The Prologue: What You Need
So! The first chapter of the story. Last week, we discussed the tradition of oral storytelling and how it persisted and affected the art of storytelling itself throughout the ages. Now, we’ll be moving on to a more modern idea: the written format.
Just as oral tradition can express emotions through tones, evocation and vocal techniques that written words simply cannot express, writing can create sprawling expanses and deep emotional connection without needing to rely on spoken words. It’s generally more efficient to write a story than to speak it; not only can we record entire stories with perfect clarity, we can read faster than we can speak, which makes immersing oneself in a story entirely subjective to their own pace.
That pace begins with the first chapter, the first sentence, the first word. For an excellent example, we only have to look at Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. The prologue hits with just as much force as the last sentence, and while the pace lets up in some portions, it never becomes disinteresting. Take a moment to examine the first paragraph:
“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king. The white clothing was a Parshendi tradition, foreign to him. But he did as his masters required and did not ask for an explanation.”
From the very first line, we get three major things: a character, a descriptor, and emotional weight. Not all stories start like this, but not all need to. The Way of Kings, however, does; it’s the beginning of a series, and by introducing us to this major character, we immediately gravitate towards his story. Szeth-son-son-Vallano, even in the first three sentences, piques our interest. We question his name: why is he named son-son? We question his motives: why does he want to kill a king? We even question his connections: who are his masters, and why do they want a king dead in turn?
See, that’s the clincher for the first chapter. Every word has to do one thing, and that thing is provoke interest. A fading tradition with books is the three-chapter rule, where a reader pages through the first three chapters of a book before deciding to buy it. It stems from a long period where books didn’t have universal reviews at the tips of our fingers, when the internet was relegated to coders and digital professionals.
And there’s a good reason for it. The start of a story isn’t supposed to place you in the middle of the action without eventually explaining the circumstances behind that action. Without the exposition, we feel lost as readers, and we put that book away for something a bit easier to follow. Sanderson does an excellent job at balancing both. The prologue progresses with Szeth-son-son-Vallano completing his mission and killing the king, who seems to be—for all intents and purposes—a good and hospitable man. We, as an audience, feel slightly cheated by this. When Szeth is revealed to be an antagonist, we don’t blindly hate. We’re already interested in him as a character. Instead of immediately lashing out towards Szeth in anger, we have to know why.
And eventually, we learn. Eventually, the exposition is given, perhaps more subtly than in other stories, where characters blatantly shout their motivations towards everything.
So, we already have three crucial elements to the beginning of our story: tension, pacing, and interest. Let’s take a look at another renowned fantasy story. The Eye of the World is the first book in the Wheel of Time series, widely regarded as one of the cornerstones of fantasy literature. Its author, Robert Jordan, was a master at pacing the beginnings of his stories. He flags towards the end, one of the major failings of the Wheel of Time series, but in the beginning he never fails to capture a reader. The prologue of The Eye of the World follows a bit of a different structure from The Way of Kings’, however:
“Behind him the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man who looked around, his mouth twisting briefly with distaste. Not so tall as Lews Therin, he was clothed all in black, save for the snow-white lace at his throat and the silverwork on the turned-down tops of his thigh-high boots. He stepped carefully, handling his cloak fastidiously to avoid brushing the dead. The floor trembled with aftershocks, but his attention was fixed on the man staring into the mirror and laughing.”
Immediately, we can make note of the most obvious differences. Compared to Sanderson, Jordan writes with so much prose it’s not funny. Jordan’s talents lie in not immediately gripping the reader with interest about his characters, but by painting elaborate portraits of the setting and events in our imaginations. As the chapter progresses, we do become interested in the character, but our first impressions of these characters are vivid pictures that symbolically flesh themselves out. Of course, Jordan tells just as good a story as Sanderson (debatably, of course), but this only proves that there’s no one way to tell the perfect story.
We’ve taken a gander at two examples, both pinnacles of the fantasy genre. From it, what have we learned? We’ve learned that interest is paramount, as are pacing and a story’s internal conflicts. However, we cannot neglect prose, since it’s a staple of more traditional fantasy stories. This doesn’t apply for all genres; stories like crime dramas or mysteries will always skew towards hooking the reader through intrigue, while sci-fi and outlandish fiction has a tendency towards creating bright portrayals of their events through prose.
Whatever your genre, these aspects are crucial to crafting the perfect prologue. They’re everywhere, always present in your writings.
1. Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (Book One of the Stormlight Archive). TOR Publishing, 2010. Pg. 1
2. Jordan, Robert. The Eye of the World (Book One of the Wheel of Time). TOR Publishing, 1990. Pg. 3
