Can I complete “This must sit outside the main narrative because…” with an impossibility?
Have I tried absorbing the material into Chapter One, and relocating it in the main timeline, and listed what broke?
Would anything change if the prologue were headed Chapter One?
Distance
Which axis carries the load, and are the others costing more than they buy?
Does the main narrative close the distance on that axis, by the means the axis requires?
If the distance stays open, is that the book’s policy, its subject, or an oversight?
Domains
Which domains does the prologue serve, and which of them require exteriority?
If the authority domain is served, does the book honour the frame it installs?
Plants
Which specifics recur, and on which pages?
Does the first fragment return within the first quarter of the book?
Is the last sentence a held note, or a portentous half-line?
Contract
Do the prologue, pages 40 to 60 and the last chapter share pitch, pace, mode and scale?
Can a reader who skips the prologue follow the whole book while still losing something?
Exercises
The sentence. Write “This must sit outside the main narrative because…” for your prologue three times, with three different endings. Strike any that name a preference. If none survives, the prologue is a candidate for absorption.
The absorption. Write your prologue’s material into Chapter One as a paragraph, a memory, a document or a line of dialogue, and separately relocate it as a scene in the main timeline. List what each version could not carry across. The list is your case for the separation, or against it.
The audit. Beside each sentence of the prologue mark the domains it serves (plot, character, world, theme, reader contract, authority), then mark each I if the job could be done inside the main narrative and X if it requires exteriority. Justify every X in a sentence beginning “This cannot be done from inside Chapter One because…”.
The schedule. List every specific in the prologue and the page on which the book next touches it. Choose three to five to carry the closing, cut the rest, and place the first return within the first quarter.
The substitution. Rewrite the prologue as two other types that keep its load-bearing axis: a last ordinary day for a victim’s last hour, an editorial note for an overture, a flash-forward to an aftermath for one to the climax. Compare what each buys and costs before choosing.