Books I won't read, Part 2

Following on the last "Books I won't read"...

Any book in which the first chapter (prologue, etc.) is rendered entirely in italics. Won't read it.

If for some reason the chapter is so disconnected from the rest of the story that it needs to be set in italics, just eliminate it. Cut it out entirely. Chances are better than good it won't affect the story at all.

If you insist on including a superfluous prologue that only serves to delay the start of your story, at the very least print it in a regular font. Pages of italics are annoying as hell to read.

Comments

[Dave White]

Uh oh.

[David J. Montgomery]

Ha!

Clearly this isn't a hard and fast rule, as I didn't even notice that about The Evil That Men Do.

[I.J.Parker]

Funny! I think you're right about italics, though I had never thought about it. They are supposed to be attention- getters.

I use prologues, not always, but often enough to be aware that some people dislike this format. I do not put them into italics. Usually they show a crime being committed, sometimes in an effort to bring attention to the victim -- a character all too often neglected in mysteries. Sometimes, they are meant to draw the reader into a world where violence disrupts ordinary lives.
The other alternative to draw the reader in is to start in medias res (italics here?) and have the body in the first few pages, but that has become so common a ploy that it doesn't work for me (the reader) any longer.

[David J. Montgomery]

I'll confess that I'm not a huge fan of prologues. (I'm not sure what it is really... But for some reason they kinda bug me.) However, a well done prologue will work, just like anything else.

But the italics! Why the italics? It's so unpleasant to read several pages of them at a time. Especially in ARCs, which often have strange typesetting to begin with.

[Guyot]

My 2 cents on prologues...

People who say they don't like them - if it was the exact same words but said chapter 1 instead of prologue at the top, you would never notice anything.

Prologue or chapter 1 - it's all the same.

Now, italics is another thing and I agree that would be annoying.

Books I won't read - anything self-published. I've tried too many times and have always been disappointed.

[David J. Montgomery]

The thing about prologues -- and really I'm only talking about BAD prologues here -- is that they so often seem superfluous and they delay the start of the real story. They're set 30 years before, or feature unrelated characters, told in a different POV or tense or voice -- none of which is ever visited again. (I've also read a couple of books recently in which the prologue effectively spoiled a significant portion of the book's suspense.) So I read the prologue and ask myself: is this necessary for the reader to understand the story? If it's not, I think it would usually be better to leave it out.

Beginnings of stories are such fragile things...They shouldn't be messed with without very good cause.

[Deborah]

As Dave said, if a prologue is good, it's good.

But I tend to dislike them too. Most of the time, it seems to me that prologues are a writer's tool--it helped her or him enter the telling of the story. They're usually not of much service to the reader.

And, I disagree with Guyot that a prologue is indistinguishable from a first chapter. Usually the reason a prologue exists is because the author wants the passage to differ significantly from the voice/context/whatever of the main narrative. If most prologues were printed as if they were first chapters, the reader would be going "huh??" after a couple of chapters, because there would be such a big shift.

I would say, go ahead and write a prologue if it helps you as a writer. But at some point, go back and ask yourself if it's truly necessary. Please also apply this rule to song lyrics, dreams and e-mail messages appearing in novels.

However, I love reading afterwords, acknowledgments and author's notes at the end of books! Is that typical?

[Guyot]

It's interesting what Deborah says - I just pulled eight books off my shelf that all have prologues and are all by well known authors... and each one is indistinguishable from a first chapter.

Also, I know of at least two bestselling authors who told stories at conferences about writing prologues and then simply calling them chapter one at an editor's appeal.

I think what Deborah is talking about is how a prologue should be written, but that doesn't mean they are.

[J.D. Rhoades]

So if a prologue is indistinguishable from a first chapter, who cares what it's called? Are you saying you'd read the thing if it was captioned "Chapter One" and not if it was captioned "Prologue", even if the content was exactly the same? I'm sorry, but this strikes me as silly.

[David J. Montgomery]

You forgot the part about the italics.

[Guyot]

I don't think Dusty is paying attention.

[Elaine Flinn]

"Please also apply this rule to song lyrics, dreams and e-mail messages appearing in novels."

Add to the above - deatailed trips in a car listing every street, intersection and the song being played while going from hither to yon. I don't need to know every street the protag drove on his/he way to catch a killer. :)

[Debra Hamel]

"Please also apply this rule to song lyrics, dreams and e-mail messages appearing in novels."

I *hate* reading dream sequences in novels. It's one thing to suspend disbelief and immerse myself in a fictional world. But I don't want to then enter a fictional world within that fictional world. Besides, how often does one have really telling dreams in real life? Also, it can seem kind of desperate, an easy way of getting something across about a character--easy because it's all made up and thus doesn't have to fit into the plot.

[David J. Montgomery]

I usually skip dream sequences... There's just something so artificial about them.

Another tired gimmick: fake newspaper articles.

[Elaine Flinn]

And writers describing characters by having them look in the mirror. Yes, that's still being done. :)

I agree about the dream things! Most people couldn't interpret their own dreams let alone their characters.

[Doug Riddle]

Prologues...well I agree and disagree (big surprise there).

The use of italics doesn't bother me since I just figure that is an editor trying to be creative, and probably not the author.

As for prologues in general, I want in them excatly what David doesn't want. I only want them if the information in them is from 30 yrs ago, the character in them is not going to appear again, etc., because if the information in them is from just before the start of chapter 1, and the charcter is in the rest of the story, well, then that is chapter 1.

Also with a prologue I prefer them in a thriller (Berry, Rollins, Cussler, etc.) rather then in a mystery. But that is not a hard and fast rule if it is done well.

[Patrick Balester]

To be effective, italics (and prologues), need to be used sparingly.

[Cheryl]

David's "rules" have to leave a lot of wiggle room. A couple of days ago on another forum, I mentioned the book "Who is Conrad Hirst" by Kevin Wignall. David commented that he really liked that book. Since that book starts with 3 pages of italics, imagine my surprise when I saw this blog. (To be fair, the italics are used to indicate a letter, but...)

[David J. Montgomery]

As Cheryl rightly points out, I'm lousy at following rules -- even my own.

Witness the selection of Wignall's Who Is Conrad Hirst? as the Book of the Week back in November, or the glowing review I gave it in the Chicago Sun-Times.(Okay, you can't actually witness the review in the Sun-Times, because once again they have purged their website of the content that would make people want to visit the site. But trust me, it was a rave.)

[Clea Simon]

I used to feel guilty for starting my books with brief prologues. Then I realized that Henning Mankell uses then extensively. Also some Christies, so at least I know where I get it from.

[spyscribbler]

People have such passionate feelings about prologues; I don't understand it. I know someone who refuses to read them. Just skips them! Without any regard for whether it's necessary and well-done or not.

This horrifies the writer in me. Dear God, I hate to think of a reader skipping any word I write.

;-)

Personally, I could care less whether someone calls something a Prologue or Chapter One. Or The Beginning.