Not a month goes by when some agent or editor doesn’t decry
prologues. Allegedly they drive away readers and signal poor quality fiction;
they are labeled unnecessary and signs of poor craft, too short or abrupt, useless and dissonant from the
main narrative. Last night I talked to an agent who said she tosses any
manuscript that features one.
I’ve never been rejected over a prologue. It’s just a pet
peeve of mine because not a month goes
by when I don’t read a popular novel from traditional publishing that opens
with a prologue. When they’re poor, I simply skip to the main body of the
novel, as I suspect most audiences actually do.
But if this anti-prologue dogma is going to be preached at all
emerging writers, the industry ought to hold their actual employees to it.
Below is a very incomplete list of some notable prologue-uses.
1. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
(debut novel)
2. Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind (debut novel)
3. Patrick Rothfuss’s Wise Man’s Fear (Locus nominee for
Best Fantasy Novel 2012 –1/5)
4. Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris (debut novel)
5. Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Book 1: The Final Empire
6. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight (debut novel)
7. Vernor Vinge’s The Children of the Sky (Locus nominee for
Best Science Fiction Novel 2012 – 1/5)
8. Stephen King’s Carrie (debut novel)
9. Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot
10. Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (King’s first #1
Bestseller)
11. Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (Locus nominee for Best Science
Fiction Novel 2012 – 2/5)
12. Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Series Book 1: Eragon
(debut novel)
13. George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (debut novel)
14. George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings
15. George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords
16. George R.R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows
17. George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons (Hugo nominee
for Best Novel 2012 – 1/5; Locus nominee for Best Fantasy Novel 2012 – 2/5)
18. Max Brooks’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie
War (debut novel)
19. Daniel Abraham’s A Shadow in Summer (debut novel)
20. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck’s Leviathan Wakes, as
‘James Corey’ (Hugo nominee for Best Novel 2012 - 2/5; Locus nominee for Best
SciFi Novel 3/5)
21. Jo Walton’s The King’s Peace (debut novel)
22. Jo Walton’s Among Others (Hugo nominee for Best Novel
2012 - 3/5; Locus nominee for Best Fantasy Novel 2012 – 3/5; Nebula nominee for
Best Novel 1/6)
23. Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic (debut novel)
24. Terry Pratchett’s Snuff (Locus nominee for Best Fantasy
Novel 2012 – 4/5)
25. Catherynne Valente’s Deathless (Locus nominee for Best
Fantasy Novel 2012 – 5/5)
26. Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy Book 1: Sabriel
27. Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy Book 1: Lirael
28. Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy Book 3: Abhorsen
29. Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Book 1: Rosemary and Rue
(debut novel)
30. Seanan McGuire’s The Newsflesh Trilogy Book 1: Feed, as
‘Mira Grant’ (debut novel as Mira Grant)
31. Seanan McGuire’s The Newsflesh Trilogy Book 2: Deadline,
as ‘Mira Grant’ (Hugo nominee for Best Novel 2012 – 4/5)
32. China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station (debut novel)
33. China Mieville’s The Scar
34. China Mieville’s Embassytown (Hugo nominee for Best
Novel 2012 – 5/5; Locus nominee for Best SciFi Novel 4/5; Nebula nominee for
Best Novel 2/6)
35. N.K. Jemisin’s The Kingdom of the Gods (Nebula nominee
for Best Novel 2012 – 3/6)
36. Jack McDevitt’s Firebird (Nebula nominee for Best Novel
2012 – 4/6)
Just imagine a publisher shunting one of those debut novels over a prologue. Now, remember how many times J.K. Rowling was rejected. And you know what? It's susceptible to all the criticisms lobbed at aspiring authors in workshops, and it's perfectly functional.
Two
of the six Nebula nominees for Best Novel lack prologues: Kameron Hurley’s God’s
War and
Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique: A Tale of
the Circus Tresaulti. God’s War has literary quotes from
The Bible and The Quran, but nothing resembling narrative in the way of Mira
Grant’s blog excerpt about “The Wall” or Vernor Vinge’s Chapter 00. Meanwhile,
the fifth of the five Locus nominees for Best SciFi Novel is
Charles Stross’s Rule 34, which I’m
told lacks a prologue - I don’t have a copy and couldn’t find a preview online.
So out of all the books nominated for a Nebula, Hugo or Locus this year, either two or three of the twelve open with Chapter 1. None of those books nominated for more than one of the awards lacks a prologue. All of the nominees that hit #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List have prologues. Of the nine-out-of-twelve majority, guess how many of the prologues are short and dissonant from Chapter 1.
You forgot to mention my upcoming book! :)
ReplyDeleteRobert
Raises the question - are you going through traditional publishing?
DeleteYes and you forgot to mention my upcoming novella too! The prologue is necessary part of some stories, without it, they may not work.
ReplyDeleteSame question for you, I think. Are you taking the novella to traditional publishing, Helen?
DeleteMy Fowlis Westerby novel has a prologue. I can't help thinking that this is one reason why self-publishing, or at least using small presses, is becoming so popular - the advice of agents goes against what a lot of people have experienced within published books, and so we listen to them less and less.
ReplyDeleteWhat's curious is that so many exceptions do make it through the traditional publishing, and in the U.S., Big Six publishing, even though multiple agents who have their ears of those houses swear against prologues. I could see one being overwhelmed enough by the mixed information that one went to self-publishing, though I wouldn't necessarily advise it on that worry alone. It clearly worked out for many of the above-listed authors.
DeleteAs a reader, I am rather partial to prologues. Their presence doesn't deter me one little bit.
ReplyDeleteI believe there's an art to making even the generic prologue's dissonance fit. Many have a pleasing punch for their brief durations. Presently reading A Feast for Crows, which positively does this.
DeleteI'm ambivalent about prologues. I don't dislike them as a rule, but I've read books where they were entirely unnecessary and only served to delay the action. On the other hand, they do exactly the opposite when used wisely - giving background information that won't bog down the story later on.
ReplyDeleteSee, ambivalent.
Like any first page, I do my best to give a prologue a shot. That's what the author is using to make his or her (or their, James Corey) first impression for the piece of art. One curious thing is when a book front-loads action into the prologue to balance a slow start, like the original A Game of Thrones or Clive Barker's Abarat.
DeleteI've heard the THOU SHALT NOT USE PROLOGUE dictum, too. What frosts me about such pronouncements is that they always seem to have the asterisk of UNLESS IT'S GOOD IN WHICH CASE IT'S FINE. The advice should really be THOU SHALT DO WHATEVER THE HELL THOU WANT AS LONG AS IT'S GOOD.
ReplyDeleteHard and fast rules... pfft. Still more reasons to be irritated with the mass of conflicting information.
That particular agent got me hot under the collar. I didn't want to quote her, but some of what she had to say about her target audience's attention spans offended me when I'm not even in it.
DeleteHard and fast rules against anything in prose tend to make me uneasy, even though I'm inclined to some, particularly about grammar. Yet such ironclad rules against something so plainly common in publishing successes is utterly infuriating.
"Official" advice is crazy-making. Tony, you have it about right. "THOU SHALT DO WHATEVER THE HELL THOU WANT AS LONG AS IT'S GOOD."
ReplyDeleteIt seems like we're getting somewhere in the dogma-forbidden discussion below. Hoping for some sort of breakthrough, or at least better understanding.
DeleteOne of my favorite UF authors, Kelley Armstrong, uses them in every novel (including her debut novel) and so did Kimberly Derting in her debut, The Body Finder. I can go on and on, but I must say, I don't like reading them. They usually frustrate me because they have nothing to do with Chapter One and I feel like I'm starting a book twice.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I agree with you whole-heartedly that it's a complete double-standard. Why do they preach at us and turn around and print them? Only the gods know.
You've been kind enough to put up with my needling on this topic for months. As with the start of our disagreement, I respect your upfront dislike of the feeling that you're starting a novel twice. I get the sense of introductory redundancy, even though since I was a kid I've generally liked it because of how one start promises about, affects and overlaps the second, "real" start.
DeleteIt may relieve you to know my current work-in-progress doesn't have a prologue, though it does play with false-starts.
It's a fun debate that I'm sure we'll continue to have. If a Prologue sets up the first chapter, I'm good with it, but if it's some bit of randomness that makes no sense until the end of the book (like the one I just read in Ghost Story by Peter Straub-awesome book btw), it frustrates me as a reader. But, no matter how much I hate them, I never skip them because you just never know.
DeleteI admit, I'm partial to foreshadowing in prologues. Especially in Fantasy, it's so common and can have fun effects. But like Randall wrote, the intentional obtuse nature can drive someone nuts. I can at least respect the opinion, though I'd think none of us would blanket-ban them from the market for our reactions to them.
DeleteI too find conventional wisdom infuriating in matters like this, though I do have some secret sympathy for this particularly warning against prologues, if only because of a secret hope that it might do away with some bad ones. In the past year, I've read all of one prologue that didn't feel like it was trying to be as obtuse as possible - or worse, sell me on keeping reading. Which the latter is especially a shame, as I was already reading the book.
ReplyDeleteExcellent list. Respectable use of time fuming.
Couldn't let the fuming go to waste, you know? Especially not when I realized that the fifth of the Hugo nominees I was reading had one.
DeleteI can at least appreciate the hope that the dogma would discourage bad prologues. That sort of preventative legislation is common, and I sympathize with editors on that point. It's much like Strunk & White, who knew enough to know a competent writer could break any of their rules. But this one is just so damned common in publishing, and the breaking of it is equally damned common, that I had to write about it. It's not even subtle.
Not even remotely subtle.
DeleteIn the interests of lively dissent, and because I was thinking about this just yesterday: this recent article about the proper way to watch Star Wars can be read as a useful object lesson on why prologues that don't work, don't work. http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2011/11/11/the-star-wars-saga-suggested-viewing-order/ Successful prologues are great, but unsuccessful prologues are both common and annoying, and I thought that blog, in a roundabout kind of way, identified some of the things that an unsuccessful prologue tends to have.
ReplyDeleteBad examples of anything are to be avoided. It's hardly shocking dissent that anyone would rather bad prologues go away, but to dismiss them entirely misses the point. I loathe trite romances, and advise people to write better ones, not to ditch love altogether. You've clearly read a lot, Amanda, and so if you have things you wish people would do in their prologues to strengthen them, that would be far more helpful than the current conventional dogma of avoidance.
DeleteI have seen the Machete Order before, and actually rather dislike it, since flashbacks are a much bigger nuisance to me than prologues. So maybe we've discovered one of my hypocrisies on blanket-rejections, though I still think jamming six hours of shoddy films as a flashback into the middle of another trilogy is a poor plan.
Well, to frame the question like Danielle does: "Why do they preach at us and turn around and print them?" The same reason there are DO NOT TOUCH stickers on electrical boxes, but electricians are still allowed to work in them. People who know what to do with prologues can do them well and ignore the warning; people who are likely to do them badly are well-served by discouraging them. Repeat for second-person narration, head-hopping, present tense, and all the other writing tips presented to noobs as "rules".
DeleteBut the DO NOT TOUCH sticker is not analogous to an agent or editor saying you should never write prologues. It's analogous to a boss electrician telling a rookie electrician, "Don't ever open this box of supplies." A beginning author is not going to learn how to use something well by being told to never use it. That's why I asked if you had advice on how to strengthen or improve prologues.
DeleteHmm. I DO love giving advice I have no business giving. Okay: prologues I've enjoyed tend to work as complete or nearly-complete short stories (the problem introduced in the first paragraphs is resolved, with clear if not explicit implications). They serve up backstory before it's needed, so that a single line of exposition later can be a revelation. They're recognizably related to the first chapter and the true story, in setting, tone, or characters.
DeleteI tend to dislike prologues that serve as flash-forwards: "I'm in danger! I'm about to die! How did I get here??" followed by the actual story. I don't like villain POV's in the prologue...I was raised on horror novels and think disposable-victim POVs are a more solid choice. I'm not a fan of prologues that seem to give away too much.
Again: I am no kind of authority WHATSOEVER. But hey. It's the Internet.
You're at least an authority on the great number of books you've read and the stories you like to produce. I really appreciate you opening up with some of these details, and I am completely on-page with you about flash-forward prologues. I can't remember one that's actually enhanced a novel for me, and if it turns out the proper linear narrative works after it, I feel a little cheated that the author didn't trust me to get interested on my own terms. I'd be interested if anyone else has flash-forward prologues they've liked, and what made those work.
DeleteI'm reading A Feast for Crows right now, and I was impressed by how its prologue was a relatively complete story. It helped that Martin wrote an unusual character for the franchise (a happy and even cute lover), but even if it was standard fare, I'd agree with you on making something feel satisfyingly whole.
Nice roundup of stories there. I've idly wondered but never really looked too closely to see just how common prologues are.
ReplyDeleteThey started standing out to me in the last year, as I was pelted with this anti-prologue advice at the same time as finding them in everything I read from traditional publishing. Eventually I had to start keeping track. Having the opportunity to vote for the Hugos has become an accidentally humorous experience.
DeleteI, myself, am a fan of the prologue. They intrigue me.
ReplyDeleteThank you, thank you, thank you for doing the analysis on this. I'm neither a fan nor a hater of prologues (if they work, great! if they don't, they don't!), but I've never understood why people in the publishing world hate them so much... and yet publish them anyhow.
ReplyDeleteMy personal stance is that any structural or narrative device is up for grabs if it works. Really a lot of these "rules" are either particulars that can be rolled up under the "murder your darlings" rule, or else are easy ways for people to reject work without bothering to read it. Given the size of slush piles, this is understandable -- but given that they are supposed to be looking for salable stories, it is not.
Personally I don't have anything against prologues but if the first lines of a first chapter are catchy enough then I see no need for a prologue. However, through a writing process you can get an idea and indeed write a prologue that is a logic, intriguing and important part of the story.
ReplyDelete