Writing A Future Prologue That Works

Today we’re going to talk about The book The Nurse, by Amy Cross. Like all her books, it’s extreme horror. Again, we’re not going to be talking about the gore, well, not that much, but about the strange technique, she employed in this book. It’s a technique I call a future prologue.

So what the heck is it?

If you’re an active fiction reader, which you need to be if you want to write it, you’ve probably seen quite a few prologues, and a lot of them are bad. You know if a prologue is bad because

it’s boring.

And

If you remove it from the story, the story still makes perfect sense.

The Nurse has a prologue that almost falls into that category. I’m not saying it’s boring, because it isn’t. But I am saying the story still makes sense if you take it out, and here’s why.

Instead of being something that happened years ago, it takes a scene from later on in the book, almost near the end, and puts it in the beginning. Then, when the story actually starts, it starts ‘today’ or rather a while ago.

In this way, we get the promise of the horror to come even though the buildup is slow. This is a fairly new technique in fiction but it’s actually an older technique from TV.

In older TV series, they’d have a scene from the upcoming episode, followed by the theme song, and then a commercial.

Now, this technique has migrated over to books about 20, 30, maybe even 40 years after the fact. Even movies have started doing it; starting a movie with some clips then jumping backward into the action.

So does this make the book better?

Yes. And no.

I’ve seen this future prologue in both indie and trade published books, so clearly someone out there thinks this makes the book better.

What it really does is make the book slower. I’ve already discussed how The Nurse has a slow buildup. It also has a great twist, but that’s another review.

Without the prologue, the tension and feeling of dread wouldn’t be in the first quarter of the book. Yes, there was a general feeling of unease, but it wouldn’t be enough to carry through the work to make it a piece of horror fiction.

Shirley Jackson was the master of the slow simmering suspense. She never would have used a future prologue.

However, times change, and Shirley Jackson wrote her books over 60 years ago. Modern audiences demand a faster pace, hence the future prologue.

Be sure to check out the Nurse’s future prologue and put it in perspective with the rest of the story, but keep in mind, Amy Cross does write extreme. Weak stomachs should not read.