Prologues, Once and for All

As a beginning writer, I am heartily sick of the following vein of advice:

• Never write a prologue.
• If you must write a prologue, burn it immediately before it can taint your other innocent manuscripts.
• Never submit a prologue to anyone under any circumstances or they will spit on you.
• Never admit to anyone, even your closest friends, that you wrote a prologue.
• People don't read prologues. Even though they've spent money on a book they're supposedly intending to read, they skip the first part of that story because it contains the word "Prologue".
• Hang your head in shame if you've written a prologue, because it means you are a clumsy, crappy writer.

I reread my romance classics regularly. Here is the skinny:




Lord of Scoundrels has a prologue. Frequently cited as the Number One Romance of all time.

Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm has a prologue. Number two on the same list.

Kinsale's For My Lady's Heart also has a prologue - many like this one better than Flowers.

Randomly picked from my TBR pile, mega-bestseller Connie Brockway's My Seduction has a prologue.

That list took me exactly thirty seconds to compile. Do I need to go on? A prologue is simply an item in the writer's toolbox, to be used if needed for the story and passed over if not. In the hands of a master, a prologue is a delicious teaser, an appetizer, a promise of more.

Maybe everyone is just worried about the bad prologues - the amateur ones that recite 2,000 years of history or gobs of dull backstory. But crappy writing can happen anywhere in a book. Crappy writing does not just happen in prologues.

Okay?

On another note, I'm rereading Scoundrels on my commuter train every morning, and that glorious, wicked, cheesy cover (look at that thing!) is getting stares. Not just sidelong glances, but outright, horrified stares. I'm the Bad Girl of the Commuter Train. If I were Loretta Chase, I'd have that cover up on my wall.