My story used to begin with a prologue. I was quite fond of it because it was a shortcut to conveying certain things that the primary character's POV made difficult, like clearly communicating the ruined state of the Earth and introducing the Seeker organization.
The anthropologists were wrong.
Humanity wasn’t born in the so-called Cradle of Civilization. Maybe reborn.
The anthropologists were wrong about a lot of things, but Laurent didn’t blame them. How were they to know better? To know that an ancient empire predated their notions of history. It was a well-guarded secret, kept only by the Seekers. Would the world of today, too, be forgotten ten thousand years hence?
Not if Laurent had his way.
The Cradle was a wasteland now, the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers reduced to mere trickles of their former glory. Nothing survived here for long except the hardiest plants and animals. Those few people who remained were no different, battling over the sandy wastes at the behest of local warlords just to survive. This place was windy, dusty, death—a canary in the coal mine for the withering Earth.
This was the lead to version 3.7 of Spacewalker, and this was what I sent to Miranda Darrow for a developmental edit.
I didn't seek professional editing help until I was certain I'd pushed my story as far as I could on my own. And, after writing three drafts and going through a number of self-guided exercises, like the story validation checklist, I felt I was ready. Bombs away!
After rewriting the same story so many times, I'd managed to cram my manuscript full of sentences and scenes that I loved to death. I loved them for what they were (evocative phrasing, contemplative narration, or clever dialog) rather than what they contributed to the manuscript. In short, I couldn't see the literary forest for the trees. Sure enough, about a month later, Miranda sent back a developmental edit letter with five key areas to focus on. Number one, at the top of the list, was to drop the prologue that I was so fond of.
She wanted me to kill one of my darlings.
Sure, I'd read a few different resources that said prologues should be avoided if at all possible, I simply thought there was no other way to convey all that was necessary. Of course, this is where an experienced editor shines. Where I'd seen impossibility, she saw potential. She identified the key pieces of information present in the prologue and provided suggestions for how to scatter them throughout the early portions of the manuscript.
Naturally, I went through the stages of a grieving writer. From, "This prologue is great! Why would I cut it?" To, eventually, "Actually, yeah, this does stick out. There's a better way." In hindsight, it was very obviously the correct choice. The prologue was flavored like Indiana Jones, but the rest of the story was far more like Interstellar.
There were other darlings that got the axe, but none that caused me quite as much anguish as losing the prologue. Fewer trees can make for a stronger forest, at least in a literary sense.