What is it about prologues?Do you love or hate them? Dad’s
Red Dress, my first published novel this year, had a prologue I loved. I only pulled it
years after my first draft. It’s not in the finished book but I had a sneaky
idea I might be able to squeeze it into the sequel. Now I’m working on that,
I don’t think there’s any place for it.
Yet it gave my book its name. It said so much about the tone of the book and the central character and her dilemma and I still love that little short page. (I’ve attached it at the end so you can make up your own mind.)
So what about the novel I’m finishing now, The Angelica Touch? It had a
prologue too but I completely forgot about it until I came upon an older draft.
Back in
2012, I set up a First Chapters Club for writers to share chapters and everyone there loved my prologue. One said they wept with laughter. So why isn’t it in this draft?
I’m not entirely sure but the
event it describes was peeled out only in this draft, when an editor suggested it was too bizarre, especially as it contained on colourful character that
never reappeared in the story.
Only now I'm torn. I’m gathering in feedback from beta readers, getting ready to do a
final (is it ever a final?) edit and I’m feeling a little homesick for it. So I'm curious, what do other writers and readers think about prologues?
“Red or
pink?”
Hi. My name is Jessie.
My Dad is standing in front of me asking me to help him choose between two
dresses. “Red.” It’s a no-brainer. And yes, my Dad.
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. It hides your knees.”
“What’s
wrong with my knees?!”
Gramma
says knees are the ugliest part of the human body, but Gaffa says that someone
somewhere probably thinks knees are downright gorgeous. I’m not sure. You
couldn’t call Dad’s knees gorgeous. Not even if you were, well, desperate and very,
VERY short sighted.
And a
bit crazy.
But I’m
in one of my ‘nothing bothers me’ moods so I give him a hug and say, “Nothing.
You have lovely knees.”
They’re
very easily pleased, Dads. Give them a hug and they’ll believe anything. Don’t
get me wrong – ‘cos people often do; it’s something about being nearly thirteen
that makes everyone get you wrong - I
love my Dad to bits. But sometimes when the ‘bits’ are heels as tall as well
the tallest thing I can’t think of right now, then the ‘bits’ are a bit confusing.
“Red it is, so.
Scarlett Johannson eat your heart out,” he says, whoever she is.
Or he.
You can’t be sure with
parents.
And then he whips out
two pairs of shoes. “Pumps or heels?”
