One of the rules on writing states to never use prologues. This is something I mostly agree with, although I don't think anyone should ever listen to writing rules. Usually when I pick up a new book, I want to skip right over the prologue because I think if you really have a story to tell, then start it at chapter one. If it doesn't start there then it's obviously not important, and the prologue is a bunch of boring back story no one cares about. Of course there are always exceptions to this.
Sometimes a story truly needs a prologue because there isn't an artful way to incorporate that particular nugget into the story itself. In the five novels I've written, only one has a prologue, and it's only a page long at best. In my novel G-157, the back story of how this world came to be needed to be told upfront. Otherwise the reader would be very confused as to what the heck was going on in the story and why certain events and people were the way they were. In these scenarios prologues are extremely helpful, and over the years I've learned to always read prologues even though I have a personal bias that makes me not want to do so.
Prologues are a baneful irritation when they tell you something that you very well could have figured out on your own. The worst one I ever read was almost thirty pages. That's right, thirty pages. Bah!! But I did read it, and really wished I hadn't.
First off, the book jacket already told me the main character's parents were killed in an Asian country. What was the prologue about? The main characters parents being killed in said Asian country. Dumb. And it wasn't like the author needed to add more pages because the darn thing was already over five hundred. Why waste your time and the reader's time telling us a story about something not important that we learned in two seconds from the back of the book?
Second, in this prologue it described how someone the parents thought was their friend was actually a backstabber and caused their demise. The friend comes into the main character's adventure five pages into the book only to screw them over at the end. Wouldn't it be much more dramatic and cause a better twist at the end if we had found out at page 475 that the friend was a jerk instead of learning this knowledge at page four? Because the whole time I was thinking, I know he's going to screw the main character over so I don't care much about reading this anymore.
Third, the bad guys were also introduced in the prologue and were trying to kill the main character within the first chapter. Again, it would have been so much better if we found out the connection between the bad guys, the main character, and the main character's parents at the end. This would have not only made the book more suspenseful, but I wouldn't have been reading about the main character the whole time thinking, okay when is this ditz going to get knocked off?
However, prologues are a great and necessary vehicle for a story when they are kept short and only include minimal background information. The screenplays for the Star Wars movies are excellent examples of prologues used well. They're only a few paragraphs, they give us some background information so we understand the conflict, they let you know key characters' standpoints, and they bridge in time gap information. Perfect!
So though the rules of writing say don't use a prologue, I say use them whenever needed and don't regret your decision about it, because really there are no rules for writing. If you read enough, you will understand the difference between a good, necessary prologue, and one that has no business being there. Follow your own rules for prologues, not those of someone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment