Can the prologue's POV be different from the POV of main story?
Let me explain my question:
I want to write the prologue of the story with the narrator in first person with the point of view of the protagonist. But the story is already written in a third person narrator... and I have 2 protagonist so its not omniscent.
I think is like a cheap trick do this change of pov and narrator... I want to write a strong "first lines" (for hooking, you know) and I think is easiest that way, at least for my idea.
I'm so sorry for my bad english, I hope someone can help me.
As other answers have stated a different POV for prologues is quite a common technique, particularly in SF and Fantasy ( …
5y ago
As others have mentioned, writing a prologue from a different POV than the rest of the story is common enough. The part …
5y ago
If you think it would be a cheap trick, then don't do it. But it is an already somewhat estabilished tecnique - there a …
5y ago
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/38969. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
3 answers
As other answers have stated a different POV for prologues is quite a common technique, particularly in SF and Fantasy (George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, David Eddings and Brandon Sanderson have all used this to one extent or another)
Changing to first person vs third might be a little clunky though - that said you could "cheat" slightly by having the first person section written in such a way as to make it obvious that it is something written by the POV character rather than it being experienced with them at the time. For example as a letter or a diary entry.
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As others have mentioned, writing a prologue from a different POV than the rest of the story is common enough. The part I'm not sure about is writing the prologue in first person, while the rest of the novel is in third person.
First person feels "closer to the character" than third person. So you'd be making the reader feel closer to a one-time POV that we don't see after the prologue, than you ever let him feel towards the actual protagonists. That feels a bit strange and confusing to me. If you're writing all the novel in third person, I would also write the prologue in third.
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If you think it would be a cheap trick, then don't do it.
But it is an already somewhat estabilished tecnique - there are tons of books where the prologue has a different PoV from that of the main characters (I can recall a few at the moment: Perdido street station from Mieville, Eragon from Paolini, Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Weis and Hickman ... ).
Sometimes the prologue is a dream, sometimes it describes something happening in a faraway land, away from the starting point of the protagonist, sometimes it happens in the past or the future.
So, yeah, you can definitely do this.
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