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Are Prologues Dead?

Since the prologue discourse is going around again, I felt compelled to write up my thoughts on it. While I’ve read prologues I didn’t like or thought were unnecessary, I generally still believe that prologues serve a purpose, when they’re used correctly.

So what’s the point of a prologue?
Prologues are for when you have something you need to include that is out of sync with the rest of the novel. Perhaps it happens several months before the main events of the novel. Maybe it involves characters that aren’t the main POV characters, or even characters who are never seen or heard from again. I’ve seen people complain about prologues following characters that never pop up again, or die at the end of it, but sometimes events happen that you want the reader to know about but the POV character wasn’t there. I don’t have any issues with this personally, but it does get a lot of readers asking: why should I care? If you’re going to write a prologue, it has to be extra engaging.

Where do people go wrong?
The top complaints I’ve seen about prologues are they have info dumping or are just generally boring to read. The prologue needs to have a solid hook and a purpose. If I can skip it, as some readers claim they do, and not feel like I missed out on something, then it didn’t need to be there. It should include foreshadowing, world-building, or character development that for some reason can’t be worked into the first chapter(s) instead.

Prologue Examples

+ Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
I feel like Mistborn’s prologue accomplishes its goal rather well, although I do think it goes on a bit longer than it ought to. We get world-building (information about the skaa and noble attitudes toward them, and tidbits about the obligators and Steel Inquisitors) without it feeling like an info dump. This prologue is a way of showing us that nobles aren’t supposed to have children with skaa rather than simply stating it. The chapter also sets up very important superstitions surrounding the mists, which doesn’t come up against for several chapters, and I think introducing this early was a good call on Sanderson’s part. We also meet Kelsier and learn a little bit about him.

+ Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
This prologue follows a character that doesn’t show up again for a long time, and when we do see him he’s dead. Some people might dislike this, but I thought it was very well done. We get to see the incredible power of parem first hand, instead of simply hearing about it from Van Eck later on. We also get some world-building and information about Grisha and Kerch attitudes toward them, which is important for people (like me) who hadn’t read Shadow & Bone prior to starting Six of Crows.

– Shadow & Bone by Leigh Bardugo
While I enjoyed the prologue in Six of Crows, I have opposite feelings toward the one in Shadow & Bone. Part of it was a stylistic thing–it was written in 3rd person instead of 1st, even though Alina (the POV character through the rest of the book) was present, and referred to the main characters as “the boy” and “the girl” instead of their names. It also felt incredibly unnecessary. Everything we learned is neatly explained to us later, and I don’t think we benefitted much from actually seeing it. This is one of those prologues I could have skipped and gone on with my life without having missed anything.

– The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
This prologue just… confused me. I don’t know why it exists. I think it was the author’s attempt to drop us in the middle of the action and get us hooked so they could backtrack and give us history in the first three chapters. Personally, I think Chapter 1’s opening line (“Grace Somerfield was the first to die”) is a perfectly good hook.

The prologue takes place between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, and there’s little indication that this is what happened. I found the gap between the exposition in Chapters 1-3 and the actual plot getting started in Chapter 4 confusing. I honestly feel like the story would have been better served starting with Chapter 1 and putting the prologue between Chapters 3 and 4 where it belongs. At the very least, they could have given us an indication that “hey we went back in time and this is the spot where we catch back up.”

How to decide if your book needs a prologue

I caution writers to really think about whether their prologue is needed. Will your story suffer if you don’t include it? Some readers will dislike seeing one, others might skip it entirely, though the fact that people do this still baffles me.

The bottom line: If you’re going to include a prologue, have a good reason and make it count.

Bad Science: Breaking Dawn

But Nicole! Twilight is a fantasy novel. Why are you bringing science into this?

Well, because Stephanie did. Or tried to.

I understand the impulse to explain magic by tying it to science, but if you’re going to do this, please do the research. This is such a brief part of Breaking Dawn (one chapter!) that it didn’t even need to exist, but it still managed to annoy me.

For those who haven’t read the book or don’t remember, Carlisle and Jacob spend a few paragraphs talking about chromosomes. Specifically, the fact that vampires and werewolves have a different number of chromosome pairs than humans. Humans = 23, werewolves = 24, vampires = 25.

Let’s start off ignoring the fact that getting turned into a vampire means you gain two extra pairs of chromosomes and focus on the faulty reproductive aspect of this. For vampires it matters less, since they’re not supposed to be able to reproduce anyway, but werewolves are another matter. If they have 24 chromosomal pairs, they would only be able to reproduce with other werewolves, lest they produce infertile offspring. The reason this is problematic is the same reason mules are usually sterile. A mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, two species that have a different number of chromosomes. The resulting mule has an odd number of chromosomes (63), which disrupts the process of meiosis.

To really explain this, we’re going to delve deeper into genetics and molecular biology. You may remember meiosis and/or mitosis from biology class. Mitosis is how cells replicate themselves, producing an identical cell with the same number of chromosomes. Meiosis, on the other hand, is how our bodies made sperm and eggs, also known as gametes. We inherit half of our chromosomes from each parents, which means gametes need to have half the number of chromosomes, lest the offspring end up with way too many. During meiosis, chromosomes line up with their pair so they can be separated, producing cells that have only one set of chromosomes instead of two. The fact that mules have an odd number of chromosomes means that last chromosome doesn’t have a pair to buddy up with. This prevents meiosis from being successfully completed, and therefore mules have no sperm or eggs.

So how does this relate to werewolves? Since Meyer makes a point that most werewolves are male (Leah being the exception, blessed her poor tortured soul), it means that werewolves reproduce with humans. The result would be a child with an odd number of chromosomes (remember, humans have 46 chromosomes and werewolves have 48), and therefore they would experience the same reproductive problems as mules. They would be a genetic dead-end and werewolves would cease to exist.

As for the vampires, apparently drinking their blood and then dying somehow infects you with two extra pairs of chromosomes that infiltrate all of your cells and that turns you into a vampire. Vampirism would have to be a virus that can insert itself into your genome, those chromosomes carrying genes that can bring you back from the dead and allow you to exist without a heartbeat or blood.

Wait, did I just explain vampirism? Okay, Stephanie, I’ll give that one to you. But the werewolf thing still doesn’t work.

Update: I forgot to mention that Edward and Bella’s hybrid baby would have 23 pairs and 2 unpaired chromosomes, not 24 pairs as Carlisle implies. It’s an important distinction.