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Once upon a time ...
Sunday, I turn in The Mirador. Monday, I come down with a cold.
The universe just LIVES for moments like this.
I've been meaning for a while--like, say, a month--to make a post about prologues in fantasy novels, and now that I have a head cold as an excuse for any really wrong-headed things I may say, I'm gonna go ahead and do it.
The short version: Don't.
I'm not quite sure where the addiction to portentous, pretentious, and unnecessary prologues comes from. For once, I don't think we can blame it on Tolkien, since his "prologue" to The Lord of the Rings is mostly anthropological exegesis and the remainder is a recap of the correct version of the finding of the Ring (which, since Tolkien changed his mind about it, is actually kind of important to have). Not that Tolkien can't be portentous, pretentious, and even unnecessary when he puts his mind to it, but that's not what his prologue is all about.
But somewhere along the line, somebody decided that fantasy novels need prologues, the more high-falutin' the better. It has been my experience that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the book would not suffer if the prologue were excised. And in the majority of those ninety-nine times, the book would be vastly improved if the dead weight of the prologue were cut free from the basket of our lovely hot-air balloon. Because there's an even more insidious trend, which is for the prologue to give away the central mystery of the story. The Book of Atrix Wolfe is a case in point (not to pick on Patricia McKillip, but that's my most vividly disappointing encounter with the prologue as ruination of the story). I understand that there's a prologue to the movie Dark City which is much the same phenomenon. I know I've said that keeping secrets from the reader just because you can is a bad idea, and I stand by that. But explaining everything in the first five pages of the book so that there are no secrets at all is just as bad. Especially when those explanations could occur naturally within the story itself and would be much more interesting and lively if they did. Even worse are when those explanations do occur within the story and would be lively and interesting--except that they've been hamstrung by the prologue.
There should be a sense of unity to a story--not Aristotle's unities, although buy me a drink the next time you see me, and you might get me to explain how I think Aristotle's unities are an attempt by a non-storyteller to codify and explain the same idea. All the huskies should be running in the same direction, and it should be possible for a reader--if they're prepared to read carefully and thoughtfully--to understand what each husky is doing on the sled-team and why we need that particular husky instead of his littermate. All too often, the prologue-husky is doing nothing but getting tangled in the traces and bringing the rest of the team down. He's not there because the story-sled needs him, but because somehow the author has been hornswoggled into believing that all husky teams in the Fantasy Iditarod have to have a prologue-husky.
I'm going to put that metaphor down and back away now, before anybody gets hurt.
Alert readers will have noticed that there's a certain amount of irony in this post. Mélusine, after all, has a prologue. (And, yes, the preceding paragraphs should make it clear why I called it an "introduction.") Consider it a reminder of the painful truth about writing: there is no rule that can't be broken. No matter how stringently I may appear to be laying down the law, I'm not talking in absolutes here. If you know why your story needs a prologue, and why that need can't be met by any other method, then you shouldn't hesitate to write one. But if your reasons are Everybody else is doing it or I have to explain [x], maybe it's time to think again. Everybody else is doing it is never a reason, no matter how it's phrased; it's only an excuse. And I have to explain [x], while it may be true, is not a reason to write a prologue.1 Especially if [x] = [spoiler].
It occurs to me as I am writing that one reason for the pretentious fantasy prologue may be an ill-defined and poorly conceptualized belief that fantasy novels need strong generic markers, like warning flags, right up front where everybody can see them and nobody can complain later, Hey, I thought this was a real novel! What are all these elves doing prancing around?2 And it's certainly true that stories of the fantastic have tended, over the long millennia, to have warning flags: Once upon a time being the most instantly recognizable.
But notice that OUAT is not a prologue. It's a four word formula. And once it's out of the way, fairy tales assume that the reader can do her own math from here on out.
George Lucas expands the formula: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Lucas even has a portentous and pretentious and unnecessary prologue, but what I love about the prologue to Star Wars is that it knows it's unnecessary. I've never been able to read the whole thing before it scrolls off the screen, and that's kind of the point. It's window dressing. Genre trappings. And because Star Wars is a movie, it can suggest the window dressing without actually having to give it equal weight with the story itself. It's just there to establish the mood.3
TV shows can do the same thing with their title credits. Twin Peaks and The X-Files both used music to warn the audience that what lay ahead was not going to abide by the strict canons of realism. The Twilight Zone's theme music has become a cultural shorthand for exactly that transition. Again, these aren't prologues. They're formulas.
Novels have rejected the formula on a syntactic level, and they're right to do so, since syntactic formulas are clichés. But one theory to explain the proliferation of pretentious prologues is that fantasy novels, in particular, have recreated the formula on a structural level--without actually having a structure in which that formula makes sense. Title credits are a necessary part of the structure of TV shows (and we could spend all day taking apart the reasons that's true, but for now I'm just going to acknowledge that there's a lot of history and baggage there, and move on), but novels have no such comparable requirement. These unnecessary prologues, in other words, are the result of an individual narrative being caught between conflicting generic demands. On the one hand, there's the demand for a warning flag, and on the other, the rejection of syntactic formulas, meaning that the flag itself must participate in the construction of narrative and meaning.
My language is starting to get dense enough to impede breathing; I should probably stop.
My point here is that a lot of fantasy novels have prologues not because their story needs one, but because their genre demands one. Notice, please, the difference between need and demand. The most crucial lesson of capitalism is that we can demand all kinds of things we don't actually need--and which may in point of fact be harmful to us.4 So when I say the genre demands it, I am not saying that the demand is a valid one.5
What the story needs should always trump what the genre wants.
---
1Unless you're J. R. R. Tolkien. In which case, all bets are off.
2Please notice the unexamined assumptions I've assigned to the hypothetical reader in this case. I personally believe that fantasy novels are real novels. They're just not realistic.
3I've had to train myself out of establishing shots, because in a novel--as opposed to movies and graphic narratives--there's no way to use the medium itself to de-emphasize certain segments. All five letter words take up roughly the same amount of space.
4One word: tobacco.
5There's a whole 'nother jeremiad about the things the fantasy genre has talked itself into believing it needs, but that's a post for another day.
The universe just LIVES for moments like this.
I've been meaning for a while--like, say, a month--to make a post about prologues in fantasy novels, and now that I have a head cold as an excuse for any really wrong-headed things I may say, I'm gonna go ahead and do it.
The short version: Don't.
I'm not quite sure where the addiction to portentous, pretentious, and unnecessary prologues comes from. For once, I don't think we can blame it on Tolkien, since his "prologue" to The Lord of the Rings is mostly anthropological exegesis and the remainder is a recap of the correct version of the finding of the Ring (which, since Tolkien changed his mind about it, is actually kind of important to have). Not that Tolkien can't be portentous, pretentious, and even unnecessary when he puts his mind to it, but that's not what his prologue is all about.
But somewhere along the line, somebody decided that fantasy novels need prologues, the more high-falutin' the better. It has been my experience that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the book would not suffer if the prologue were excised. And in the majority of those ninety-nine times, the book would be vastly improved if the dead weight of the prologue were cut free from the basket of our lovely hot-air balloon. Because there's an even more insidious trend, which is for the prologue to give away the central mystery of the story. The Book of Atrix Wolfe is a case in point (not to pick on Patricia McKillip, but that's my most vividly disappointing encounter with the prologue as ruination of the story). I understand that there's a prologue to the movie Dark City which is much the same phenomenon. I know I've said that keeping secrets from the reader just because you can is a bad idea, and I stand by that. But explaining everything in the first five pages of the book so that there are no secrets at all is just as bad. Especially when those explanations could occur naturally within the story itself and would be much more interesting and lively if they did. Even worse are when those explanations do occur within the story and would be lively and interesting--except that they've been hamstrung by the prologue.
There should be a sense of unity to a story--not Aristotle's unities, although buy me a drink the next time you see me, and you might get me to explain how I think Aristotle's unities are an attempt by a non-storyteller to codify and explain the same idea. All the huskies should be running in the same direction, and it should be possible for a reader--if they're prepared to read carefully and thoughtfully--to understand what each husky is doing on the sled-team and why we need that particular husky instead of his littermate. All too often, the prologue-husky is doing nothing but getting tangled in the traces and bringing the rest of the team down. He's not there because the story-sled needs him, but because somehow the author has been hornswoggled into believing that all husky teams in the Fantasy Iditarod have to have a prologue-husky.
I'm going to put that metaphor down and back away now, before anybody gets hurt.
Alert readers will have noticed that there's a certain amount of irony in this post. Mélusine, after all, has a prologue. (And, yes, the preceding paragraphs should make it clear why I called it an "introduction.") Consider it a reminder of the painful truth about writing: there is no rule that can't be broken. No matter how stringently I may appear to be laying down the law, I'm not talking in absolutes here. If you know why your story needs a prologue, and why that need can't be met by any other method, then you shouldn't hesitate to write one. But if your reasons are Everybody else is doing it or I have to explain [x], maybe it's time to think again. Everybody else is doing it is never a reason, no matter how it's phrased; it's only an excuse. And I have to explain [x], while it may be true, is not a reason to write a prologue.1 Especially if [x] = [spoiler].
It occurs to me as I am writing that one reason for the pretentious fantasy prologue may be an ill-defined and poorly conceptualized belief that fantasy novels need strong generic markers, like warning flags, right up front where everybody can see them and nobody can complain later, Hey, I thought this was a real novel! What are all these elves doing prancing around?2 And it's certainly true that stories of the fantastic have tended, over the long millennia, to have warning flags: Once upon a time being the most instantly recognizable.
But notice that OUAT is not a prologue. It's a four word formula. And once it's out of the way, fairy tales assume that the reader can do her own math from here on out.
George Lucas expands the formula: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Lucas even has a portentous and pretentious and unnecessary prologue, but what I love about the prologue to Star Wars is that it knows it's unnecessary. I've never been able to read the whole thing before it scrolls off the screen, and that's kind of the point. It's window dressing. Genre trappings. And because Star Wars is a movie, it can suggest the window dressing without actually having to give it equal weight with the story itself. It's just there to establish the mood.3
TV shows can do the same thing with their title credits. Twin Peaks and The X-Files both used music to warn the audience that what lay ahead was not going to abide by the strict canons of realism. The Twilight Zone's theme music has become a cultural shorthand for exactly that transition. Again, these aren't prologues. They're formulas.
Novels have rejected the formula on a syntactic level, and they're right to do so, since syntactic formulas are clichés. But one theory to explain the proliferation of pretentious prologues is that fantasy novels, in particular, have recreated the formula on a structural level--without actually having a structure in which that formula makes sense. Title credits are a necessary part of the structure of TV shows (and we could spend all day taking apart the reasons that's true, but for now I'm just going to acknowledge that there's a lot of history and baggage there, and move on), but novels have no such comparable requirement. These unnecessary prologues, in other words, are the result of an individual narrative being caught between conflicting generic demands. On the one hand, there's the demand for a warning flag, and on the other, the rejection of syntactic formulas, meaning that the flag itself must participate in the construction of narrative and meaning.
My language is starting to get dense enough to impede breathing; I should probably stop.
My point here is that a lot of fantasy novels have prologues not because their story needs one, but because their genre demands one. Notice, please, the difference between need and demand. The most crucial lesson of capitalism is that we can demand all kinds of things we don't actually need--and which may in point of fact be harmful to us.4 So when I say the genre demands it, I am not saying that the demand is a valid one.5
What the story needs should always trump what the genre wants.
---
1Unless you're J. R. R. Tolkien. In which case, all bets are off.
2Please notice the unexamined assumptions I've assigned to the hypothetical reader in this case. I personally believe that fantasy novels are real novels. They're just not realistic.
3I've had to train myself out of establishing shots, because in a novel--as opposed to movies and graphic narratives--there's no way to use the medium itself to de-emphasize certain segments. All five letter words take up roughly the same amount of space.
4One word: tobacco.
5There's a whole 'nother jeremiad about the things the fantasy genre has talked itself into believing it needs, but that's a post for another day.
no subject
I don't mind the 'this took place 30 years before the main action' kind of prologue, because if it's done right (I think this is more like what you're doing with the prologue in Melusine) it has a specific function within the narrative. Or perhaps I'm only saying that because I did it in King's Dragon!
What I have found I am reacting badly to these days is the creation myth prologue. Those, I just want excised altogether.
However, do expand on your argument against establishing shots in novels, because I'm not sure I agree with you there.
no subject
I was doing the same thing with establishing shots, in other words, that I'm complaining about as a failing of prologues.
I agree that the this happened a long time ago and nobody in the story has any reason to talk about it prologue can be just fine--as long as it's actually, you know, interesting. (I haven't read any of your books--yes, I suck! it's true!--so that's not aimed at you in any way, shape, or form.) Or, of course, there's the opposite problem. We watched Hellboy a couple weeks ago, and the most interesting and engaging human character (as opposed to Hellboy himself) in the entire movie was the young Professor Bruttenholm. I spent most of the movie with part of my mind sad and cranky that we didn't get to see more of him. (And, no, lovely as John Hurt is, the old professor was not an adequate substitute.) So the prologue backfired a little.
no subject
Yours I would snap up.
no subject
You'd probably like other Kate Elliotts as well, but do try Jaran if you get the chance.
Matter of wether its dun right
no subject
(I know there are formal names for each part of a TV episode, Acts I think they're called, but I can never remember how they're structured.)
In TV episodes, after the first time through an episode, they're wicked easy to fast-forward through without loss of data, because, in the horror/SF genre of which The X-Files and Supernatural are made, they spend a long, theoretically-tense three minutes telling you that aforementioned dead teenagers have gotten that way via exciting new methods of death, which unfortunately the network censors will not allow to be seen. I can spare three minutes for mood-setting on a first viewing, but after that -- blah blah moody rainy darkness, blah blah something's up, blah blah blood and screaming blahbiddy blah. MOving right along!
(There is no magic in my heart.)
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My own (tentative) conclusion is that prologues aren't always genre-expected. I do think that's true of writers who feel that fantasy must be Tolkien-shaped because that's all there is. (That especially propogates the dreary prologue that begins with the family of gods and there was one who was Evial from the beginning who got thrown into a cave, and when he or she popped out after ten thousand years, he she set immediately about Revenge....Power Rangers did that niftily in ten seconds flat: Rita pops out of her crashed module and exclaims, "Then thousand years ago they imprisoned me, but I'm free! Now to conquer Earth!")
I think prologues that readers hate also happen because there's a divide between what authors want to tell and what readers want to read. That is, the author already knows the world and all its faboo details, and wants to dazzle the reader with them ASAP, while the new reader just wants to know where she is, whom to follow, and what's happening, or better, what's going to happen next. I've been talking extensively to a couple of writres about this, and then spent hours and hours poring over reader reviews on Amazon (the ones that actually talk about the story, not the cheerleader or nutbar ones) on all kinds of fantasy books, the single similar element being: does it have a prologue.
This conclusion caused me to jet a prologue I'd labored over off and on for two years. Two weeks ago I dumped it. And spent three weeks on the opening of chapter one, trying to scale it down into shape. (And so of course it could be dead-in-the-water wrong.)
Anyway, prologues that match what readers want to know up front, before they've invested any interest in the story, get read. The ones that the already-invested and indeed dedicated author thinks ought to go there, are usually the ones people say they skipped.
no subject
And you'd think from the way they all do that that Tolkien must have summarised the events of the Silm in the LotR prologue, or at the very least Sauron's previous fall instead of talking about hobbits and tobacco.
no subject
A problem, I have found, with some infodump prologues is that the author then forgets to put all that information in the text where I need it to interpret the action. It's a failure of storytelling if I have to keep flipping back to the prologue to figure out what the hell the characters are talking about now.
no subject
Interestingly, the new series I'm working on, I am resolutely not using prologues, which I used together with epilogues in all the volumes of the previous series. It's interesting how, even if you are starting with material that drops back in time, if you conceive as chapter one it changes the way you interact with the material.
no subject
---L.
no subject
... okay, I've scanned my shelves and I've found one worthwhile prologue, in Laura Kinsale's My Sweet Folly. It's so good, in fact, that the rest of the book has trouble living up to it.
Elsewhere, someone compared readers to ducklings. They imprint on the first reasonably sympathetic character they meet. If that happens to be the serial killer whose childhood trauma you decided to explore in your prologue, the poor reader is going to have to wrench her sympathy over to the real protagonist later. Or perhaps you're showing the serial killer actually killing someone instead, in which case the reader has to wade through all sorts of unpleasantness before she gets to bond with the protag.
I have basically the same problem with historical prologues. If everyone in the prologue is dead by the time the real story begins, why should we care about any of it? Get on with the current conflict and have the designated exposition fairy explain the relevant events later.
There's a lot to be said for getting the protagonist and his conflict onto the first page, or at least the first chapter.
no subject
{goes off to tattoo this on several prominent writers' typing-fingers...}
no subject
George RR Martin does really irritating prologues like that, and Hambly does one as bad as your McKillip example in Circles of the Moon. (All I can remember of The Book of Atrix Wolfe is the food.)
But I just read (and loved) a novel by Pat Rothfuss to be published next year called The Name of the Wind which started off with a prologue that made me groan, and consider suggesting that he cuts it, but which it then repeats at the end with minor variations as an epilogue, by which point it is totally resonant, partly because of all the middle and partly because I slogged through it before without a clue what it was about. So I'd say that retroactively it worked extremely well, even though I didn't like it at the time -- and it's only about a page and a half.