From the Writer's Desk: Prologue vs. Chapter One

You probably noticed that my latest book doesn't start with Chapter One. It starts with a Prologue. In fact, all of my Dick Thornby spy thrillers (Net Impact, Wet Work, and Flash Drive) start with a prologue instead of going straight to the first chapter of the book. Two of my other books, Frame Shop and Greensword, start with prologues, while Forced Conversion does not. The Love-Haight Case Files, which in set up as four different cases, starts with a Preamble. (And, of course, I can't say anything about the book I ghost-wrote, lest it help you identify it.)

Whether to use a prologue or not is the subject of much debate, most of it inane and ridiculous. People declare they can't stand books with prologues and will never read one. Others think they are essential in certain types of books. These strong opinions are, imho, the result of too many writers writing ... and too many readers rightfully disliking ... giant, expositional info-dumps of world-building before they get to the main action/narrative of the book. (The preamble to Love-Haight introduces the world--basically that magic has returned to San Francisco and caused supernatural other-than-human creatures to come into existence, who need legal representation--but it is super-short.)

Long, expositional info-dumps are generally a bad way to start a book. Instead, you want to have something which will immediately draw the reader into the book. Lots of times people think that equates to an action scene where bullets (or spears or vehicles) are flying and people are dying, but that doesn't have to be the case. In fact, putting people in danger who the reader has no reason to care about isn't as compelling as some people assume. And being in the midst of of a battle with factions the reader doesn't yet know anything about can be confusing and off-putting.

The beginning of a book should hook the reader. It can do that with action, but it can also do that with suspense, mystery, or sheer novelty.

But most importantly, none of those things have anything to do in my mind with whether you should use a prologue instead of letting such hook occur in your first chapter. So, what's special about a prologue?

Others may differ, but I think a lot of the justification for a prologue springs from one simple fact about what readers generally assume when they start reading a book. They assume the the first character they meet is the protagonist and that the main action of the book takes place, or at least starts, in the time and place where the book starts. So, if your hook involves the main character in the time and place of the primary plot-line, you don't need or want a prologue.

I believe that you should use a prologue when you want to start with a scene which does not involve the main character and/or occurs at a different time or place than the main plot-line of the book.

Why? Because the fact it is a prologue signals the reader that the the main plot-line involves someone or something else. It may be solving the crime which occurs in the prologue, dealing with events set in motion in the prologue, or how other people deal with what is set up in the prologue, but some kind of shift or separateness will occur.

And, while I have written tales with bookend structure, I'm not a terribly big fan of prologues/teasers/openings which occur in the future from the main action. See below. 

24 Hours Earlier (A Blog from February 4, 2014)

Two quick knife thrusts skewering my gut, then the man in black leather twisted the knife and ran, but not before grabbing the McGuffin. As I lie here on the floor, blood soaking into the medium pile carpet, my vision dimming as life flows out of me in crimson pulses, I wonder if it was all worth it. The betrayal, the confrontation, the plotting, and all the burials -- Jeez, it's a lot more work to bury a body than you think. And for what? Life was so simple, so happy, so violence-free just a day ago ...

Okay, so there's nothing about that intro that is true, except that I did "lie here." But, I'm sure you've seen (better written) intros like this before in stories, books, movies, and, especially, televisions shows. Desperate to have an action scene or a cliffhanger as a hook to grab the audience before they can change the channel or stop perusing the book and saunter down the aisle to pick up something with a bimbo on the cover, writers too often love to skip ahead to the climax of their story, then head back in time and run the story forward to explain how the hero got into such a desperate situation.

For example, in the movie version of Starship Troopers (you know, the one with Doogie Howser as a military scientist who dresses like a Nazi stormtrooper), the movie starts out with an action sequence of soldiers firing their machine pistols at a exo-skeleton alien bug, advancing as they do so (cause bullets are so much more effective when shot from three feet instead of fifteen feet) until one gets grabbed and impaled by the bug. Then we skip back and watch the soldiers enlisting and training and showering and talking tough until they arrive at this scene, which ends up not being pivotal in any way.

The device is even more common in television shows -- so common that it drives me crazy. Sometimes, the clip is even set up as a cliffhanger, when it isn't really one or when it has no relation to the main plot. I see this kind of thing so often on television, especially on action-oriented shows, that I am sick to death of it. So, what is the point of this post? To tell you as writers to STOP doing this. It's hackneyed, it's overdone, and it makes what might be a good story a crappy, cliched one.

Readers may put up with being misled, but they certainly don't like to see the trick as blatant manipulation. And they really don't like to be lied to. If you start with a pivotal action moment and backtrack, you, at best, undercut the suspense as to what is going to transpire in the story. The reader/viewer knows the protagonist is going to survive to reach this point and that certain events will have to occur to create the situation (the volcano will erupt; the bad guy will steal his gun; whatever). Worse yet, the scene may reveal other critical clues about the story arc -- who the bad guy is, when the event occurs, who else is there or not there.

In short, the action teaser has all of the egregious faults of the worst movie trailers, but with no upside because the viewer/reader is already consuming the product. Sure, it's great to start your story/book/movie with a hook, especially an action hook, but if you can't do that naturally with either a prologue or the first chapter, then maybe your story shouldn't really be starting where you have it starting. "24 hours earlier ..." captions should be like exclamation points, used sparingly and for very good reasons. So if you are thinking of doing either, think again, and just say "NO!!!!!!!!"

Okay?