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A tale of three prologues
A few days ago, we began a new evening routine. At about 7.00 pm, the whole family sits in the living room and my wife reads a chunk of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to the kids (two sets of twins, 7 and 9.)
This is the children’s first exposure to HP and, predictably, they’re liking it very much.
But interestingly, they didn’t immediately fall in love. Because kids are demonstrative, it’s easy simply to watch how engaged they are. More fiddling, more looking around, more playing with cushions – all those things are signs of weak or fading interest.
And what I noticed was interesting.
We all know the basic Harry Potter story. In the first book, especially, it’s mostly: Orphan goes to wizard school. Yes, there’s a whole Voldemort story being born, but the thing that grips you in that first book is the transition from boy-in-the-cupboard to student-wizard.
And the very first chapter of the very first book is, in effect, a prologue. The focus of that prologue is, initially, on the (boring, repressive, Muggle) Mr Dursley. He sees some odd things – people in cloaks, a map-reading cat, too many owls. He disapproves. He thinks about drills.
Then the chapter transitions to a long dialogue between Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Hagrid. That dialogue has plenty of sparkle and interest, of course. (Hagrid is a giant with a flying motorbike, Professor McGonagall was a map-reading cat, and so forth.)
But?
My kids were losing interest. We’d told them that this was a great book and that they’d love it, but they were visibly losing interest.
All that changed with Chapter Two. In effect, the second chapter still has something prologue-y about it. There’s still no mention of school. The actual story (Harry goes to wizard school) hasn’t yet started. All that happens is we get to see Harry’s strange living arrangements and we learn about a trip to the zoo.
This chapter, however, did engage the kids. If the first chapter was losing its audience, the second one captured them. It did that via Rowling’s plentiful humour. It did so by shocking the kids with the basic unfairness of the Dudley / Harry setup. It did so via the bizarre escape of a snake.
Now, I’ve got a few things to say about all this. The first is that there’s something quite remarkable about JK Rowling’s pacing here. My own Fiona Griffiths stories are aimed at adults, and a pretty literate group of adults at that – but, by heck, I get my stories started in Chapter One. That doesn’t have to mean a lay a bloody corpse out for the reader’s delight (although I might), but there’s certainly a drop of blood in the water, the first tickle of story.
JK Rowling, on the other hand, writes for kids. Her chapters are longer than mine. And she gets her story properly underway, only in Chapter Three. That’s remarkable and it’s a tribute to the excellence of her writing that she gets away with it, especially here, in the opening book of the series, which couldn’t rely on reputation to get its readers over humps in the road. In effect, Rowling presents three prologues to the readers in turn:
- Vernon Dursley’s owl-ridden day
- Three (strange) adults talking about something momentous
- Harry Potter takes a trip to the zoo
Observing my kids, I’d say that the first two prologues didn’t quite work, while the third one absolutely did. And bear in mind, that this is JK Rowling. She’s funny. She’s warm. She’s surprising. She’s inventive.
If she’s starting to lose kids’ interest, that’s not because her writing is flaky. It’s because there’s something structurally awry.
The first most obvious point is that Chapter One managed both to have a relatively dull central character (Vernon Dursley) and to have no central character at all – Dursley being pushed aside halfway through the chapter by the Dumbledore / McGonagall / Hagrid trio.
So who were the kids meant to be focusing on? Because they didn’t know, the answer that emerged for them was, No one. Simply throwing in flying motorbikes doesn’t solve that problem.
Likewise, the whole chapter was just too long, a total of 18 pages in the edition I’m looking at.
A third problem: the Dumbledore / McGonagall / Hagrid scene didn’t involve drama – it involved adults talking about drama. No matter how big, important or strange that drama was, people talking is still just people talking.
My kids were starting to wilt. The next evening, we kind of had to force Harry Potter on them. They’d rather have had a few minutes of telly.
As soon as Harry Potter himself entered the book, that changed. We’re still in somewhat prologue-y territory – we have a proper central character now, but still no hint of school – but the kids had someone to bond to. They had an unfair situation (boy in cupboard) to inflame them. They had some kind of conflict (Harry vs Dursleys) to watch and engage with.
Then all Rowling’s warmth and humour and inventiveness could work its magic. Although we weren’t quite in the story proper, it didn’t feel like that. The kids were off, and flying, and wanting more.
Writers often, often struggle with prologues. I have done myself. But here are some rules that don’t often go wrong:
- Avoid them if you can
- Keep them short
- Don’t, for heaven’s sake, double up: Don’t jump from Dursley to Dumbledore inside one prologue.
- Talking about drama is not drama
- Know why you’re prologuing at all. What’s the purpose? A really bad purpose is “the first few chapters are a bit dull, so I want to tell the reader it gets more interesting later.” A really good purpose is “use the prologue to alter the way the readers understand what happens next.” For all its excess length and talkiness, Rowling’s first chapter does in fact do that: it shines a kind of lustre on Harry, that the snake-in-the-zoo chapter couldn’t do.
In the end, readers want to meet their central character sooner rather than later. They want to reach Story sooner rather than later.
JK Rowling is a wonderful writer and that first book of hers deserved everything that later happened. But the over-prologuing? In the hands of a less engaging writer, that weakness could have toppled the book before it started.
Me, I doubt if I’ll ever write a book with a prologue again. Most of the ones that cross our editorial desk here should just be deleted.
And me? Tis a frosty day with lots of sunshine. I am going outside to find an owl.
Agreed. Long ago my daughter’s teacher told me I had to buy her a copy of Harry Potter (my daughter was an avid reader). So I did and we both started reading it, me when she was asleep. I marvelled at why Sam had recommended such a dull read with improbable characters – the Dursleys work better on screen, imo – but plodded on. For me it sprang to life when Hagrid appeared, and the rest was gripping.
I think JKR was very lucky to publish when she did.
Interesting. It’s been a while since I read Harry Potter, but I think I’ll re-read that first book in light of your comments.
It took JKR’s agent a dozen submissions before she snared a publisher; I wonder if what you describe was partly to blame?
I am blaming the incapacity of agents to dicern an exciting book. They are blasé people who read it all and nearly nothing impresses them
Read an article recently that on average a writer submits 50 times before being accepted by an Agent. The writer referred to was Erin Morgenstern, who wrote the Night Circus. Again not sure if it this is the norm. If it is, J K Rowling did well.
Of course their attention fades. They are not alone, they distract each other. Listening demands a lot more attention than reading (as a training teacher we were told that children have a capacity of less than 10 minutes attention; mainly because in a class with others). if alone with the book, the difference will be enormous! As a child I could read a book for a long time. If I had to listen to one of my parents, I would fall asleep after a few minutes…. Besides it is the idea.
I think it is the difference between the children nowadays and those who read it when it was first published. My children were between 11 and 13 when it originally came out and they loved it and had no problem with the opening chapters. Today children seem to want instant gratification and can’t see the nuances as they did back in the day. I also think that 7 and 9 is a bit young for HP as well.
My daughter and I both loved the Harry Potter books. She fiddled constantly while I read them to her. But the books that had us both riveted were the Goosebumps books by R L Stine. Each chapter was just a few pages long, but it was never enough! The amount of evenings that I would still be sat on her bed reading while she was fast asleep…
This is such an interesting chapter analysis. I remember being a bit bored of the first chapter but staying with it because it was popular. I remember how I fell in love with the Harry and his gang as we got to know them. It was such a perfectly artful way to imagine perfect characters.
Can I say though, I’m devastated by how hateful I find Jo’s obsessive, fixated, and transphobic view of the world? It makes me, personally, want to hear less of her literary brilliance…You know, because less hate always feels good. My ask: find less horrid people to emulate, no matter how good their prose. Please.
Agreed!
JKR had a well documented long path to publication. Do you think part of the problem was down to all this prologuing? The industry consensus is that writing your way into a story like this is a bad idea, so do you think she might have been published sooner had she reworked the start of the first book to make it more immediate?
It’s possible, maybe even probable. That said, she had a big vision and something by way of prologue was needed to convey the scale of that vision. I met her first editor once. I should have asked him about hat chapter one. But didn’t …
Phew. Taken ages to get through the Townhouse portcullis. I reckon an opening chapter can be prologue-like. Is it the Odyssey where we’re told the entire story to begin with, miraculously engaging us to think ” you what? How? Really? Who?” I’m currently revising my opening with that revealing approach, pairing the foreshadowing with the eminent Ms Darwin’s good advice to set the rules early, be consistent and ensure reader more or less bonds with narrator. So Harry is right about Rowling here. The reader is quite reasonably staring at the ceiling and picking noses to begin with. It’s a bit all over the shop. Don’t hold back. Tell us what we’re getting into.
Now the kids are properly into the book, they’re loving it. It’s interesting to see what works for them. They still love anything at the more slapstick end of things – letters flying down a chimney and knocking Dursley on the head, Hagrid tying a gun into a knot. Their eyes pop, they laugh, they ask for one more page … It’s a lovely family experience
This is an interesting point. My favourite book Jurassic Park has not two but three prologues and yet the story is incredible.
Personally, I enjoy a good prologue but I don’ t like prologues that are just an “exciting” chapter from later in the book. These sort of prologues have no context and actually you replace the “will they/won’t they” suspense with a kind of “they’re behind you” sort of suspense which I think is much weaker.