Relayer:
That is an interesting question. I probably would have read it anyway. My only hesitancy comes from the concept of spoilers as I said earlier, and those aren't generally in intros, they're in ancillary material like book jackets or promo materials on Amazon.
Part of the contention here seems to be that we're talking about 2 different types of material, which are often both called Prologues, Introductions, etc. You're really talking more about something like the Afterword of The Real Story, where SRD talks about his writing process. But the Prologue to MN is not talking about the story from the outside, it's directly an intro about Terisa and Geraden and sets the scene for the entire story.
Great analysis. That was what I was thinking about. I probably made assumptions based on sour previous experience. Looking back at my thoughts at the time there was also something more. Death to the 'she's just a whiny rich girl'-s we all say, right? But when I started the prologue those were my thoughts. It took me some time to ignore the 'I hate romance novels

' thoughts and try and read the book from the story's beginning.
But in general, from my experience when someone adds an introduction to a book where it is discussed and dissected the spoilers naturally start to pop up. And while it may be interesting and enlightening it would have more meaning after you read the book and know what it was talking about. Why then is it placed in the beginning of books? Not because this was the right place to position it. It's to encourage people to read it at all. If it's in the end the reader might be disinclined to read it after he got what he was looking for or that is the way the publishers think when they print it. (I don't.)
However, I do agree that I'll often skip "Introductions" when they're literally not about the story... certainly the long-winded thank yous and stuff... but even w/ those, how would I know I didn't want to read it until I started reading it.
You can breeze through them to see if there's anything interesting in them. You don't need to read the whole list of thanked people to know if you wanted to read their names.
By this logic, did you skip the Prologue to Runes? You would've missed quite a lot Smile
Heck no!!! For me, the parts of the TC chronicles that happen in 'the real world' are the most interesting. But I did skip the 'what happened before' part in Runes.
I could use the same argument, "why should I care about these two people," if I started at Ch. 1. I still have no reason to care about this woman. It's an author's job to make however he starts the story be interesting enough that I want to continue. I'm wondering, how would you have felt reading it if, instead of calling it a Prologue, SRD had written exactly what he did, but simply called it "Chapter 1" ?
Is a heap of dung, a heap of dung by any other name??? It's not the name that makes an introduction an introduction, it's what it says. Why did I became interested in Terisa when I started reading chapter 1 but not when I read the prologue? There's a difference between hearing a description of someone and getting a glimpse into their lives.
variol son wrote:I think it depends on the prologue.
In books such as Runes of the Earth and A Feast for Crows, the prologue is an integral part of the story, a special name for the first chapter/chapter as it were. I would think it foolish not to read it in these cases.
And you'd think right! In case anyone was wondering I never skip these kinds of prologues. They are part of the story.
variol son wrote:
However in books such as The Fellowship of the Ring and A Mirror of her Dreams, the prologue is more about the story than part of it. In these cases I can see why some people might skip the prologue and come back to it later.
Yes this was what I was talking about.
variol son wrote:
The question is, how do you know what type of prologue it's going to be before you read it? That's why I generally read them all.
Well,

You don't need to read more than a few words to distinguish between the two kinds.
You mistake my intent. . . I see these things as part of the story. Smile
In the course of my studies in literature, I studied the literature of the western world from the epics of Gilgamesh, to Greek Drama, all the way to modern literature. The reason I brought up my training was merely to comment that my understanding of what comprises a story was shaped by these studies. Should you want to see what I speak of, you can check out the following explanation of the history and function of the prologue. This brief summary explains that the prologue has a long history of being an integral part of the story itself.
I read your wiki link. But does a novel works the same way a Greek play does? The viewers of the plays often knew what the plot would be in advance. But here, talks of spoilers and spoilering are endless. A novel's plot is usually supposed to be unexpected. And in contrast to plays we meet the characters as we go along in the story itself.
And as for your new question, yes, I would read the prologue even if it were written by someone other than the author. I trust the author to know what is best for his story, and whether the author himself or an editor (or another author) writes the prologue, I can confidently say that it was placed there with a purpose. I do not understand the thought that reading the prologue could be harmful to the story.
Ahh, but who's purpose? Is it the authors purpose or, say, the publisher's? I tend to give a lesser amount of trust to the later.