Eternity RPC Board
Honestly, I generally skip prologues. Sometimes, after I've finished the novel, I'll go back and read the prologue to see if it adds anything I might not have gotten before now that I have all the information I need to make sense of a prologue, but I'm not usually a fan of them.
Of course, hence the vote, it's all personal preference. And my personal preference is that I like being thrown into the middle of a story without an introduction telling me why things are the way they are; it's more immersive, and I feel like I'm an observer from the setting, not a time-travelling god or maybe an outside historian far removed from what's happening to our main characters. I find it easier to suspend disbelief when I haven't been told by the author that "things A, B and C led us to where we are today" because it seems that the story has been less constructed and more like it happened organically (if that makes sense). I also like stories that imply things better than ones that spell it out for me; it leaves more room for interpretation and speculation, and generally makes me think more about the motivations of certain characters/factions. If I know beforehand that the author intended for Empire X to be evil and that Squadron A rose out of the ashes as a shining bastion of hope from the prologue, then I'm going to have my interpretation colored due to that. If I don't hear the prologue and only get what the characters themselves think, who's to say that Empire X were really the bad guys and Squadron A isn't a terrorist cell?
No-go on the prologue.
**Another edit, because heck you, that's why!! - Past events can be worked into the story without the need for a prologue (flashback, stream of consciousness, hinting through dialogue, etc.) and this is my preference, but it also depends on the author's style and the general tone of the story. Additionally, I'm not outright opposed to a more unique use of a prologue - thinking less "this is what happened a few years back that led us to now" and more "this statement/event is a thing, which you will understand by the time you've finished the last chapter".
Of course, hence the vote, it's all personal preference. And my personal preference is that I like being thrown into the middle of a story without an introduction telling me why things are the way they are; it's more immersive, and I feel like I'm an observer from the setting, not a time-travelling god or maybe an outside historian far removed from what's happening to our main characters. I find it easier to suspend disbelief when I haven't been told by the author that "things A, B and C led us to where we are today" because it seems that the story has been less constructed and more like it happened organically (if that makes sense). I also like stories that imply things better than ones that spell it out for me; it leaves more room for interpretation and speculation, and generally makes me think more about the motivations of certain characters/factions. If I know beforehand that the author intended for Empire X to be evil and that Squadron A rose out of the ashes as a shining bastion of hope from the prologue, then I'm going to have my interpretation colored due to that. If I don't hear the prologue and only get what the characters themselves think, who's to say that Empire X were really the bad guys and Squadron A isn't a terrorist cell?
No-go on the prologue.
**Another edit, because heck you, that's why!! - Past events can be worked into the story without the need for a prologue (flashback, stream of consciousness, hinting through dialogue, etc.) and this is my preference, but it also depends on the author's style and the general tone of the story. Additionally, I'm not outright opposed to a more unique use of a prologue - thinking less "this is what happened a few years back that led us to now" and more "this statement/event is a thing, which you will understand by the time you've finished the last chapter".