While I guess many fantasy works contain prologues, I don't think "normal" ones can't not work with them. A lot of my short story ideas start in medias res, so while this can lead to either interwoven flashbacks or one long flashback, the first section can effectively be considered a prologue.

In your case, Connie, I say go with it. You have a lot of flexibility at the beginning, so if you think a prologue will help, do it. I find them to be very good for hooks. The one in Plainsong had a killer punchline.

The heroine was in a relationship with a severely abusive man, but she was finally able to walk away--true, she'd just gotten engaged to someone else, but one takes one's impetuses where one can. If I did the scene where she walks away from him, and the villain is apparently calm and supportive while she's terribly nervous but determined, it should make people wonder what's up with that. Plus if people think she's gotten married, readers shouldn't automatically realize it's her when she turns up single again. This could work.

Hey, I could actually get back to that and finish it. The first draft's been done, but the beginning has been an unholy mess and doesn't match the second half. At the very least, a prologue will knock the dust off of it.

The whole thread is being productive! Yay, creativity!

Has the world turned enough, you think, that a thriller set in the financial centers of New York could/could not get away with a passing reference to 9/11? The heroine of my novel works on Wall Street, and I was thinking she could say in a melancholy moment that she was in the office that day and remembered the wall of debris that went by. Would that be gauche?

Hmm. You're writing it now. I don't know how fast or slow your write, but we'll say for the sake of argument you finish it sometime in the middle of 2005. You edit it and send it out to an editor or agent, who accepts it in mid-2006 for publication sometime in 2007.

IOW, I think you could leave it out.

IOW, I think you could leave it out.

If it's only a token reference, of course. If it serves some sort of thematic purpose, I don't think your method is gauche.

Thank you so much, P-C and Anne, for valuable feedback. Anne, it's so funny that you made the suggestion you did about the opening, because that is exactly the section I have moved around to various places in Prologue at least ten different times. It used to start with that first line "The Archive should have been wet" etc., but then I was worried I was waiting too long to get into the "action" and that character.

What would you think about starting again with "The Archive should have been wet" and moving everything preceding that to right before the paragraph starting with "The Archive felt like a beast to her after all these years"?

What would you think about starting again with "The Archive should have been wet" and moving theverything preceding that to right before the paragraph starting with "The Archive felt like a beast to her after all these years"?

The book is called The Archive. I don't think it's wrong to start with the words "The Archive." Also the word "should," which makes the reader go, "THEN WHY ISN'T IT, DAMMIT?"

I think that might work, but you might want to fiddle with the description in such a way that it intimates the existence of a character, because while it's cool to start with a description of the Archive, you don't want to make the reader think the entire prologue is going to be like a history lesson. Maybe it's already there in the tone, though. Re-reading those bits, I like them more than I first did. The mystifiedness of it all. The inability to believe its existence. Which could only come from a character or a personalized narrator, either of which should be enough for the reader to turn the page. I like narrators.

You're welcome for the comments. Glad they were helpful.

Pssst, P-C...wanna see Ch. 1? That might give you a clearer idea of one of the two main protagonists. Also, it would clarify how the narrative voice will generally sound.

(comments wouldn't be necessary unless you wanted to give them--this isn't an attempt to make you do more work for me, promise!)

Gimme!