My novel for young adults begins with the heroine looking back to the time before she met her boyfriend. I'm happy with the content, but I am struggling with how to head this section. Prologue looks old-fashioned to my eye, but not to put any heading at all also looks odd. I would be grateful for any comments.

I can't put my hands on my copy, but doesn't Meg Rossoff's 'How I Live Now' begin with a prologue?

A short one, yes, ending with 'And so here's what happened' but it is simply titled One (as in chapter one!) and the next chapter is the start of her story.

Kelly McKain also has a sort-of prologue in The Goddess Society, a young adult novel I love. The narrating character then writes something like (I can't remember the exact words) "Come back in time with me to when it all happened - woo woo woo, wobble wobble, spooky music."

It's a humorous book, of course. But I did love that.

You could just call it 'Then' and call the next part 'Now'? (Has someone done this? Maybe John Green? Hmm, I can't remember.)

Whatever heading you choose, the publisher will probably change it to Prologue anyway, just to keep with convention.

However, you could avoid using 'Chapter 1, 2, etc', and instead pick headings for each one. Then you could use something like 'In the beginning' or 'It started', or whatever you like, for the intro.

I've banged on about this before, but I have had to force myself not to include a prologue, having heard that they are a turn off for agents. The first person to mention it was someone from Cornerstones, the editing agency, and the other time was in an interview with some agent (can't remember who though) who said they were on his list of pet hates.
Not that this means it shouldn't be done ever, but it was enough to put me off..

<Added>

That's also adult fiction, so may be irrelevant!

Thank you everyone for your comments. The option that appeals most is to simply call it One - as in Chapter One, and it's an option I'd already considered. The reason I was hesitating to do it though, is that agents ask for the first three chapters, so to make a two-page prologue into a chapter effectively shortens your submission by one chapter. If they are on some agents pet-hate list, perhaps I shouldn't have one at all.

Do you think you can do without it?

Would you like to upload it and get comments from us about it? Of course, only you can make the decision.

If the voice in your prologue is significantly different from the voice in the chapters, then I would leave it out of any submission. I've heard that agents/editors often don't read beyond the first few sentences or paragraphs of a submission unless it totally grabs them.

Just started reading Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (prize-winning Australian author). It starts with a prologue called 'Prologue'.

Just thought I'd mention it!

I can only talk about adult fiction, but adult fiction is rolling with prologues. I like them

It seems to come naturally to me to begin with a Prologue, but I read an agent say he loathes them. So I looked again at the Prologue of the novel I was writing and asked myself was it really necessary? Answer, no. It was essentially backstory that could be interwoven into the main text with little difficulty. I'm not suggesting they should never exist, just that they should only exist if vital.

And, strangely, when I read others' novels I dislike Prologues. I don't want to engage in a teasing glimpse of a past only to find I'm to leave it to re-engaged with the new world of the main body of the novel.

Andrea

I rather like prologues.

Though in my latest chronologically it is set towards the end of the story...

But I'm having a real headache with the structure anyway.

S

I'd never say 'don't use prologues' - far too doctrinaire. And yes, the very reasons you want to call it a prologue, not 'chapter one' - different voice, different time, etc., may be the reason they sit oddly with the chapters of a submission, and might be a reason to leave it out. Agents read like bookbuyers, and a prologue like that means they can't tell quickly what they need to know about a book - who, where, when, what, why - while the significance of the prologue is often not revealed in what they have, even if they do get to the end.

But I think they can be a lazy way of kicking off with some narrative tension, as a substitute for actually building tension in from page one of chapter one proper. so anyone finding themseles with a prologue could do worse than examine their reasons for having it, and see if it could be done another way. I suspect that's another, less reasonable reason why agents say they 'don't like them' in that irritatingly blanket way. Why can't they say the truth, which is that they've never met one done properly?

Seven, if it's really that short, I doubt if you'd be hung, drawn and quartered if you sent four chapters. If they like it enough to read to the end, they'll be liking it too much to bin you because of sending four. My agent's guidelines say 'the first thirty pages', but I sent thirty-four, because that was the end of the chapter, and the last page was in a different voice and absolutely crucial. Didn't seem to matter.

Emma

One way around it is to put the prologue in at chapter two. Sounds silly, but I've seen it done a few times. You start with action, get the ball rolling, leave the reader wanting more with a good cliffhanger, then you change scene and time in chapter two, outlining things that have gone before or telling that story in it's own way (ie, non-narrative) and then chapter 3 kicks back with the action from chapter 1. You don't need to stick to alternating chapters if you can tie the two up quickly, but to some writers (eg, Dan Brown) it's a way of keeping the tempo high, throwing endless cliffhangers at the reader and keeping the pages turning.

Personally, I don't like prologues. They always feel lazy, as if to say, "right, this is what you've missed" like the silly text at the start of Star Wars - it doesn't actually need it. Most readers can work out the missing pieces of the jigsaw, and for many, that is part of the joy of reading - to work out for themselves what is going on. I think this is particularly important for your Young Adult target audience.

But, if you feel you have to have a prologue, and the story won't work without that initial scene, but you hate the term "prologue" - use another word. Think of a word that suits that little lone chapter and use it as a title. ie, "The Nightmare", and then, "Chapter One", "Chapter Two". So essentially, it is still a prologue, but you've lost the formality of the term.

Colin M

I'm trying to write a novel that reflects the structure of a Greek tragedy.

Why make life easy? Lol!

So the opening is deliberately theatrical - setting the scene.

Fun to write but...

I said 'unpublishable'.

S