Let me take a couple of minutes – about all it will take – and let me address the runaway discussion on Twitter/X.
Prologues.
It’s a known fact that most editors (and a lot of literary agents) don’t like prologues and epilogues. They didn’t use to. Many great classic novels had them. Not anymore.
If you’d like to research this, it won’t take long. There’s an editor who does seminars on “Your first 20 pages” who dismisses prologues immediately. I bought a copy of her seminar from the Writers’ Digest online shop. She has this to say:
- I don’t like them
- I don’t read them.
- If your novel does not make sense without it, I reject it.
- If the prologue is that important, why not call it Chapter 1?
This is what she says, not what I think or my opinion. A shame because it makes it so easy to introduce your book with a prologue. That may be why some editors don’t like them – they think it’s lazy writing. It is tell, not show. Essentially, prologues are a place for a narrator to give pre-exposition introducing your world. I understand that.
Most editors reject them.
Many literary agents automatically reject your manuscript as well if they see the first word is “prologue”.
Why would you INSIST on including one, when you know right away it’s an automatic reject from most editors and literary agents?
It’s ridiculous to shoot yourself in the foot just to rebel against editors.
So here’s my not so hot take on the subject, so we can put it to rest.
You have three options:
- rename it chapter one
- self publish and…
- submit your manuscript with a prologue you include out of sheer rebellion, knowing in advance it will be rejected.
If you take option 3, know that I’m going to submit my novels without one, not even disguised as a chapter one. I like to start my novels in media res.
I’d rather see you succeed. Don’t do it. That’s my not so hot take.
But if you insist on it…
…all the less competition for my novel.
