prologue vs. chapter 1?

One nice thing about art is we can call a fish an orangutan and get away with it, if we convince our audience. However, in my understanding, a prologue typically a) doesn’t feature the main character and b) introduces some element of the plot/world that the reader needs but can’t get in the main storyline. In older fantasy, they very much introduced lore, but I haven’t seen that as much in contemporary books. Nowadays they seem to me to be more about establishing stakes or premise. 

My mental take on a prologue always jumps to David Gemmell's prologues. I don't believe every book he wrote had one, but a couple--in Legend, and Knights of Dark Renown--always stuck out to me as good ways to do them. They're both brief (I'd say around 1k, though I don't have them to hand to check), but completely different to one another.

Legend starts its prologue at the current time in the story, with an emissary going to the camp of an invading enemy's leader, to sue for peace, and it establishes stakes when it becomes very clear that there will be no avoiding the war. In this one, the leader is clearly ruthless, and he reveals in the scene that he never intended to take the peace talks seriously. The stakes are set fast, and high.

The prologue for Knights of Dark Renown, on the other hand, takes place many years before, and is probably offering a broad-strokes lore reveal, but focuses on one of the main characters when they are a child. The events witnessed there are referred to explicitly later on, and you get to know more about exactly what was happening then, but the prologue also does a little bit of neat foreshadowing about the character. It also establishes that the lead character has become an orphan, but that's probably secondary to the witnessed scene, which is a really solid mystery hook. And although it's not obvious at first, what was witnessed is the event that drives the entire novel's story, years later, a mystery that gets unfolded piece by piece until around the half-way point of the novel (I think, or thereabouts).

My brain always jumps to these prologues, because I loved both of them so much that they just stuck in my head.

A marketing perspective... If you call it a prologue, some readers will skip it. Some will stop reading.

It ain't rational, but it happens. Some people viscerally dislike prologues.

Structurally, I think RETreasure has a good interpretation. A prologue usually stands apart from the main action in a significant way: time, place, or characters, for example. We likely never return to the events of the prologue, but we see their impact in later scenes.

For that last, here's an example... A group of thieves break into a jewelry exchange. They escape with an impressive haul, but are quickly pursued by the police. They flee, they fight, and eventually get caught or killed; but in the confusion, one giant ruby slips free and is lost in the sewers.

Ten years later, the ruby is found on a beach where the sewer treatment plant lets out, and is found by our protagonist. Death and confusion follow; but the original thieves are no part of the story. They just set up the conditions for the plot.

The start of LOTR (film) springs to mind. Set years before, showing the full danger of the ring, and setting up how it has resurfaced. It does have Elrond, but why not? Plus the voice over narration.

I think, unless it's a prelude like this, set well apart yet informing you what's to come, your just trying to guild a lilly with a fancy word.

On the other hand JP starts with a load of waffle (good waffle) if I remember correctly. While the film starts with a secondary character in Muldoon and a taste of that what's to come, no waffle.

So maybe narration of some type forms the prologue?? A voice/character waffling??

To have it as a proper scene only confuses when those people are dropped for chapter 1?? I did just that in a story read by someone above and it was pointed out that killing the main character isn't good. But they weren't the main character. So, yes, perhaps that was a prologue and I didn't know it.

The set up for the story, or the story before the story? Maybe that's it. 

If you have a start that doesn't quite fit, maybe alter it more to form a prologue using all the suggestions people give above? Or just add a dinosaur!

Posted by: @joebenet

Are there criteria for calling a first scene a prologue? Does it have to set-up the work a certain way, a certain time distance in the past, or from a separate pov?

My first scene in my current WiP, a novella, sets up the backdrop to the story, tells what is happening in the world that informs the remaining scenes, but does so just one month before the next scene chronologically, and happens to two recurring characters.

Structurally, I'd like to call it a prologue simply because the next three scenes group together nicely into a chapter.

Guidance? Thanks!

Whenever I see the title "Prologue" in any novel, I immediately groan, and my gut reaction is to simply skip it. I'll skim the first couple of paragraphs and, if they're boring, I'll skip the whole thing. Especially with some hard sci-fi and epic fantasies I've read, "Prologue" seemed to be code-word for "Info Dump."

If you must have a prologue, just make it the first chapter of the story and call it something else. Another tactic is to follow the example of films. Thinking of "Stargate" here, where the beginning of the film is simply a cool scene that took place many years earlier when they found the gate buried in the desert, then it was a flash-forward to modern times.

Hmm

Info dump. That's sounding like it.

Either as a scene, like Stargate, or as this from King Kong. If I remember correctly it's even called a prologue, "And lo the beast looked upon beauty and was one lost," or something like that.

Either way, it's giving us some primer info, readying us for the story ahead.

Also, in its own way the prologue could actually tell the story in a short form. Almost showing that history repeats. Either the scene acts as a shortened version of the story, or the info narrated foretells/pretells it.

Yet another reason to crack some books. 

Ok. Doing some reading, skimming, whatever.

HPs, Hunger games, go right to chapter 1. I think it's a kids book thing.

Twilights have that King Kong bit, then a Preface, that seems to be a bit from later in the book??? Again for kids, letting them know there was a something that's going to happen after the boring stuff.

Ive found a Prelude in a SciFi. Are people just making up words here? I believe this one is some story before the story, setting things up.

An Introduction in a sci fi, reading like Michael Crichton style, is it fact, or is it fiction, narration on science.

Ann McCaffrey has a What has gone on before. Waffle on previous stories that are linked to this one.

Yay! First Prologue I've found, by Mr Herbert. Basically fictitious documents, speeches. 

I'll leave it there for now, but you can see the difference between authors and genres.

Really, I feel Prologues are an older thing, or perhaps for more "proper" stories not really for pulp or kids books. Maybe I'm wrong?

Another note is all these prologue type things can easily be skipped when reading as they don't form part of the actual story.

Hope this helps someone.

I agree with all the comments in this thread.  I don't think there is a good literary definition of a prologue.

In my mind, the prologue must be somehow distinctly separate from the rest of the story.  That separation can be time (as in Sauron & Smeagol's backgrounds in the LotR film as @han mentioned), it can be a separate scene that does not involve your story's characters (say a bank robbery that happens across town that sets other events into motion), a technology 'reveal' (as you might have in what Orson Scott Card calls an Idea Story), or even an introduction in a distinct voice (as if read by a narrator).

Prologues seem very important to video made from epic novels (LotR, Dune, Foundation come to mind).  I don't have the credentials nor experience to be a critic, but it seems to me that prologues are lazy.  I'd much prefer (as a reader) that prologue information be woven into the story via the character's experiences.

I had no idea there were visceral reactions to prologues, but I think I understand it.  A prologue isn't usually a part of the character's story, but of the setting's story, which then frames the character's environment.  Hmmm.  I've got to think about that.  It may have just changed my entire thinking on prologues.

Mark