In the Beginning – What’s the Deal with Prologues?

There has been ongoing discussion on social media about whether readers actually read or enjoy prologues. Do you think prologues add value to a story, or do you wish the story just started with chapter one? Are there good and bad ways for an author to utilize a prologue in a fantasy novel?

I absolutely do not understand this controversy. My initial reaction to hearing about this is, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. Who cares if you callthe first ting you read in a book the prologue or chapter one? It is still the first thing you read in the book. The label is unimportant.” But maybe I don’t understand the point.

Is the issue that people don’t want to read a chapter that sets up the world building or history of the story? In that case it wouldn’t matter if you called it a prologue or chapter one. Would people just be grumpy because they didn’t want background information? I don’t see the point of that either.

The Others series by Anne Bishop is one that uses the beginning of the book to set up the world. It tells you where you are and explicitly how the world works. That helps a lot because it is almost our world but with enough changes that you’d be confused if you just jumped right into the story.

I just read A Wall is Also a Road and I would have loved a prologue in that one. The book was structured so you had minimal knowledge of what was going on. You figured it out as clues were given slowly through the book. Honestly, I would have DNFed it because of the structure if it hadn’t been a review book.

I also like a prologue in books in a series that reminds you what has happened so far.

I hate it when authors assume I remember what happened when it has been years between books. I’ve read a lot of books in between. Give me a little something to jog the ole memory.

Seanan McGuire is starting to put this in her Incryptid series because at this point there are so many characters it is hard to keep up. The summary/prologue gives the timeline of the characters you need for this book in an entertaining way. If you are reading a series back to back and you don’t need the reminder, then that is the only time that it is acceptable to skip a prologue.

I suppose this means that people think they shouldn’t read epilogues either? I swear, why don’t some people want to be happy?