Very long prologue good or not?

ManwX

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I wanted to ask if having a long prologue is a bad thing. My story has a 10k-word-long prologue. it's my first time writing. I just wanted my mc to have an interesting past that links to his future endeavors. It's a transmigration novel. not a game or anything far from it. A dangerous world
 

Akaichi

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It is usuallt better to hide some things... Make the prologe an outline, focus on the facts important for the first few arcs and sprinkle the rest of the details throughout the story.
but again, this is you novel... do what feels right.
 

TheTrinary

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Generally with the level of quality for webnovels, that's not a good place to put your energy; even professional authors struggle to make prologues meaning or engaging. But if you have a really good idea though, sure why not. I'd love to see a thirty or forty page prologue that is an engaging short story in its own right.
 

miyoga

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Generally with the level of quality for webnovels, that's not a good place to put your energy; even professional authors struggle to make prologues meaning or engaging. But if you have a really good idea though, sure why not. I'd love to see a thirty or forty page prologue that is an engaging short story in its own right.

Adding to this, your prologue could almost become its own prequel-esque short story. If you posted it separately, then you'd be able to knock out a couple stories at the same time, gain a reader base and gauge interest for the main story and what you have planned.
 

melchi

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One of the feedback threads noted the flop of the john carter movie. Readers are much more forgiving when things are from a main character's viewpoint. If the prologue is not from the main character's view point expect readers to react poorly.

Like with the john carter movie the first part of the movie doesn't even have the main character in it and it was one of the biggest flops in history.
 

ManwX

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Adding to this, your prologue could almost become its own prequel-esque short story. If you posted it separately, then you'd be able to knock out a couple stories at the same time, gain a reader base and gauge interest for the main story and what you have planned.great advice. I will do that once I do some serious revision and post it on royalroad. I don't want to move the prologue on sh. I feel like it earns its place after being the first chapter that I wrote.
 

BearlyAlive

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Easy writing hacks: If prologue too long, turn prologue into first arc, otherwise axe everything that could be used as future content or interludes. If you yourself don't think you have enough experience to relocate the unimportant parts get help from beta readers or editors (tho most editors just grammarly your works, so you'd need to find one that does do story editing)
 

Representing_Tromba

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Prologues shouldn't be too long. Maybe a 1500 words or less depending on the story.
 

georgelee5786

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I think prologues should be on the shorter side
 

Akaichi

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One of the feedback threads noted the flop of the john carter movie. Readers are much more forgiving when things are from a main character's viewpoint. If the prologue is not from the main character's view point expect readers to react poorly.

Like with the john carter movie the first part of the movie doesn't even have the main character in it and it was one of the biggest flops in history.
Exactly. The problem in John carter is the fact that it is a wish fulfilment story in diguise... so the prologe must establish the simpathy....
Every type of stories needs a diffrent approch.
The prologe's goal is to make you filp the page in exitment. Not say 'oh it is another one of those...'
 

StainedGlassThreads

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Readers are extremely picky about their prologues. It's the first thing they're expected to read, welcoming them to the world of the story, after all. A boring or nonsensical prologue can make them fearful that the rest of the story will be infodumpy or poorly paced.

In my opinion, prologues should be a 'taste' of the story rather than too vague or too lore-dump-y. If you're gonna spend a while on worldbuilding and setting things up, use the prologue to give a glimpse the action or intrigue that appears later on. If you want to explore certain themes or questions in your story, use the prologue to start bringing those themes up. If you want your lead to be an unreliable narrator, have the prologue be another character observing them from an outside perspective. If you want to start setting up a particular important character, like a major villain, hype us up by showing why they're so cool or terrifying.

Or be like me, and try to do almost all these things at once. I've actually gotten a comment that the prologue, though perhaps the longest or second-longest chapter in the first volume of my story, added something necessary and beneficial to the story, promising readers that the stakes would eventually increase. :P

10,000 words may be a liiittle lengthy unless all your normal chapters will be of similar, or greater, length, though.

For a transmigration novel I don't think it's necessary, it'd be better to give readers little bits and pieces of the MC's backstory over a longer period of time. Perhaps they distrust a character in the present because they met someone similar in their past life who screwed them over, or they always do a certain routine because that's what their beloved dead mentor taught them. Stuff like that.
Personally for a prologue, I'd recommend just writing out a single scene from their life so the audience asks 'Whoah! What could've made them turn out like that!?"
 
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