: Re: Prologues with no protagonist - How can they work? It is my understanding that novels should generally start right off with the protagonist. The story is about the protagonist, after all, not

The thing to do with any writing rule is to consider its functional utility. One good reason to start with the protagonist is that otherwise the reader may become invested in the the initial characters and narrative and may resist transferring that interest to the main protagonist and storyline. For me, both Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence and Samuel Delaney's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand committed this mistake by following up a captivating prologue with a much duller main narrative and protagonist.

I would advise that if you take this route, you keep it brief, and make sure that what you give the reader serves to prepare them for the introduction of your protagonist. In the Harry Potter example, the prologue offers a great deal of important context about Harry, and frames him as a significant figure. If it had just been (for example) a random day in the life of Dumbledore, the effect might have been quite different.

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: Re: Prologues with no protagonist - How can they work? It is my understanding that novels should generally start right off with the protagonist. The story is about the protagonist, after all, not

More posts by @Sarah872

: If characters never do bad things, you don't have a plot, and if every bad action is followed by a speech about how bad it is, you end up with a didactic polemic, not a novel. It's possible

: Using Present Tense to describe a Fact on a story that uses Past Tense newcomer here, and I have a question. I have a story that starts with the sentence, 'the ocean is vast'. However, I'm

: What's the common practice for warranty chapters in technical manuals? I'm working on a technical manual project for industrial machines and the original documents have some warranty warnings and

: How do I choose a name for my character? I am looking for a name for my fictional, European, mysterious old man who lived roughly in the 1600's to 1800's. I want the name to have plenty

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