Friday, December 16, 2016

Prologue and Epilogue: To Use Them or Not?

Our Round Robin topic this month is on the use (or not) of a prologue and epilogue in a novel.

pro·logue ˈprōˌlôɡ/
noun
1.     a separate introductory section of a literary or musical work.
"this idea is outlined in the prologue"
synonyms:
o   an event or action that leads to another event or situation.
"civil unrest in a few isolated villages became the prologue to widespread rebellion"

Authors have often been told that agents and editors do not like prologues, nor do readers bother to read them. If that is the case, why do some authors (holding my hand up here) use them?

At best they can depict an important clue to an inciting incident, character or plot, at worst they become the dreaded ‘info dump’. They should be shorter rather than longer. A Regency romance by a New York Times best-selling author that I read recently had a prologue that ran over several pages. By the time I reached Chapter 1, I felt cheated of my reading time because by then I was well into a story that seemed to be starting all over again. The epilogue in the same book, on the other hand, was barely three pages long.

When I wrote His Dark Enchantress, I chose to use a prologue to show the incident that made my heroine want to remain something of a recluse. In the epilogue, that incident is resolved. In both instances, there is a marked time-frame of three years between the incident and the start of Chapter 1 and several months between the end of the last chapter and the epilogue.

I had considered working the information into my text with flashbacks, but there’s another issue. Flashbacks, if not introduced with some circumspection, can be clumsy and obtrusive and slow the pace of a book. If I were writing that book today, I might choose to exclude the prologue and epilogue entirely and find another way to introduce that same information, probably through dialogue.

When I wrote that prologue I wanted my character’s strength and loyalty to be immediately evident, so that the reader would understand her actions as they got into the story. In that book I used the epilogue to not only give closure to the story, but to also set up for a sequel. I think that using a prologue and epilogue is really determined by the story.

As an instance, I have read several thrillers where the prologue inevitably shows some past murder which is then solved in the body of the book. These types of books need not necessarily have an epilogue. There is no rule that I can discover that says if you have a prologue you have to have an epilogue. In the romance genre, many books will have both. In a romance, an epilogue is often a handy vehicle to get a pregnancy out of the way without suffering the heroine’s pangs of morning sickness, stomach cramps and food cravings.

ep·i·logueˈepəˌlôɡ,ˈepəˌläɡ/
noun
1.     a section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened.
synonyms:
"the book is summarized in the epilogue"
So there you have it! Now visit these authors for their take on the subject.


13 comments:

  1. One of the things I love about doing these round robins is seeing everyone's take on the subject. More often than not, I find that most of us agree, but how we reach that conclusion is always different.

    Prologues and epilogues are out of favor now with agents. (I was on a panel with an agent a few weeks ago. He was virulently opposed to both.) Generally, I would agree, but I think this is a mistake. There are times when a well-written prologue and/or epilogue (if done right) adds a lot to the story. The problem is that they rarely are.

    I have used them in my books, but I don't like them to be more than a few pages long.

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  2. The longer I've been writing, the more ways I learn to incorporate backstory into the text.

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  3. Hi Victoria!
    As I stated in my post, it all depends, but agree that I don't like it when the prologue gives away information that would be better placed within the actual story.

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    1. The more I read the more I'm beginning to see why agents and editors hate 'em!

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  4. I agree - prologues that are nothing more than eloquent info dumps are a drag. Just as bad as having info dumps in the main body of the story, but we all seem drawn to considering them when there is a significant time lapse between the prologue or epilogue and the main body of the story. I guess the answer is - BE such a remarkable writer with characters the readers can't get enough of and they'll read every word.

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  5. Victoria, how brilliant! You have added another logue, one that works well: not prologue or epilogue, but dialogue!
    :)
    Bob

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    1. I put that other logue in just to see who caught it! 10 out of 10 for Dr. Bob.

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  6. A good post, and thanks for suggesting it. The opinions very and are interesting. I agree with an epilogue if it's used as a set up for a sequel. And yes, a prologue and epilogue is really determined by the story.

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  7. What I find so interesting about these posts is that while opinions do differ, we ultimately are not very different.

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  8. I love reading the responses here. The best news is that as writers we are free to use or not use the prologue and epilogue. Like food, we all have different tastes and must determine what's best for the story.
    JQ Rose

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    1. Thanks for stopping by. And you are correct, at the end of the day it is what's best for the story!

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  9. Hi Victoria, Sorry to take so long to get here - it's a busy time of year. I enjoyed thinking about thei issue and thank you for suggesting it. I don't use either myself and that's probably because I often writes around a chapter's worth of settling in material and then delete. It's in my head by then and maybe I leave the reader to work for it a little. Oh dear - one of the problems of moving from writing for the stage to writing novels is adding enough narrative. I may need to re-think. In the meantime - I think you're right to say it depends on the book. anne stenhouse

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