Why Prologues Have Bad Reputations & How to Write a Winning One

Devlin Blake Author

Master the art of prologues: engage readers, dispel negativity, techniques, set the stage, hook, effective storytelling.

Transcript:

Prologues. Do you love them or do you hate them?

It’s been said that readers hate them, but that’s not actually true.

What readers hate is a prologue that makes these deadly mistakes, and that’s what I’m going to go over today.

Hi novelteers, I’m Devlin Blake, Novel Writing & self publishing Expert, Coach, published author, and former ghostwriter of over 200 books. If you’re writing a book, be sure to check out my Novel Writer’s Club, featuring self directed courses, weekly crits, ask me anything, group coaching and more. You can find out more about it at the link below.

So what are the deadly mistakes involving prologues?

Well, the biggest offender is the info dump. A prologue needs to be it’s own separate contained story. A mini story with its own ups and downs. However, far too many writers use it as an info dump, especially in the genres of fantasy, sci fi or history.

A prologue is a place where we should get introduced to the problem, not the world. Getting introduced to the world is a side benefit, not the main point. Remember Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone?

The prologue was a brief conversation between Dumbledore and Hargrid, and then an infant Harry is given to his relatives to raise.

We see a flash of the wizarding world but not much more than that. But this simple prologue makes two promises to us that it fulfills; promise one; we will be learning more about the wizarding world later. And promise two, this is Harry’s story, and we’ll be following him around. Dumbldore and Hagrid are supporting characters, not main ones.

The story fulfills both these promises and get us interested in the story to come. However, this brings us to our second deadliest mistake in prologues…

The bait and switch.

This is where the prologue promises to be X, then delivers Y. We would not be happy with the Harry Potter story if he never returned to the wizarding world we were promised. If everything took place in the real world, the story would not be anywhere near as interesting.

Now, this might sound like common sense, but I assure you, after helping with over 250 books and reading 10,000 books, it’s not.

For example, one book I read started with an exciting car chase then the rest of the story was about the guy in the hospital trying to recover. The story was actually good, but the reviews revealed that too many readers felt ‘tricked’ into reading the rest of the story, hoping for that same level of action.

Authors also make the mistake of starting prologues as episodes, meaning, they're just interesting things that have no effect on the story, or this bait and switch. Or worse, as dreams.

Please never make your prologue a dream unless it’s important to the story, like it’s a prophecy dream or the dream is what inspires someone to take an action or something like that. And if you do use a dream as your prologue, it should take up less than 10% of the prologue. There needs to be something else to hold our interest beyond that dream inside the prologue itself.

Now, let’s talk about another deadly mistake; making the prologue chapter one. If your prologue is written correctly, it should never be able to serve as a chapter one as it normally takes place years before the main story, and most often, without the main character too, or at least, the main character at a different age.

A prologue written in such a way will advance the story further as a prologue, but as a chapter one, it will only serve to disconnect your readers from the story and you don’t want that.

Remember, your prologue must always serve the story, and in most cases, must be a story of its own. The only exception to that is a future prologue, and that’s a whole other video.

If you’d like to know more about writing a novel, check out the link below for my Novel Writer’s Club and other ways to work with me at the link below.

Until Next time, this is Devlin Blake saying ‘Write On’.

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Categories: : storycrafting, Writers Block