Prologue Power

I’m currently reading an advance copy of The Hollow Boys by Tariq Ashkanani. I opened it up and dived in to chapter one.

It works. Straight into the action of the story, short chapters revealing one character after another. Progressing the plot with each section. It’s what good genre fiction does.

When I watch a film at the cinema, I’m one of those people who likes to watch all the adverts and trailers before the film starts and I stay for the credits at the end. If those two elements were not there, I don’t feel like I would be getting the whole experience.

I think I’m like that with books, too.

I like a prologue.

And I’ve always written one.

Sometimes, writers will add a prologue because they’ve opted for a slow build from chapter one. I love a slow burn and I love a prologue, but not if the prologue is acting as a safety net for that gentle start, it has been misused. The prologue should not be an apology, it should be a complement.

I think it’s a great place to hook a reader, to set up the tone of the novel, to perhaps give the reader some information that the characters are not aware of.

I’ve always written one. With The Beresford, I opened with an obituary. It’s for a character that does not show up until page 230 but it was there to pose questions, immediately. There was also some key information that hinted at something that bubbled throughout the book. And it was something that could be forgotten that would register after the realisation near the end. (Sometimes, I’m too clever for my own good.)

In Hinton Hollow Death Trip, I had to establish the tone of the novel and how my narrator - Evil - was going to deliver the story. The prologue was probably 15 pages long, but it absolutely set up the idea that Evil was a character and would lead the reader through the story in his idiosyncratic way.

There have been times that I have written a prologue after I’ve finished a book but, mostly, it’s the first thing I do after I have researched and planned.

MEA Today, September ‘97

I’ve just finished doing this for the new novel I plan to write this year. The attached image is taken from an education magazine from 1997 - when the events of the book occur.

It’s set in Montana over the long weekend of the annual Education convention, where teachers get an extra day off to listen to people like Yvonne Andres talk about the power of the web in the classroom, and kids get to cut loose before the bad weather hits.

I’ve written the prologue. And I like it.

I’ve also noticed that, while my subscribers are up by 50%, my paid subscribers are down by 33%. So, this is just for you because you should getting shit that others are not.