The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit by William G Tapply

Author:William G Tapply [Tapply, William G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-12-27T16:00:00+00:00

A prologue is usually a short, focused, single scene showing an event that occurred before the time in which the story itself unfolds. Similarly, an epilogue concerns events that occur after the story’s climax and denouement.

A prologue and an epilogue can give symmetry to a mystery, but they can also make it appear that the writer is striving to be “literary.” If you are tempted to add a prologue and/or an epilogue as an afterthought, scrutinize your reasons. Most well-told stories don’t need either.

A story about an escaped convict who murders the jurors who sent him to prison ten years earlier, for example, might benefit from a prologue in which the convict’s original crime is dramatized. If the storyline involves the murder (or was it suicide?) of a disabled Vietnam veteran, try a prologue that recounts the circumstances under which the vet was wounded.

In Rick Boyer’s Pirate Trade, his narrator, Doc Adams, explains in a prologue called “Lightship Purse” the origin of the baskets crafted by Nantucket natives and the significance of the ivory medallions on their lids. The reader needs this information to understand the story that follows.

James Lee Burke opens Black Cherry Blues with a dream sequence that establishes the foreboding mood of the novel and introduces the reader to the tortured mind of Dave Robicheaux, the first-person narrator.

If your prologue sets a mood, reveals a character trait, gives important information, or introduces a theme echoed in the story itself, it is likely to work for you. If it does none of these things, delete it.

Epilogues typically explain what happens to characters after the story has ended. Minette Walters ends The Sculptress with this epilogue:

At 5:30 on a dark and frosty winter morning the Sculptress walked free from the gates of her prison, two hours earlier than the time announced to the press. She had sought and obtained permission to slip back into society well away from the glare of publicity that had surrounded the release of other celebrated cases of wrongful imprisonment. Roz and Sister Bridget, alerted by telephone, stood outside in the lamplight, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. They smiled in welcome as the Judas door opened.

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