Dear O'Abby: To prologue or not to prologue...

 Dear O'Abby,

I'm writing a horror novel in which an ancient curse is uncovered in the modern age and wrecks havoc on society - I know it's been done before, but I promise my story is different and very resonant in the current climate.  As I've written it, there is a fairly long prologue in which the origins of the curse are revealed, something that is relevant to the ending of the book when my heroes have to try and reverse it. 

The book really doesn't work without the prologue - it's actually almost more of a first part to the book than a prologue - but I've heard that agents hate prologues and was wondering if I need to try and re-write the book to make it work without this section.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Yours truly.

Cursed.

Dear Cursed,

I don't think agents hate prologues so much as find so many of them unnecessary or a vehicle for info-dumping up front.  If, like you say, your prologue is an essential part of the story and your book won't make sense without it, then it is fine to keep it.  Some books really need their prologues while others don't.  

The problem with prologues is that when querying, if your query outlines the main part of your story, but your first 10 pages (or however much the agent requests) are a prologue that doesn't mention any of the characters or elements you talk about in your query, an agent can get confused.  There are two ways to deal with this: either skip the prologue and send pages from the main part of the novel, or reference the prologue section with a sentence or two in your query and send those pages.

At the end of the day, you know your novel best, and if you believe the prologue is essential to understanding and enjoying the book, then keep it.  If you think the key information in your prologue can be woven into the main body of your text, then it is probably better to do this.  Having a prologue is not going to be the decider as to whether or not you get an agent or a publisher, but how you handle it will be.

Hope that helps!

X O'Abby

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