I can infer that a giant war took place via setting/dialogue/etc., I don't care about explosions on the first page that provide nothing but backstory for a story that takes place 10 years later."

Prologues tend to be just backstory infodumps, when you get down to it. Tend to be.

Yea, I agree with this
 

robjvargas

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This might prove telling to some:

Agent Brenda Drake said:
By the questions I'm getting, there's a lot of prologues in #PitchWars. Just send us the first chapter, not the prologue. If you wondered.

Brenda Drake (@brendadrake) August 15, 2014

If your prologue is going to generate this kind of response, you should think long and hard about whether you need this.
 

Jane Berry

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If your prologue is going to generate this kind of response, you should think long and hard about whether you need this.

Wow. That adds to my tendency to steer clear of prologues.

I agree with pandaponies, I prefer my backstory woven into the narrative. Prologues aren't always terrible, but it's the rare few who write them well. Which is why readers skip them. There's nothing worse than getting drawn into an interesting story, then realizing it's not the actual story.

Trust yourself to be able to convey the necessary information within the story. Trust your readers to be able to fit those events into their proper place in their mental timeline.
 

robjvargas

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Wow. That adds to my tendency to steer clear of prologues.

I agree with pandaponies, I prefer my backstory woven into the narrative. Prologues aren't always terrible, but it's the rare few who write them well. Which is why readers skip them. There's nothing worse than getting drawn into an interesting story, then realizing it's not the actual story.

Trust yourself to be able to convey the necessary information within the story. Trust your readers to be able to fit those events into their proper place in their mental timeline.

I've read some very well-written prologues. And terrible ones. In both cases, I found prologues that were unnecessary (in my unpublished opinion). Sort of like: The most well-built hammer in the world still isn't the right way to drive in a screw.
 

Roxxsmom

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Prologues are generally supposed to be something separate from the main story--something that happens before but that adds to the narrative. People love to hate on them in writing forums, but a high percentage of published novels (in some genres, at least) still have them, so obviously they're not the kiss of death for a story or something that sends agents and editors screaming fort he door.

One down side of casting the scene when he's 13 as chapter 1, then skipping several years of his life, is that it sets the wrong expectation--that the story will be about the protagonist as a teen. The reader may feel cheated, even if nothing terribly important or interesting happens during the interim. Calling this scene a prologue creates the expectation that the main story will start sometime later.

And there is always that question of whether you need to show the scene with the teen-aged protagonist, or whether the information could be dribbled in later.

One piece of advice I've seen is to write your main novel (starting with the 21 year old protagonist) first, then decide if it needs a prologue. Or if it's already written, set it aside, finish the draft, and let some betas read it without the prologue. They can tell you if they feel something's missing at the beginning or not.
 
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Ken

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That's sort of a difficult call. The main thing is you want to separate the first from the second. So a prologue would seem like an option. Not really though. Maybe another alternative would be to do the section thing. Have chpts and also sections. All you'd need would be two. Section 1 / chpt 1. (MC at 13.) Then Section 2 / chpt 2, 3, 4 ... That might work though it is a bit clunky.
 

shadowwalker

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Personally, if I felt the story was better for having the prologue, I just wouldn't submit to agents who have a (rather narrow-minded) prejudice against them. Probably not an agent I'd be happy working with anyway.

I compare prologues to condiments. Sure, that burger tastes great without them, but it's really great with them. Readers should be able to understand and enjoy a story without a prologue - but having a good one means they get extra understanding and enjoyment from reading it.
 

Buffysquirrel

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Except prologues are usually just an extra layer of bun.
 

shadowwalker

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Not if they're done well, they're not. I love a really good prologue.

And this is the whole thing. Bad writing, whether it's a prologue or a chapter, is still bad writing. Good writing, whether it's a prologue or a chapter, is still good writing.
 

neicolec

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I find the instant rejection of prologues annoying. I have one. But I renamed it Chapter 1 because of the stigma attached to them.

The incident that I cover really IS the start of the story. It's not something that should be woven into the story. I could do that, but it's the wrong approach. It's kind of annoying to feel like I have to make it a Chapter because just titling it Prologue is likely to put some agents/publishers off.
 

mccardey

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I think perhaps some of it depends on genre. I couldn't understand the prologue-aversion when I first encountered it (here on AW, actually) but I've come to see that most of the time it's directed to SFF writing, where apparently the world-building-back-story-as-prologue thing can be clumsily done.

(That's how it was explained to me, anyway.)
 

mccardey

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This would be why I wrote 'usually' :).

Sure, but it still puzzles me because I don't think I've read a bad one. Hence the post aboutspecific genres using them much more frequently than others, and for other reasons.
 

Roxxsmom

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Personally, if I felt the story was better for having the prologue, I just wouldn't submit to agents who have a (rather narrow-minded) prejudice against them. Probably not an agent I'd be happy working with anyway.

I don't think I've ever seen submission guidelines from agents that say no prologues. Some agents say they think prologues are overdone, or that prologues are sometimes *really* chapter 1, or that they don't like boring ones that read like history lessons.

But there are tons of books out there that still have prologues. So someone's certainly picking up them (and reading them).

I compare prologues to condiments. Sure, that burger tastes great without them, but it's really great with them. Readers should be able to understand and enjoy a story without a prologue - but having a good one means they get extra understanding and enjoyment from reading it.

A cool analogy.

The major thing, I think, is that it pull the reader in because it's interesting. This means showing something happening, not simply summarizing or telling. The "bad" prologues I can think of (the ones that make me put the book down and not come back) are the ones that read like summaries of events that happened long ago rather than like scenes where something interesting is unfolding. Please don't open your novel with the creation myth for your fantasy universe, or the history of the colonization of the Gamma quadrant or whatever.

I suppose this can backfire too, however. I read one recently that was so cool and riveting that I was disappointed when I reached the end and the focal character died. So the story isn't going to be about him and what he did? Darn!
 
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Iforgotthis

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The major thing, I think, is that it pull the reader in because it's interesting. This means showing something happening, not simply summarizing or telling. The "bad" prologues I can think of (the ones that make me put the book down and not come back) are the ones that read like summaries of events that happened long ago rather than like scenes where something interesting is unfolding.

You see, this is exactly where my issue crops up. What I've put in the first chapter/prologue is a scene, where the reader isn't told information they are shown it in application. But still, I'm worried that the prejudice against prologues will entice people to skip it even though it is actually an important scene. I don't want to have to find ways to explain the mc's predicament twice as that will be repetitive if the reader chose to read the prologue.
 

shadowwalker

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You see, this is exactly where my issue crops up. What I've put in the first chapter/prologue is a scene, where the reader isn't told information they are shown it in application. But still, I'm worried that the prejudice against prologues will entice people to skip it even though it is actually an important scene. I don't want to have to find ways to explain the mc's predicament twice as that will be repetitive if the reader chose to read the prologue.

If people want to skip the prologue on general principal, it's not your problem. That "myth" (I call it a myth because I've only ever heard this in writing discussions, never among 'mere' readers) should not be cause for not writing what you feel is needed for the betterment of the story.
 
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