Activity

Prologues. I figured I’d do a post on prologues as it is one of those things that a lot of people get confused on, and often they get confused on it regarding pacing and suspense. (Plus, y’know, @steward-of-the-pen may or may not have asked about them.)

So without any further ado, here is how you can use prologues in your story.

 

Use them when you have crucial and engaging plot that will reveal itself to the reader’s fairly quickly.

An example of this is found in The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

No, his opening prologue does not have the main characters, nor is it set clearly in the same time. However, it does establish the world, the situation, and a fair chunk of the plot from the start.

It is also referred to throughout the rest of the series. When you first see a shardblade, you assume that it’s one of those from the prologue. Then things start to piece themselves together and make more and more sense as the story goes on.

So, this isn’t a case of it making total sense to the reader from the start, but it has enough information to make it engaging.

 

Tips to get this Mastered:

1. Does it have significance to the introduction, midpoint, climax, and resolution? If so, then go ahead. If not, then think about whether it is important enough to include.

2. Is it purely a cheap filler used to make the reader’s hooked at the start because the first chapter is lame? If that’s why it is there…Well, I think you need to rewrite that first chapter and ditch the prologue.

3. What is the genre expectation? Typically, an action or dystopian novel will not have a prologue. However, a fantasy or magic realism novel almost certainly does. Often it is good to try to stick to the genre expectations.

4. Does the story make sense without it? If so, maybe it isn’t necessary. Your prologue should be just as vital to the plot and story as your introduction, midpoint, climax and resolution. Make sure that the prologue gives the reader a glimpse of something that they will want to hold onto for the rest of the book.

5. Does it set the tone of the book? This is often a really good chance to set up the whole book. Look at this brilliant prologue from Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind:

 

IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of the night. If there had been music … but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussion of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.
The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

 

Generally, I’m not a fan of fancy, waffling descriptions, but somehow, this one really captured me. I think it could well have been because it was set right at the start of the book, and was there to make you ask questions.

 

Well, those are some of my tips. And don’t worry, I am not going to ask you to write an entire prologue.

As it is, this week’s activity is to examine your own WIP and see if you would add a prologue. If yes, what would it include? Muse and think. Experiment a bit too.

 

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