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A question on prologues

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kero319:
Would it work for the prologue of the book to be in a different point of view than the rest of the book?
For instance, a book that is 1st person POV has a 3rd person POV prologue?

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: kero319 on October 16, 2008, 05:28:29 PM ---Would it work for the prologue of the book to be in a different point of view than the rest of the book?
For instance, a book that is 1st person POV has a 3rd person POV prologue?

--- End quote ---

Depends on what you are doing with it.

I would say yes, it's perfectly fine, but so long as there's something specific you are trying to achieve by doing it that way. There is something of a cliche that bad high fantasy starts with prologues setting up the history of the world and conflict in uninspired and tedious detail, so probably best to avoid looking like that.

What's in your prologue that would not be in the rest of the book, and when does it connect on ? I'm fine with prologues not connecting immediately to the main story, but it might be problematic if the book felt like it was going on and on and on without showing you why it had the prologue in the first place.

Myself, I find myself leaning on epilogues from different POVs to tie things up rather more than I would ideally like. Am trying to avoid becoming dependent on that.

meg_evonne:
Just a footnote ---  I've read several agents pages that did not like prologues.  Several others probably do, but I will toss that out for fodder to discuss.  Sorry I wasn't making notes as I lurked through agent postings and blogs so i can't give you details as to locations...   :-)

kero319:
well the prologue i was thinking about would introduce a character, in a different time period, that would come up later in the story, but I couldn't really think of a way to introduce his backstory without it being weird.

Basically
The Prologue would be about character B, 1000 years before the story. My actual story is in 1st person, so I thought it might be confusing if the prologue was 1st person but with a different character.

Ill write up the prologue and ask some people, and maybe post it

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: kero319 on October 17, 2008, 02:07:17 AM ---well the prologue i was thinking about would introduce a character, in a different time period, that would come up later in the story, but I couldn't really think of a way to introduce his backstory without it being weird.

Basically
The Prologue would be about character B, 1000 years before the story. My actual story is in 1st person, so I thought it might be confusing if the prologue was 1st person but with a different character.

Ill write up the prologue and ask some people, and maybe post it

--- End quote ---

Doing that isn't going to answer the question of how well it flows with the rest of the book, though.

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