Why I Don't Like Prologues

            I saw Hunger Games last night with my brothers, an alright movie, I’d give it about a six or seven out of ten, and something occurred to me, something that irks me actually concerning writing in general, even in film; the use of a prologue.

            Personally, I really do not like prologues, I think they are way overused, and when they are used, are so poorly utilized that I believe most people should simply refrain opening their stories or movies this way. Fortunately, Hunger Games managed to be quite watchable, but when they opened with that descriptive text, I loosed a frustrated groan. This beginning summery of how the world in the movie worked was completely unnecessary and could have easily been cut from the movie and changed absolutely nothing. Usually, a prologue is a immediate indication to me that the movie is going to be bad: Green Lantern did it, I was really hoping that this movie was going to be enjoyable, but as soon as that string of words began scrolling up the screen in a weak attempt to explain how the universe worked and what Green Lanterns were, I knew the movie was going to be a dud.

            People, at a first glance, do appear to be generally dim, but not really; the prologue is like a slap in the audience’s face, assuming that we’re too stupid to decipher a plot line. Some of the best stories out there dump you in the middle of a strange world and part of the experience is about learning how the world works as you go along. One novel that does a marvellous job of this is called Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde. The reader begins having no clue what the dynamics of this society entail and as we progress it gradually becomes clear, and frankly adds to the climactic reveal at the end!

            All this being said, I do believe there are proper ways to use a prologue in a narrative, and, even though I despise them so much, have used them in a few stories. The beginning of a novel, short story, movie, whatever needs to quickly grip the attention of the audience and dry deliberate exposition is not the way to do it. The two cases where I have fallen on adding a prologue have been primarily to snag the reader, get them interested in what happens next. I don’t reveal too much about the world I intend to describe, focus more on theme and characterization. In one instance, I realized the first chapter wasn’t doing the job of gripping the reader, so I took a slice of the narrative that could effectively introduce the main character. This prologue didn’t follow in a straight chronological line, but helped me open the story in a way that quickly relayed why I was writing it. The other instance was even more unavoidable as I needed a small passage to explain why the main character left his home in the desert, and was also based on how the story needed to be structured (having a series of interludes between chunks of the story).

            Sorry to rant about this, but man, every time I see a prologue misused, or used under the assumption that I am mentally incapable of following a story line, I die a little inside. When you write, even for children, do not assume your readers, or viewers, need everything explained. In psychology, Cognitive Behavioral Theory, learning though repetition is well understood; if you tell, or even suggest, that someone is stupid enough times, they will eventually believe it, and humanity at large, as a whole, is dumb enough, don’t you think?