I have a story-in-progress that takes place in a dystopian alternate reality. There is an extensive backstory that I'm not sure is all that relevant to the main story other than to explain why the world is the way it is, but I thought it would set the tone if I used a few paragraphs in the prologue.

The only example I can think of would be like the opening crawl in Star Wars or the opening of Escape from New York that explains how Manhattan Island became a prison. Very quick and to the point.

An example from my story would be something like...

The Franco-Nippon Engagements of the late 20th Century escalated into the most destructive war in history. Thousands of wells in the Ghawar Oil Field became searing pillars of fire that suffocated the world as they filled the atmosphere with acrid black smoke and devastated the economy.

Oil shortages and rising prices caused mass hysteria which turned into uncontrollable chaos that spread worldwide. Local governments, impotent and withering, collapsed as commercial industry absorbed their remnants and replaced elected officials with corporate leaders.

(There's more, but I fit it into the window as not to violate the rules of 14 lines, even here).

Not really looking for a critique on the opening (because it was hastily done) unless you feel compelled to comment. In that case, please go ahead.

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

Lots of people just skip them. Usually they find that it's not a problem to do so.

So here's my advice: 1) Don't put anything in a prologue that is important to the book, and 2) Don't put anything in your book that isn't important to it.

Where does that leave the prologue? Nowhere.

Steven Horn's Law of Gravity has a 3 page prologue. In it you see a detective who much later becomes important to the story imagining what happened when a women fell, jumped or was pushed from a roof. The story then jumped over 30 years into the future to the present. It hinted that this seemingly random event would be critical for the unravelling of the story and this event was something that the MC didn't know about until the end of the story so Steve couldn't tell the reader about it any other way. It was also wonderfully written. That's probably the best recent use of a prologue I've seen.

I had this same issue with my story. There is an event, out of time with the rest of the story, that the reader won't find out about for, oh, 150-200 pages unless I put that event up front. There are three characters in it. One never reappears, one reappears late in the story (150 pages or so in) and one refuses to think about the event. Because one of my MCs is part of the event, I ended up making it Chapter 1 and then indicating Chapter 2 is 17 years later. Who knows, if it ever gets picked up, Ch 1 may become a prologue again.

The sample you've posted sounds like a history lesson/ info dump. I'd be turned off by that kind of a prologue. Try to work that type of back history into the main story. The characters are going to know all that history so they can educate us as they experience it.

But lots of people do skip them. It's a good idea to know that before deciding to use one. That's why I would never put essential information in a prologue, unless my purpose is to confuse a significant percentage of the readers. And if the information is not essential, I think it's a good idea to question closely whether it belongs in there at all. Sometimes it does.

I agree that it should be either from a different POV than what follows, or from a far earlier time, or both. If at least one of those conditions doesn't hold, it should be chapter 1.

What is a preface used for? Is it part of the story or something like "why I (the author) wrote this book"?

As a rule of thumb, how long should the prologue be? When does it stop being a prologue and starts being "Chapter 1"?

So an "info dump" is not acceptable even in a prologue (or is it just that info dumps bore readers)? Again, my only real frame of reference is movies that have a narrator or text explaining something and it's written sort of like an info dump. Not acceptable in books though, right?

Why? Because I have in general found prologues to be both boring and irrelevent. I sometimes go BACK and read the prologue--sometimes after I have decided I trust the author or like the story. But I rarely read it first. Everything I read about this subject indicates I'm pretty average in this.

I think several posters have hit on what is a good strategy for prologues if you're going to use them - have something HAPPEN. Have it be event-based, usually removed in time from the events of the story, usually setting up some element of a character or otherwise getting the ball rolling. If what you feel the need to convey isn't event-based, then I suggest (not that I've written anything like this, just basing it off gut feel from the books I've read) looking hard at what info you feel compelled to explain, and looking hard at the beginning of your story, and seeing if the info you feel is necessary can work itself into a scene early in the story so that the info is present, but happened in an event-based way.

I would hazard a guess that the prologues most often skipped are the ones that are summary-style instead of event-based.

Yes, a preface is usually an author's note, usually providing some context to the book or author. Sometimes the preface will be written by someone else--an editor, another author, or critic.

I don't think there's any rule of thumb on how long the prologue should be. Perhaps as short as it can be, and as long as it needs to be. It becomes "Chapter 1" in my opinion, if the events that occur immediately cause the events in the following chapter. I.e. If the prologue has Cindy going off to get candy, and on the way she meets the bogeyman, then Chapter One has Cindy trying to stab the bogey man with her candy cane, then the "prologue" should be "Chapter one". But if Chapter One cuts to Cindy ten years later having a nightmare about the same bogeyman, then maybe it should remain as a prologue, even though the events are related, they do not constitute a continuous sequence of cause and effect.

In my opinion, an "info dump" is never acceptable but always some that should be avoided because yes, it does bore readers (though I do think there's a small group of people out there who relish info dumps on certain topics)

quote:

---

from a POV that is used later in the story, but it is very short

---

I'd say that if it's over a page, make it Chapter 1. I'm basing this pronouncement on personal experience. My first chapter, from a POV used later in the book--and of a character who doesn't even reappear for maybe fifty pages or so, and has to wait substantially longer to get another POV section--was a page and a half. NO ONE has ever said, "This should be a prologue." I guarantee that if it had been a prologue, some people would have said, "I don't read prologues" or something along those lines.

It's also a good example of many of the other story telling tools we talk about here.

Back to prologues. If they are info-dumps, as has been said here, I skip them. I don't want to read an exhaustive history or cultural explanation - I want to read a STORY!!! And that's the way a lot of people feel.

I felt my novel needed to start earlier than it did, giving a bit of backstory, but instead of any kind of info-dump, I wrote up several incidents resulting in two chapters of story, then had a nine year time jump (specified at the top of chapter 3 as "October ___, nine years later" - the first chapter began, "April ___" to set it in a particular time - and yes, the years are given in the novel). Nobody who's read it thinks of those first two chapters as prologue - they just consider it "story."

I've noticed that headers for book sections often do not say "Prologue", "Chapter One", etc. A descriptive section header about the content means it doesn't matter what you call it, but the opening scene should probably be an event, not info-dump. (The topic for Chapters and Parts is a better place to discuss section headers.)

I do think, however, that when possible it is better to avoid prologues. I have yet to see a prologue that excites me about reading the remainder of the book (With the exception of the Star Wars crawl, but that's mainly because of the music)

Edit:
I'm not sure what sort of dystopian society you are aiming for, but in the event that it is a 'big-brother government' type thing you already have a vehicle for throwing in the pertinent details: propoganda messages. You can fill in the readers AND create atmosphere at the same time.

The bottom line, though, if if you use it, all the normal writing rules apply. The first 13 must catch and hold our attention. The writing must be wonderful. There should be mysteries left unsolved so the reader wants to move into Chapter 1.

He, in fact, uses Robert Jordan's prologue for The Eye of the World as an example of using a prologue to introduce ideas, mystery, and a hook without being overly beneficial or detrimental to the rest of the book. You can read it, get a lot out of it, and still not know what's going on, so that you have to read on just to clarify things. Dave Wolverton calls this brilliant.

It profoundly disturbed me. Of course, I read it late at night and went to sleep before even starting chapter one, and it gave me a nightmare. I just chalked it up to an overactive imagination and lack of defining input. So, in a wierd way, it worked for me.

quote:

---

David's Wolverton's daily Kick in the Pants deals with this issue today. You might want to check his site for it because he talks about the "throw away" aspect and the use of prologue in certain genres.

---