james_davis_nicoll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-04-20 02:23 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-04-20 02:23 pm
It's not uncommon
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.
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.
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If your grocery lists have prologues, you may have a problem.
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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.
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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.