Usage Of Prologues/Epilogues - What's Your Take On Them?

I like prologues...like in Harry Potter you get to know what happened to everyone without reading yet another book.

I think prologues are trickier to use effectively.

A lot of people are against them. I'm not, really, if they are needed and add to the story. Fantasy uses them a lot. I could be wrong (someone correct me if so) but it seems that fantasy probably uses them more than any other genre.

I write fantasy and don't use prologues--simply because I haven't needed one yet. It wouldn't have supported the story. I have used an epilogue to clean everything up.

I don't see why they would give the entire story away, really. Most prologues contain an event from earlier in the MC's life, or a historical event that the reader needs to know from the POV of an earlier figure from the world. I think the key, as always, is that it's well written, engaging, and necessary to support the story.

I have a trilogy in print. The second and third books have prologues and the third has an epilogue. While each can stand alone the prologues relieve the need to rewrite the preceding book. It's a catch you up kinda device. If readers read then, fine. If not that's fine too. Skipping them won't harm the read.
C

A recent thread.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113417&highlight=Prologues

Entering the word Prologues (then a new search for Epilogues) in the Search function in the Writing Novels sub-forum will give many old threads on this topic, too, if interested.

I probably replied in one of the other threads at some point. *shrug* I'm one of the people who don't despise prologues, and find it bizarre that many people actually skip reading them (I've had people apparently skip my prologues, which I found stupid, because there's actual story in them!). I've come to understand WHY people do this (prologues are often just a shoddy excuse for setting up the story with a longwinded explanation; ditto with epilogues, in ending), but it's sad that readers overgeneralize so. One can at least peek at the prologue and epilogue to see if that's the kind they are.

That being said, I think prologues and epilogues are just fine and have their place, in the stories that require them. Some stories don't. As for what genres these are, what stories need them or not, or what exactly should be in a prologue or epilogue, I can't answer because it's very individual and varies widely.

The only clear thing I can say is, apparently one should not use them just for infodumps of explanation and story background/summary because people seem to hate that. Though I bet there would be the occasional exception to that, too. *shrug*

*uses prologues/epilogues in her novels but never seems to in her serials, just to keep the chapter numbers consistent, but whose current WIP's first part reads like a prologue*

RObert Jordan's Wheel of Time series begins with a prologue which is VERY hooking but it's a spoiler for the entire book, more or less.

I've read a lot of paranormal romance that have prologues and/or epilogues. I've also read a great many fantasy and science fiction novels with them, even the occasional mystery or thriller. I don't think a prologue or epilogue is genre specific.

I have no problem with prologues, in fact I use them myself quite often. I use them to give the reader important background information that takes place before the actual story begins. And I like epilogues because I always want to know what happens next.

I was taught that the purpose of prologues and epilogues was to give you a piece of the story that is outside the time in which the main story takes place. So if you need to know what happened in the kingdom 250 years (or 8 months) ago or what the prophecy said, etc. in order to understand the environment in which the story occurs, it makes sense. If you want to indicate that the end of the story wasn't the END of the character's experience, epilogues work. Then again, I was taught a loooong time ago!

Melenka said:

I was taught that the purpose of prologues and epilogues was to give you a piece of the story that is outside the time in which the main story takes place. So if you need to know what happened in the kingdom 250 years (or 8 months) ago or what the prophecy said, etc. in order to understand the environment in which the story occurs, it makes sense. If you want to indicate that the end of the story wasn't the END of the character's experience, epilogues work.

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This is how I usually treat prologues; they tend to cover things that happened long before the current story but have an important bearing on it. I think, also, this is where lots of writers go wrong with prologues, by just telling all the stuff that happened in the past ("Long ago there was a great war in the kingdom of Such-And-Such, leading to dissension between the different peoples. In this time a great warrior arose, bla bla bla..."), rather than showing it as an actual part of the story. Hence the dreaded "infodump prologue" that has turned so many people off of reading prologues entirely.

I'm a little different with epilogues. I don't like to flash-forward to the far future in my stories. Epilogues for me are usually just to tie up loose ends after the climax--what the characters are going to go off and do now, how everything clears up, etc. I hate stories that end right at the climax so the epilogue is my denouement, the winding-down period.

Melenka said:

I was taught that the purpose of prologues and epilogues was to give you a piece of the story that is outside the time in which the main story takes place. So if you need to know what happened in the kingdom 250 years (or 8 months) ago or what the prophecy said, etc. in order to understand the environment in which the story occurs, it makes sense. If you want to indicate that the end of the story wasn't the END of the character's experience, epilogues work. Then again, I was taught a loooong time ago!

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That's the most classic use of the prologue. You haven't been taught wrong. But there are other and more trickier usages.

AmusingMuse said:

I am curious to see what everyone thinks about the usage of prologues or epilogues. What genre usually uses them more than others? What would they contain without giving the entire story away in the first read, etc.

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I think fantasy and SF has the most number of prologues. Unfortunately almost all of them sucks. They are unconnected with the story, or they don't hook the reader at all, and all the bad things that make people dislike them.

To Darzian: I have read WoT prologue, i could stand it. But I couldn't stand the rest of the book past page 50.

Now, what I think.
I like prologues that are connected to the main story, that contains one of the major characters, that have a specific purpose -not just to fill background information.
A frame structure can work (in that case prologue and epilogue are just the frames, may introduce the narrator). What I really like is a full-circle story, where the prologue/epilogue device gives its best.

Otherwise, without prologue, the epilogue can be used effectively as denouement - that is probably the best way.

Bufty said:

A recent thread.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113417&highlight=Prologues

Entering the word Prologues (then a new search for Epilogues) in the Search function in the Writing Novels sub-forum will give many old threads on this topic, too, if interested.

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And entering the word "prologues" into a thread title will make a good 30% of the posters here have a massive coronary.

How many authors write prologues and call them "Chapter 1"?

hammerklavier said:

How many authors write prologues and call them "Chapter 1"?

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The trend I'm seeing is for people not to title their prologues at all.