Should important events that happen a long time before the rest of the story be in a prologue or in chapter 1?

Question

Context: I’m currently writing a novel that has a built in prologue. I’m unsure if I should use the prologue as the first chapter. It involves the main character being sent away by his parents for his own protection. The rest of the book doesn’t occur until about 10 years later and takes place in a much different location. For myself at least, it could work as either. The scene is important to the story, and is commonly referenced throughout the novel, so it can’t be told through flashbacks without dragging down pacing and narrative progression. The readers gets the best experience by having this knowledge readily available to them.

So should it be the prologue, or just put it as chapter 1?

I’m currently leaning towards a prologue in this case, although I wouldn’t say this isn’t the case in every novel there ever was or will be.

Answer 1

If there is such a huge time difference and there are no big temporal skips in the rest of the book this would likely be a good prologue. Because of the difference this would feel to the reader like something that is not directly related to the current story, but is important to understand for example the character's motivation. If it was a Chapter 1 the reader would expect that such a skip would happen somewhere in the book again. If that is the case using a Chapter 1 would be better, as the time skipping is part of the style that you as the author prefer to narrate the story.

In the end it's up to you as the author what you prefer and what you think makes sense. Maybe the editor or publisher will want to have a say in this matter, but in general it's up to you.

Answer 2

You are not writing a history, you are writing a novel. In a history, the temporal sequences of events is generally the mainspring of the narrative. In a novel, the story arc of the protagonist is the mainspring of the narrative. Events should therefore be narrated in the order that they impact the story arc. This is by no means always the temporal order in which they occurred.

In Lord of the Rings, for example, much of the history is not given until the Council of Elrond. Before then, the Hobbit's journey is largely one of stumbling in the dark. The meet Strider and have an encounter with the Nazgul, all without understanding who they are or what is going on. It is in the Council that Frodo comes to understand what is really at stake, and that is where it impinges on his arc, leading to his great decision to accept the role as ring bearer. Events are told in the order they impinge the story arc.

In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark constantly jumps back and forth in time, not only into the past but also into the future of the girls of the Brodie Set in order to plot the influence of Jean Brodie's personality and methods. Events are related not in their temporal order but in the order they illuminate the story arc, including events from the future which show us what was really happening at certain points in the arc: what grew of the seed being planted.

Answer 3

Author's choice.

+1 Secespitus for voicing my own thoughts. However, I will note that in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; the first book in the series, Chapter 1 is set ten years before Chapter 2. Chapter 2 begins "Nearly ten years after [the events in Chapter 1] ...", and this is the only ten year skip in the story.

To me yours sounds exactly the same. Thus, Author's choice. It may depend on how it is written, a Prologue can be written in a different voice and third-person omniscient (the narrator knows everything about everybody), while the rest of the book is third person limited (focusing on a single character's point of view, thoughts, and feelings).

Answer 4

While it would totally make sense to put these events in a prologue, no writer is obliged to write a chronological narrative. You always can flashbash to these events in the middle of chapter 38, because it's better this way for the narrative.

Answer 5

Opening with a no-win action sequence works for action movies. Consider the audience that likes testosterone-fueled adrenalin sequences and their expectation to get to what they paid for quickly. It must involve melodrama shorthand because it is a mini-story with characters who are instantiated and dispatched within a single scene: villains in black hats doing villain things, and parents being killed protecting children who watch from the closet with louvered doors or from under the bed. I'm not suggesting you would go with the worst cliches, but these opening scenes play out so often I don't believe they have any narrative impact whatsoever. They just show us how the villain kills to establish a pattern. If your project is not an action movie, I think I have a better suggestion.

The events may be a case of common knowledge among the characters and so they don't discuss it, or discuss around it because it is too sensitive. Knowing something profound happened that has left a wound might have more impact for the reader to see the wound first. The details of the incident can be trickled over time and from different viewpoints (including unreliable narrators), and provides opportunity for real character building when events in the current action start to open that wound and they must discuss events that have been emotionally buried.

If we have already seen the full narrative arc of those dead parents, created and killed in a single scene, those characters are done for us and there is no mystery. They were just the soup before the meal, and we have emotionally moved on even if the main character insists he can't.

I suggest instead to withhold the parents from the reader so we have no preconceived idea about them. They are as absent from our lives as they are to the characters, and we discover them through this wound. We are aware of them, but we don't get to know who they were. Instead we feel their loss through the other characters, and the lingering dysfunction reveals the hole where something use to be. We don't get to make up our own minds and close their story. In narrative sense they are still characters that influence the thoughts and actions of others, and "alive" because they can still grow through the opinions and maturity of the survivors.

Also consider if there is something unresolved about the event, potentially with the help of unreliable narrators, the reader can experience their own version of not being able to get over it. If re-examining the question results in different answers, even hostility, we have some empathy for the character who can't let it go. We also have a multi-faceted event seen through the lens of different characters each of whom has different emotional coping skills.

Answer 6

This sounds like the kind of thing you don't need to keep in your book. I say that having written something similar. People do do it though. So no reason you can't; but it's likely not as important as you think it is.