Dialogue in Prologue Question

Katzie said:

After Nathan Bransford's interesting post about the challenge of beginning a novel with dialogue, I started wondering about my decision to begin my prologue with dialogue. I realize that a prologue isn't always necessary and that many people skip over them all together. With that in mind, I only added one because my novel starts off a little slowly and I thought it might add a little intrigue for the reader who actually reads it. It's only about 3 pages (446 words) and was wondering if I could post it here to gain some perspective from other writers. Is that ok or should I ask about posting it in the beta reader section?

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If your prologue is a scene, go ahead and start it with dialogue.

If your prologue is an infodump, scrap it.

If you want a prologue because your novel starts slowly, fix your novel so that it starts better.

Dale

Post it in SYW and see if it hooks anyone.

Why can't it be the first chapter?

It's also certainly possible to grab readers with a slow, but interesting and enticing beginning.

IMO, nothing's too short to stand alone as a chapter. I have a couple that are one or two sentences long, but I guess I'm weird like that

Try posting the dialogue in SYW and see what people think.

I like dialogue and I like books that start with it. What I don't like is when a book starts with dialogue and it isn't until halfway down the page that you find out who the speaker is. So, I'd say, if it works, do it, but make sure you don't have disembodied voices at the very beginning, that is unless the voice is supposed to be disembodied.

TrickyFiction said:

What I don't like is when a book starts with dialogue and it isn't until halfway down the page that you find out who the speaker is. So, I'd say, if it works, do it, but make sure you don't have disembodied voices at the very beginning, that is unless the voice is supposed to be disembodied.

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I hate disembodied voices, too. But what I don't mind is if, solely from the dialogue, the author manages to convey the hook, the setting, and give you some idea of the characters talking, all without tags, and still manage avoid all the "As you know, Bob" infodump cliches while doing it. That's a way to grab a reader.

Katzie said:

I don't know that the novel starting slowly is a bad thing and I have done some work to it to eliminate unnecessary drag. I guess right now I'm wondering how an agent would see the scene since it seems that opening a novel with dialogue opens it to harsher or quicker judgement.

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Trouble is, the agent won't read the prologue right away. Many folks will include the first five pages with queries (whether sent email or snail mail), but those are the first five pages of chapter one.

If chapter one is slow, work on solving that first. Tacking on a prologue of dialogue that makes sense by Chapter Nine feels like an episode of television where they decided to tease you with thirty seconds from the middle of the show, just because the first half hour wasn't quite interesting enough.

If the dialog is good and hooks readers, fine. If not, cut it. Same as anything else I'd have to agree with some of the other posters. If the first chapter drags, you're MUCH better off fixing that than adding a prologue or worrying about the first line.

I also dislike the "preview" device. Tricking them into staying won't get them to stay for long if the stuff between the tease and C9 isn't working.

Katzie said:

Hello -

After Nathan Bransford's interesting post about the challenge of beginning a novel with dialogue, I started wondering about my decision to begin my prologue with dialogue. I realize that a prologue isn't always necessary and that many people skip over them all together. With that in mind, I only added one because my novel starts off a little slowly and I thought it might add a little intrigue for the reader who actually reads it. It's only about 3 pages (446 words) and was wondering if I could post it here to gain some input from other writers. Is that ok or should I ask about posting it in the beta reader section?

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A prologue is just like anything else in the book -- scenes, etc. So I don't see why having dialogue in the prologue is a problem.

But if you like, post it in SYW. You may get some wonderful advice.

However, what concerns me is bolded. Why does your novel start off a little slowly? Why do you think you need a prologue to pump up the "intrigue"? For me, the first chapter should stand on its own and if it's too slow, then you'll have a problem, and a prologue is not going to fix that.

If I may attempt to answer your question Maestro (I apologise to the OP for stepping on any toes) . . .

While I agree that every chapter in a book should be correct for the telling of it, and be interesting in and of itself, I can kind of get what the OP is talking about.

When I first sent out my MS to agents I realised that before I did I had a bit of a problem. My first chapter was quite old fashioned children's lit. It established who my MC was, where she lived, etc. There was also not one ounce of dialogue in it. Now I really liked my opening chapter, I felt it set the tone, you got a great sense of the narrator's voice, and it was important to the story. But. I did feel that in a children's book there should be dialogue early on to break up the swathes of text. I also wanted to make sure to get some of the humour across, which started much more slowly in chapter one.

And so I decided to create a prologue that did just that. Now of course once I did write the prologue, I had to make it work within the context of the story, but the original reason for writing it was simply to solve a problem.

This I submitted to agents, and once I had one she worked with me to fix chapter one so that truly it was the first two chapters squished together, which helped to bring dialogue into it. However we still kept the prologue, because it worked for the story.

At any rate, obviously in theory you don't want to just write a prologue for reasons outside of the story, but the impetus to may come from less than literary aspirations. My only reason at first for writing the prologue was to get some dialogue going right at the start, but I had to then make sure the prologue suited the story. Whatever reason we choose to write something, that shouldn't matter in my opinion. So long as we then make it work.

Here's my experience with this prologue issue. I had a first chapter that helped establish what happened 300 years before (to give a hint that history could repeat itself and to provide some backstory of the MC, who was at this "event"). It got cut from 12 pages down the 4 pages during revisions, based on advice from betas. Then, based on what later betas told me, they were confused about where that 1st chapter fit in with the rest of the story, even though I told them it would become clear later on (Ch 12). Finally, for the sake of reader clarity, I ended up cutting the chapter completely and weaving in the necessary info in subsequent chapters. I think it's a stronger novel now because the reader starts off plunged into the current conflict, but that's just my opinion.

Of course, certain writers (like Meyer) are notorious for having prologues that are a 1 page blip into the middle of the climax to get the reader's attention. So in other words, do what's best for you.

I never skip dialogue, i skip, what's around it (usually too much and bogs it down).

Said this, I have dialogue in my prologue too and I think it works. I dont see why yours shouldnt.

TrickyFiction said:

What I don't like is when a book starts with dialogue and it isn't until halfway down the page that you find out who the speaker is.

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I second this, that is BAD dialogue.

There are good and bad examples of prologues. There are good and bad examples of stories that open slowly. There are good and bad examples of dialogue openers. The best advice will come from seeing the actual text.

Cheers,
Rob

maestrowork said:

Why does your novel start off a little slowly? Why do you think you need a prologue to pump up the "intrigue"? For me, the first chapter should stand on its own and if it's too slow, then you'll have a problem, and a prologue is not going to fix that.

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For the most part, I agree with you. But Water for Elephants did this pretty successfully (used a kind of prologue to create intrigue because the beginning was slow). I wasn't particularly fond of that book, but a lot of people were and even I could see it was very well written. So, while I agree, I also think anything can work if it's done well.