Ryan M. Patrick

This has been one of the trickiest parts of Crush Depth (the novel I’m currently drafting) – do I include a prologue, or do I start at Chapter 1?

A few years ago, I would have definitely had a prologue to start the story off. Now, I know better – in traditional publishing, agents and editors prefer a novel without a prologue, and in general it’s better to get right to the action. In late, out early.

Lag Delay – the previous book in the series – had a prologue with a different POV character. I started writing it before I really knew what I was doing, and I just threw a prologue in there because I thought that was what authors did. I tried to remove it in editing, but all of my beta readers liked it! The book is built around a third-act twist and the prologue gives it a lot more of an impact.

I’m not sure what to do with Crush Depth. Initial feedback on my first chapters are positive, but they’re slow – slower than my beta readers would like. I have an action-packed prologue that I wrote a while ago, and could clean up and add in before Chapter 1, but it gives away one of the big twists (there’s several) in the story.

Right now, I’m leaning towards no prologue, and just starting with the first chapter, but I’ll need more feedback to see what works and what doesn’t. We’ll see what changes once I finish drafting it, I’m only 10,000 words into a planned 120,000, and my trusted beta readers tear into it!