It's not uncommon

[james_davis_nicoll]

For me to decide whether or not I like a song during its opening chord. I would like to be able to reassure writers I am not similarly judgmental about written material.

That said, the inclusion of a prologue automatically bumps down how good a book can be two categories because it says right off the writer is undisciplined and is going to waste my time.

On an unrelated note, I think more novels need to have the subtitle "A novel" because sometimes I become confused and think I am reading a grapefruit.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Which of course means that should I get around to writing a novel, I should subtitle it "A grapefruit" just to mess with sleepy reviewers. "It had a good thick rind, with unexpected orange undertones, but the juice, when one got that far, was that peculiar admixture of tart and sweet that has put me off this novelist since Cranberry."

[bibliofile]

pink or white? If ruby, then Florida or Texas?

These things matter!

[onyxlynx]

Hee hee!

(Truth be told, I take medication which disagrees with grapefruit, so I'm going on memory; white?)

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Novels and grapefruits - very tricky to tell them one from the other. Gosh.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

Now now. The subtitle "A novel" can be very useful. I wish it have been used on How to Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe, as I thought it was one of those "The Science of X" books¹, and was passing it over.

---
1. Where X is a show or comic that I never regarded as terribly science-oriented.

[pameladean]

I don't know what editors are doing nowadays, but when I was a new writer in the early 80's, it was very difficult to publish a fantasy novel with Ace Books or, once Berkeley ate them, with Ace/Berkeley, without being told to add a prologue. Either the actual opening didn't sound enough like fantasy and they wanted a clearly fantastical prologue so readers wouldn't throw the book in the ocean; or else there was background information they didn't want just scattered subtly in, and so they wanted a prologue for that. This carried over to Tor when a lot of Ace editors decamped there, but with less force. I managed to avoid a prologue for Tam Lin, but it was certainly suggested several times.

This may be partly just a matter of what was in fashion, but they were really keen on prologues.

P.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Tor wanted a prologue for THE GOLIATH STONE.

They'd changed the title, they'd regrouped the text to make fewer chapters and deleted the best heading quotes, and they'd insisted on changing the emphasis from intelligent nanotech to falling rocks.

What they got was as in-your-face a prologue as I could get my collaborator to agree to.

They have not asked us for the slightest change since.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

The Grossman, huh? (Have it, haven't read it yet.)

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

Bump it up your to-read list. It's insanely entertaining.

"A Novel" seems to be something authors tack onto their titles when the title comprises one word plus an optional article. Perhaps it helps with search or differentiating between similar titles?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Okay.

I just finished reading Alif the Unseen on James' recommendation, and wasn't sure which book I would read next. So I'll try that one :).

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The first book I read based on James' recommendation was Appleseed, by John Clute.

I'm not sure that speaks well of my reading comprehension ability.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Wait, didn't I compare the experience of reading it with being beaten with barbed wire and conclude the beating came out ahead?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I thought "a novel" usually meant "non-genre", or possibly "genre with mainstream pretensions".

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Apparently it can happen in cover design, too. One edition of Singularity Sky announces that it is SINGULARITY a novel SKY, vertically stacked. I suggested the next edition might have to note that it was by Charles, an author, Stross.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of Damon Knight's

HUMPTY DUMPTY

AN OVAL

.

I think you and he might have gotten along.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

Oh, i JUST got that. Sad, isn't it?

--Dave

[seawasp]

This is my sad face. I like using prologues and I don't see how they indicate lack of discipline. (I admit to being undisciplined and unruly, but I don't think it's prologues that give it away)

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

There is a standard set of disadvantages that prologues have, which I'm sure you're aware of. They also have advantages. I dislike them myself, but I have read them (even if it was after the rest of the book.)

If your grocery lists have prologues, you may have a problem.

[seawasp]

Prologue:

The Sea Wasp sat at his computer, contemplating the reply just posted by "Doc Lemming". He wondered, idly, why his respondent had chosen that particular nom du net, and then turned his attention to the response itself. It seems, the Wasp thought, that Doc Lemming has surety where he should not.

Decision made, the Wasp began his response.

Response:

Actually, I'm not aware of specific disadvantages of prologues. To me they've always just been a chapter in a book that has the convenience of letting me know stuff that I might not know if he just jumped straight into the book, and that will allow me a better perspective on the events of the main book. It never occurred to me to skip a prologue, as some here have mentioned. Well, with the obvious exception of skipping a prologue I'd already read and didn't need to re-read because I remembered it well enough. It would be like deciding to skip any other random chapter; I presume the author didn't just type the chapter for their finger exercise.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

What happens if you don't label your prologues as prologues? I'm honestly not sure where I'm going with this, but I've been wondering about that in general. Does it make a difference whether a prologue can be read as a regular first chapter? Is a prologue necessarily an hors d'oeuvre?

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

It's one of the things that gets discussed among people who discuss such things.

The advice I have heard, modified by however it passes through my brain:

Generally, a prologue gets called a prologue instead of chapter 1 if there's a serious disconnect from the rest of the narrative. The disconnect might be temporal or spatial: here's something that happened a long time ago, or this event over in Australia effects the actual story in Canada, and there's no way to slip the information to the characters. (Something like the accidental release of the disease that's going to affect everyone in the story but that the characters will never know, that might be a prologue.) You can also have what Dan Wells calls "the ice monster prologue" where there's some genre element that doesn't show up until late in the novel, but you want to reassure the reader that it's there. Magic, for instance, to actually label something a genre fantasy. The magic doesn't show up until late, but you want the reader to know that it's a fantasy.

The biggest disadvantage to prologues is that many people don't read prologues. And the disconnect means that you essentially have to hook the reader twice, because the fact that the characters that the reader has become invested in won't show up for a while or at all. Disadvantages to prologues are not huge, but they are there, like any other stylistic choice.

There are also genre conventions: mysteries or thrillers often have a prologue that outlines the death or theft of the Macguffin. Fantasies at some publishers seem to require prologues as a genre convention. I think it matters what the readers expect. You don't have to do what they expect, but you have to know about it.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I am (not for the first time) with le_trombone. As a bookstore and library browser, I appreciate titles like Title That Would Be A Very Interesting One For A Nonfiction Book: A Novel. Saves me time.

I am not as fond of titles such as Title That Obviously Marks This As A Work Of Fiction: A Novel. But I don't mind publishers who err on the side of caution.

Maybe I'm saying that your peeve is not among my own peeves.

[redbird]

I think more novels need to have the subtitle "A novel" because sometimes I become confused and think I am reading a grapefruit.

And I thought I'd had a long day.

(

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<ljuser=cattitude">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<q>I think more novels need to have the subtitle "A novel" because sometimes I become confused and think I am reading a grapefruit.</q>

And I thought I'd had a long day.

(<ljuser=cattitude">, who has just had the same long day I've had, suggests that sometimes you <em>are</em> reading a grapefruit.)

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Especially if the prologue is very long prologues and in italics. And then followed by a very long epigraph. And then another epigraph. Then a sort of preface to the first chapter of the first section of **** A Novel.

Also, if ***** A Novel opens with a dream sequence, which upon the dreamer - protagonist wakening, turns out to be not only a dream, but a false dream.

Also, opening ***** A Novel with the same chapter with you concluded a previous book!

On the other hand I see that many readers like to read fiction novels.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

any italicized passage that lasts more than ten words should incur a small per-letter fee, so that writers will only italicize what they really have to.

[seawasp]

I refuse to give up my entire advance just so you can enforce your anti-italic bias on me!

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Possibly you could negotiate a waiver by . . . oh, I don't know, yielding the right to an epilog, or something.

[vass]

Which raises the question of truth in advertising. If instead of A Novel they used some other noun...

Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy: A Brick.
[I'm reading it right now, so it's on my mind.]

Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass: A Psychedelic Drug.

And so on.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Last summer I wrote a book for a small game company, and the publisher was genuinely surprised to hear that people skip prologues.

"Undisciplined"? That seems a bit much.

[jaimiev.livejournal.com]

I'm genuinely surprised that people skip prologues. The idea had never occurred to me - they're part of the story, why would I miss out?

Forwards I'll always read, but after the main text - particularly when the author is commenting on their own short stories due to potential spoilers.

And appendices, sure - I'll often skim/skip them if they're of the "notes on the world" encyclopedic variety and I was more interested in the story than the world.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

This also reminds me of "The Amityville Horror: A True Story" and my realization, the moment I saw that title, that this was very useful in telling it from books labeled "A Huge Pile Still Steaming".

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

So 2001 didn't work for you because a large chunk of it is a prologue set in the "dawn of man"

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

In the spirit of "kallisti", my most popular work not only had a prologue but a prologue in three parts; the work was published serially and out-of-chronological-order to boot so the first part of the prologue was the third-last (IIRC) to come out.

-- Steve was trying to have some fun with tropes on that one, to be honest.

[seawasp]

And the one book my agent's currently circulating has TWO prologues.