Prologues

[squeequeg]

Reread the novel last night. It's not bad. There are some lumpy bits, some places where I wasn't watching what I'd changed, and Chapter 1 needs a better punch, which I think I may have figured out. But overall it's a good read. I think I can shine it up nice and pretty.

I'm encountering a mild marketing dilemma, though. At the moment I have a three-page prologue that takes place the night before Chapter 1 (Those of you who've read this already, the draft has changed considerably). It involves a phone call from a dead man, which will prove to be the catalyst for the rest of the story.

Now from what I've heard about trying to market a novel, either to agents or publishers, prologues are not good. Elmore Leonard's rules for writing say to chop off the prologue, and I've talked to a few people who claim to be allergic to prologues. (My words, not theirs.) I've also heard that agents or editors don't tend to look favorably on prologues. But I think much of this concerns prologues that are backstory, and this isn't really backstory.

So how do I handle this? I don't want to ditch the phone call, so I'm still starting the story there. Do I integrate it into Chapter 1 and lose the nice little end-of-chapter punch I'd had? Do I call the prologue Chapter 1 and renumber the rest? (Though if I do that, the first gunshot doesn't come till Chapter 4; it's currently in Chapter 3.) Or do I just leave it as a prologue and damn the torpedoes?

Comments

[spyscribe.livejournal.com]

With the caveat that you undoubtedly know more about book publishing than I, my inclination is that the "no prologue" rule is generally addressed to those horrid 30-page monstrosities that tell you this history of the world and then some. (The sort of thing no one would have thought to include before the invention of the word-processor, or that is subbing in for the author's inability to handle exposition any other way.)

Yours sounds more like a TV-style "teaser" (the bit that comes before the opening credits) than the sort of fantasy prologue that induces allergic reactions.

You ought to be okay with 3 pages vital to the story. Or, if you're really worried, call it a "prelude" or "overture" or something else instead. *shrug*