On Writing: The Primrose Path to Prologue

The Prologue Question: To P or not to P?

[image error]Should one choose to tread the primrose path to prologue, ’tis a dalliance I wish not to rede.*

As a judge for the San Diego Book Awards, I recently read about a dozen novels, some as published books, some as unpublished manuscripts. Most of them had prologues—and in every case of a book with a prologue I lowered the author’s score.

The problem?

These so-called prologues either were not prologues, or they were unnecessary, or they could (should) have b...