Post History
This strikes me as a semantic quibble. You can have a section in which the stories of various main characters are told before some larger action commences. Lots of novels have multiple parts, often...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23631 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:23:32Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23631 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:23:32Z (about 5 years ago)
This strikes me as a semantic quibble. You can have a section in which the stories of various main characters are told before some larger action commences. Lots of novels have multiple parts, often with gaps in time between them. Calling the entire first part, with its multiple chapters, a prolog, however, seems to stretch the meaning of the word for no obvious purpose. But you should also bear in mind that backstory is not really backstory unless you are already in a story and, at some point, reaching back into the past to reveal earlier story. What you are talking about is starting the story earlier. And that means that your character introductions need to be stories in their own right. Simply writing biographies or case files that do not work as stories is not going to engage the reader, and calling them prologs is not going to change that.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-06-29T13:12:07Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 2