Prologue question

I recently started submitting queries for my latest novel, and I'm wondering what to do about my prologue when/if I get a request for a partial. My prologue shows a scene in my main character's life after the story takes place; in the timeline, it falls between the last chapter and the epilogue. It's designed to put a lot of questions in the reader's mind, so at first glance including it seems like a good idea.

The problem is, it's written in first person present tense, whereas the rest of the novel is written in third person past tense. I'm worried that an agent will start reading and think, "Ack, no one will publish a novel written in first person present tense," and set it aside.

I can't change the tense of the prologue and epilogue, because then my ending wouldn't work. For the same reason, I can't get rid of the prologue and epilogue entirely. But I'm torn as to whether to include the prologue when I send out a partial. Any thoughts?

Shady Lane said:

Hmm.

How many pages is your prologue?

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Eight.

JanDarby said:

You don't get to explain your story to a reader in a bookstore; don't explain it to an agent.

If you get a request for a partial, just skip the prologue and send in whatever number of pages/chapters they want after that. If they ask for the whole manuscript, send the whole manuscript.

It doesn't matter that the prologue is necessary for the ending to make sense if they only ask for, say, the first three chapters, and you know that the prologue is going to make a bad first impression on them. You just need to make sure those three chapters are good. Agents don't necessarily read all the pages you send, and if they don't like the first five pages, they may never get to the rest, so it's a problem if those first five pages contain elements that you know are things agents say turn them off.

If you've sent them the non-prologue pages, and they then decide they want the whole thing, you'll send them the whole thing, including the prologue and the first three chapters that they've already read. You've already got them hooked, and can risk the prologue.

JD

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This is what I'm leaning towards right now. I'm afraid that if I include a note, the agent won't necessarily read it carefully - after all, the pages are what they're interested in.

Of course, I've still got time to think it over some more.

blacbird said:

If you feel like you should skip the prologue in submitting to the agent, you probably should skip it, period. The agent wants to read the beginning of the book, precisely to see if it has what it takes to interest a reader. If your prologue doesn't do that, you're in trouble.

caw

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It does though, and that's the main reason I'm asking. I think it would do a more effective job of drawing a reader in than the first chapter would (though the first chapter would do it too). But if an agent starts with the prologue, he might think the whole book is written in first person present tense, which from what I've heard is quite hard to sell; I don't want someone rejecting the book based on a flaw that it doesn't have. (I'm not saying my book is perfect, just that I'd much rather it be rejected on the basis of flaws it actually has ) So the choice is whether to use the stronger beginning that's written in the problematic tense, or the less strong beginning that's written the way the rest of the novel is written. (As I said though, the first chapter makes a strong beginning too, so sending a partial without the prologue could work.)

nevada said:

Miss Snark always said, and I agree with her, is never send the prologue with the partial. She was of the opinion that prologues are unnecessary. My question is, if you say that the prologue is better than the first chapter in drawing readers in, why is your first chapter not as good? A lot of readers skip prologues. (Myself included) So instead of getting great writing, I'm going to a chapter that won't draw me in. That doesnt sound right. Maybe you need to re-examine your first chapter and see how to make it more drawing-in like. (I know that's not a word. )

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Like I said, my first chapter is (in my opinion, of course) good at drawing readers in too. (I tried to make them both good hooks, in case I wasn't supposed to send in the prologue with the partial; I didn't know readers often skipped prologues, though.) It's just that I prefer the way the prologue does it.

Of course, if the prologue were unnecessary, I would have cut it out in my revisions But it's not necessary to understand the first three chapters.

For curiosity's sake, since I want to know how a reader would be likely to react to my book... As a reader, if you skipped the prologue of a book and then reached the end and got to an epilogue that looked like it was starting in the middle of a scene, would you go back to the prologue to see if the prologue had the beginning of the scene, or would you just continue reading? Or would you skip the epilogue too?

blacbird said:

Well, isn't that exactly the point? If the prologue is unnecessary (her view), of course you shouldn't include it, in any incarnation of the manuscript. But if you feel it is necessary, it is the beginning of the reader's experience of the novel, which the prospective agent is attempting to judge.

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That's a good point - it is what a potential reader would see first, so maybe it would be best to include it.

Neeli said:

I wonder if you could change the tense of the prologue to the same as the rest of the book. Using 1st person present to set off the prologue as being at a different time is using a crutch. Your writing should make it clear when and who the POV character is. If not, use a header, like they do in the movies.

Award-winning author Robert Sawyer said at a conference I attended that if you do something unusual in your work, something that goes against the grain of the standard, you can do it, but you had better have a very compelling reason to do so. So ask yourself, is it REALLY necessary? Or could you write it without those things that an agent is going to hate?

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It's not done that way to set off the prologue as being at a different time; it's done to make my ending work. Also, to get very deep inside the character's head to see how the rest of the story has affected her. I might be able to go that deep in her head in third person, but the rest of the novel isn't written that way (I use a close third person POV, but not close to the level of first person). I could eliminate that closeness from the prologue and epilogue, but it would lose a lot of its power that way. That said, I'd be willing to look it over again and try it out.

Barbarique said:

If you genuinely feel that the prologue is an integral part of your novel, why on earth would you not include it? Some sort of attempt to "fool" the agent into requesting a full?

Most peculiar, Momma.

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It's an integral part of the novel, but not necessary for understanding the first three chapters. It's not that I want to fool the agent into thinking I don't have a prologue written in first person present tense; it's that I don't want the agent thinking the whole novel is written that way. And since agents are known for often only having enough time to read the first few pages, an agent might not go past the prologue if he thought the novel was written in a hard-to-sell tense (even if he was intrigued by the story), and might not read an included note very carefully (because of that same lack of time).

gp101 said:

Why not make your first chapter do this instead, and call it a day?

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It does But those are more the "What will happen next?" variety; the questions the prologue (hopefully) puts in readers' minds are more the "How did this happen?" variety.