To Prologue or not to Prologue

Agree, if the Prologue adds to the overall enjoyment of the novel, stick on in there. My first book has one, and I think it works great.
CJ

Dirk, the details about who's who, how they got there, why they're foes follows. It's the novel itself. The point of this kind of prologue is to evoke those kinds of questions and motivate the reader to read on to find out. So maybe the question is--how many readers have felt the need to move on to find out what the hell is happening, and how many were are just confused and don't care about finding out?

True enough vern. I could label the prologue 'chapter one,' and then preface it with 'sometime in the future.'  Then Chapter two prefaced with 'the present.' But the concern was more whether the scene adds anything. I think it does, as it shows where various conflicts merge and the core of the central conflict. Everything leads up to the point in the prologue or flows from it. And it's meant to make the reader ask questions that the novel will answer.

This is what I think:

From my perspective, there are four kind of prologues:
a) Personal
b) Academic.
c) Background.
d)Teasers.

a) Personal prologues: The author shares with the reader a personal moment, or the reason why she wrote the book, or the particular feelings the story raises within the author, etc.

b) Academic prologues. These are the prologues in which a recognised voice (such a celebrity of some kind, such as an actor, a known college dean, a politician, etc) introduces the book to readers, usually by praising its content. Sometimes, but not always, the prologue may focus on issues around the book such as the writer’s personal story and motivations. Or the story’s background. I.e., if the story is about WWII, the prologue on the European political situation during it.

c) Background prologues. These prologues provide background to the story. These are the ones I believe some other people in this forum have indicated may be used as Chapter One or Chapter Zero. The Lord of the Rings has a large prologue from the author that is mostly background, and only because the Silmarillion hadn’t been published yet and Tolkien felt the need to update the reader on some Middle Earth details unknown to the reader that may hinder the reader’s ability to grasp the whole Middle Earth thingie.

IMHO, what makes this kind of prologues an actual prologue, and the reason why they can’t be turned into Chapter One, is because they provide background that can otherwise be provided within the story, but not at the beginning of it, or else, that can be omitted at all without damaging the story. If you cut The Lord of the Ring’s prologue, you can still read and enjoy the whole story, and grab what the author wanted to transmit, without losing anything.

d) Teasers: In these cases, the prologue is usually an extract—a scene—from a later chapter. This extract either actually exists, or is a scene otherwise not narrated but that took place between two scenes, or chapter, that ARE narrated. It may also be “Had I known…” type of prologue narrated by the MC at a point in time after the whole story has taken place. It vaguely discusses the bad consequences of whatever took place in the story, which might have been prevented by the MC “had she known…” The objective of this type of prologues is to grab the reader’s attention before she has even laid her eyes on page one.

Rachel: from your answer to Dirk, it’s my belief you’re writing a teaser. IMHO, just make sure the teaser is no so obscure it scares readers away rather than luring them to your story.

Kiss,
Gacela

Gacela, yes, that's the challenge--a teaser that isn't too obscure and actually relates to the story.

jp:
The secret of good world-building is to have the characters take their world for granted and to write for people in that world. I call it the John Campbell dictum, as he told his writers to do that. I find to do this, one simply models writers who are writing in our world but in sub-universe of it that their readers might not know.  For example, "The Women's Murder Club." Maxine Petrine goes into detail about San Francisco but has it revealed by the characters navigating around the city. We find the methodology and the hierarchy of the police force by Lindsey navigating it. In this novel, the reader is assumed to have heard of the Silver Wheel, but no details are provided and they can guess it's a powerful witch's society by use of terms like 'nun,' 'sorcery,' and 'Don't mess with the Silver Wheel.'  Offworlder is a play on outlander, or foreigner, to refer to aliens. The Marines are modeled after the United States Marines (semper fi) although obviously globalist.

No long descriptions like Gormenghast. And as to long introductions being accepted by fantasy readers, I rest my case.  100-page introduction. The Lord of the Rings?  Hey, it turned into a book in its own right--the Hobbit.

Other writers, e.g., Fritz Leiber, jump right into Lankmahr, but from context, you know it's in the desert. You know there are Viking-like Northerners from Fafred.

I think that, yes, if you find that the prologue doesn't really play a part in the hero's story, then it's best to drop it. Although, again from "The Women's Murder Club," one story had an incident at the beginning of the book which played no role at all, except that after the main plot was done, there was a tie-in, pretty artificial.  I suspect James Patterson gave it to Maxine as a Writing Prompt, it worked but left a big question that needed to be tied in. Whatever gets the creative daemon off her butt.

Oh, and Merriam-Webster defines 'conflictual' as the adjective form of conflict and 'instinctual' as the adjective form of instinct. 'Instinctually' is the adverb form.

You are right that all novels, at least (literature is a bit broad and I'm sure there are counter-examples) are supposed to revolve around conflict, which makes them conflictual. My point was that the first chapters met this criterion but only pointed in the direction of the main conflict, which some "How to Write Good" authors say should be in the first five pages. Again, not hard and fast, as Conrad didn't start his story conflictually (adverb modifying 'start') until page 10.

Thanks, JP. After all this input, I think I will leave the prologue in, more or less as it is, as it only seems to have been confusing to one reader. I think even that reader went on to find out what the heck was going on--which is the point of a "teaser" prologue.