11. Revision Checklist

Run a draft prologue against this list before deciding it stays separate from Chapter One. Each item corresponds to a test in §7 or a pattern in §8. The list is ordered so that the decisive questions come first.

The positional claim

• I can complete the sentence “This must sit outside the main narrative because…” with a structural impossibility, not a preference.
• I have attempted the absorption, in writing, and can list what did not survive it.
• I have named which of the four axes — time, place, viewpoint, register — is load-bearing, and struck out the ones that are not.
• Relabelling it “Chapter One” would lose something specific that I can state.

Domains

• I can name which domains — plot, character, world, theme, reader contract, authority — the prologue actually serves.
• At least one of them requires exteriority, and I have written down why.
• It is not serving the reader contract alone.
• It does not repeat information Chapter One will deliver anyway.

Distance and closing

• The distance opened here is closed, explained, echoed, or deliberately held open as a decision I can defend.
• The first instalment of the return arrives within the first quarter of the book.
• The return is fragmentary rather than a single late reveal — or the book is one of the two kinds that needs the reveal, and I know which.
• The fragments are objects or phrases, not moods, so that a reader can recognise them.
• The fragments vary in weight rather than repeating at the same size.

Promises

• Every specific in the prologue recurs at least once, or has been cut.
• No later chapter silently depends on information only the prologue supplied.
• The last sentence is doing the work its position deserves.

The contract with the reader

• The pitch, pace, mode and scale promised here match the book that actually follows — or the mismatch is legible as a choice.
• A reader who skipped it could still follow Chapter One, while missing the irony or dread this page provides.
• Removing it would cost the reader something beyond a hook.
• Chapter One passes Chapter 9’s own diagnostic protocol without the prologue in front of it.

The honest question

• This is not an avoided decision about where the story truly begins.
• I know whether the objection I am anticipating comes from my reader or from my market.