Types of Prologues

Charles Coleman Finlay

http://home.earthlink.net/~ccfinlay/Prologues.html

Another wheel I tried to reinvent. These comments originally appeared on the "http://delrey.onlinewritingworkshop.com/" mailing list on 16 November, 1999.

asked:

"Does anyone have a good example of a world/species prologue to a story? I have a sci-fi story dealing with an alien world and its aliens. Humans are present, but mostly as scenery if at However, I do need to describe the alien and how they function as a part of their world, with brief touch on culture and politics. A reader will be completely lost without a description and when I tried putting it in the first chapter, the story bogged down.So, I wrote a prologue. It was heinous!! Boring, flat and too technical. I put myself to sleep. I would appreciate the advise!"

I can't think of any really good examples of an Alien Intro prologue off the top of my head, but there are similar models for doing it in other books. What you CAN'T do is dump information: you have to tell a story in the prologue.

Here are a few observations about the different types of prologues.

History Prologues

There are at least two variations on the history prologue. One is a scene that happens way before the main story, giving the reader info they need to understand the book (kind of like what you're talking about).

You see this in alternate histories describing the novel's point of divergence from our timeline, for example in Turtledove's post-Civil War civil war story “How Few Remain.” There's another really good example covering several different characters and times in J. Gregory Keyes's “Newton's Cannon.”

You also see this in fantasy. The best-known example is Robert Jordan's “Eye of the World,” where the prologue shows Lews Therin's madness and defeat, setting up the same struggle Rand will ultimately have to go through. And Guy Gavriel Kay's prologue to “Tigana” is brilliant I think, the way it sets up the story to come. May be the best example of this type to study.

The second variation is to set a scene way after the story, giving a piece of information or mystery that the novel then goes on to solve. The Gears do this in their American Indian books, like “People of the River,” et al. The prologue starts out in the modern period, and sets up the history of the novel.

The Bad Guy Prologue

This is usually a short scene showing the villain doing something evil that we know will become a threat to the main characters later. I've seen this more in series, and sometimes the chief bad guy doesn't show up again for the whole book.

Again, the best example that comes quickly to mind are Keyes's “A Calculus of Angels.” Chilling! Jordan's prologue to “The Dragon Reborn” is also pretty good.

But Jordan does this badly with the prologue in “Lord of Chaos,” where it starts off okay and menacing but then wanders off to too many characters and places. No wonder people stopped reading the series with this book. Like anything else, this can backfire if done poorly.

A variation on this would be telling a prologue from the POV of characters perceived to be the "bad guys," for example the serpent prologue in Robin Hobbs's “Mad Ship.”

In Media Res

Some books just start off slowly, so the authors take a more exciting scene from elsewhere in the book (or sometimes only marginally related to the main story) and turn it into a prologue. Robert Sawyer seems to like to do this. See the prologue to “Frameshift.” But sometimes this is also just a Red Shirt Gambit. A disposable character is introduced, then violently disposed of to hook the reader into the story. Darnton's “Neanderthal” starts this way, but a really good fantasy example is the prologue to George R. R. Martin's “A Game of Thrones.”

The main thing is all of these types of prologues tell a story. They give essential background info in the context of a character in a particular setting with a specific problem. What really good authors do is pick a character/setting/problem combo that forces or allows them to spin out the bare essential pieces of information in a compelling tension-filled way that sets up the rest of the book.