Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books in lots of weird genres like fantasy (Blood of Kings and Kinsman Chronicles), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). She’s currently writing a post-apocalyptic book with all of you called THIRST in conjunction with the #WeWriteBooks series. Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website, where you can read THIRST.
Update
For a complete list of links to the posts in this series, click here.
Also, Jill has now published the Thirst Duology. To learn more about the books, click here.
Recap
Week four: maps and floorplans.
Week five: protagonists and main characters.
Week six: side characters.
Week seven: prewriting.
Week eight: plot structures.
Week nine: Theme.
Week ten: creating a plot outline or list of key scenes.
Week eleven: point of view.
Week twelve: narrative modes.
Week thirteen: how to write a scene.
Week fourteen: Where to start.
Checking In
Before we get started on prologues today, I wanted to check in and see how you are all doing. Are you keeping up with your goals? How is the writing? What’s your word count? Feel free to give us an update in the comments below.
As for me and THIRST, I’m at 46,994 words, which is about halfway done, but I have reached the end of the chapters I had written years ago. And now I’m a little stuck. I last left my characters just arriving at the destination where the rest of the story will take place, and I have discovered that I don’t know enough about the storyworld to continue. So I’m going to have to squeeze in some time this week to worldbuild and figure out how this place works. Next week I’ll be posting a totally fresh chapter, and that’s a little scary!
Today’s Topic: Prologues
Prologues are one of those things you hear about in writing circles. A lot of people say not to use prologues, but they are a perfectly legitimate part of a literary work and should not be abandoned without reason. Nor should they be used without “very good” reason. And that’s primarily what I want to look at today regarding prologues. What is a prologue, really? And what are the reasons to use one?
We actually haven’t blogged all that much about prologues on Go Teen Writers. Stephanie wrote a great post on the subject, and that’s all I could find! Here is the link to Stephanie’s prologue post: Does My Book Need a Prologue?
What is a prologue, really?
In the writing world, a prologue is a preliminary or introductory section of literature. It can be prose. But it can also be any number of other types of writing: a poem, a quote, a song, a journal entry, a letter, a newspaper article, a report, etc.
A prologue can be a risk when you consider your mission to hook your reader. Why? Because you’re asking your reader to begin the story twice. You must try and hook them once with your prologue. Then you must try and hook them again with chapter one. This is hard to do.
Plus, I’ve met many readers who tell me they don’t read prologues. They skip them. Figure they’re unimportant. That’s silly, but the reason readers do this is that there are just too many poorly written prologues out there that have soured readers on prologues in general. So take that into consideration when writing a prologue.
Good reasons to use a prologue
– To introduce critical backstory. “Critical” being the keyword here. Backstory information dumps are the number one worst reason to have a prologue. But a carefully written prologue that shares critical backstory can work quite well. Consider the opening crawl that rolls across the screen at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope. This shares critical information with the audience in only 93 words.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy….
So if you decide to write a prologue like this, don’t make it a history lesson. Keep it very short, lest you bore your readers. Trust me. You likely think it is very interesting because you wrote it. But if you go on and on, your readers won’t like it at all.
-To show a scene that is out of sequence with the rest of the story. Maybe it took place hundreds of years before. Perhaps it takes place in the future as a narrator looking back to tell the story. Or maybe you want to show a short scene of your main character as a child before fast-forwarding to the present. Becky Wade did this in her book A Love Like Ours. Click here to read the prologue on Amazon.
-To foreshadow something that will come later in the story. Putting such a scene in a prologue can be a great way to create suspense early on.
-To introduce your antagonist, especially if the antagonist will not appear in the story for a long while. Giving readers a glimpse of this person in a prologue can create conflict from the start that will rest in the back of the reader’s mind. You could also combine this idea with the “out of sequence” idea and show your antagonist years in the past before he became evil or maybe the reason he became evil.
-If you are writing a sequel and want to recap what happened in the previous books. I did this in each sequel to The New Recruit. I include a prologue in the form of an official report from Spencer about his missions in the organization so far. I use this to give a quick series recap of what’s important for the reader to remember in case it’s been a while since they’ve read the previous books. Click here to read the report prequel for Chokepoint on Amazon.
-In the horror genre, a prologue is often used to set up the “thing that went wrong” from way back… the evil thing that is about to be released by some unlucky individual.
–As a teaser to the overall plot, the way thriller or detective television shows have that little bit before the credits roll. Take the show Castle, for instance. Almost every episode begins with a teaser about someone getting murdered or kidnapped. Then Kate and Castle arrive on the scene. So if you’re writing in the thriller, suspense, or mystery genres, this type of prologue is practically a genre convention.
-To create a ticking time bomb, as Jeff Gerke calls it. I did this in From Darkness Won, the third book in my Blood of Kings trilogy. Click here to read the prologue on Amazon.
-To introduce a theme, mantra, or underlining core belief of the story.
-To share something with the reader that the protagonist doesn’t know–something that will create problems for your hero very soon. I did this in THIRST. Though it is also written in Eli’s voice, it comes from him in the future, looking back. Here is my entire prologue:
Six days into our wilderness survival adventure in the La Plata Mountains of Colorado, Comet Pulon passed by the earth. We had no way of knowing that it had come much closer than expected, that it had forever changed our planet, and that it had left a killer among us. Oblivious, the twelve of us camped in a clearing, cheered as the bright yellow fireball soared overhead, roasted marshmallows, and toasted with canteens of water we had purified ourselves.
And as we celebrated in awe of nature’s majesty, the rest of the world began to die.
Bad reasons to use a prologue
-To give the reader a major historical, world-building narrative right up front. You might have created a fascinating backstory for your storyworld, but the reader will not want to read it before they’ve come to care about the story. Make them care first. Insert backstory details later. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: if the reader doesn’t learn all this up front can he or she still enjoy the story? If so, leave it out or work it in later. Storyworld elements are almost always better folded into the action of the story.
-If your prologue is a cleverly devised scene to give the reader a massive information dump on your main character’s backstory. Just start your story and save the backstory revelations for later when the reader wants to know.
-If your prologue could just as easily be titled Chapter One, then it probably should be. Don’t have a prologue just because. If the scene stars your main character and doesn’t happen years before the story starts, call it what it is: Chapter One.
-If your prologue is a random, high-stakes scene that has nothing to do with the main story. You might think your Chapter One isn’t interesting enough, so let’s add a prologue that shows the hero being awesome. Well, if what happens adds nothing to the story, show your hero being awesome later. While the James Bond-esque prologue works great in a James Bond movie, it often feels random and displaced in a novel. Tie it into the overall plot or cut it.
To prologue or not to prologue
It’s up to you. Does your novel require a prologue? If so, write one. Just be careful and make sure you do so purposefully and with good reason. (And keep it short!) If you can work the information from your prologue into the rest of the book, perhaps you’d be better off starting out with Chapter One.
Assignment Time
Do you have a prologue in your novel? If so, share your purpose for writing it below. If you have a prologue without a good reason, think about reworking it to have a purpose or getting rid of it and starting out with a strong first chapter. Give us an update of the progress of your novel too. I want to know how everyone is doing.
