The Prohibition Against Prologues
Aside from beleaguered adverbs and the wrongfully character-assassinated semicolon, few elements of storytelling are as often maligned as the poor, misunderstood prologue.
Writers are told that agents and editors won’t read a submission that starts with a prologue … that readers skip over them or pass on books that begin with them … that the holiest of holies of writing advice is this: Never, ever use a prologue.
Prologues got a lot of haters.
And yet, thumb through a handful of published titles, and chances are solid that no small percentage of them feature this pariah of a prelude. How are all these authors getting away with that allegedly egregious breach of good storytelling and good taste?
It’s because skilled storytellers know this secret writing truth: A good prologue, well used, can immediately draw a reader into a book, whet their appetite for more, and set up and strengthen the entire story.
The key to a prologue that works is to keep it essential, purposeful—and short.
Where Prologues Go Wrong
The reason agents and editors so frequently advise against prologues is that they see a lot of bad ones. If authors don’t understand how to use a prologue deliberately and intrinsically to serve and enhance the story, they can fall into one of the many common prologue traps:
The Backstory Dump: I call this “bringing the reader up to speed”: when an author is convinced that readers won’t fully understand or invest in a story without knowing what came before. All of it. In detail. This frontloaded info dumping is like walking into room looking backward. It’s a slow start that can feel misleading if it’s only a prelude to the real story, and it bogs readers down in detail. The Exciting-Event Preview: One of the most common prologue misfires, this is when authors pull a high-stakes, exciting event from later in a story and slap it onto the front, either verbatim as it’s later seen in the story or in a slightly altered form. Used well, this device can actually serve as an effective story setup, but too often, it’s pressed into service as a fake hook that’s used to compensate for a weak, slow, or quiet chapter one, and out of context it can often fail to elicit much reaction in readers if we don’t yet know or feel invested in the characters. It can often also telegraph or defuse the impact of the scene when readers encounter it again later, and make it feel redundant. The Bait and Switch: Similar to the Exciting-Event Preview, this misstep is often borne of a desire to start on an action-packed hook. Its most common form is showing a protagonist in medias res of some pulse-pounding action, like Indiana Jones securing (and losing) the golden idol in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. At its best it can be a powerful, visceral setup for a character or story world that immediately invests readers. But it can go wrong when it feels patched-in, completely unrelated to the main storyline—a false promise that feels device-y to readers. The Dramatis Personae: Shakespeare can get away with starting a play with a long list of the players and their backgrounds … but most authors can’t. As part of a prologue, too many players introduced too soon can overwhelm readers. Let us meet characters as they become germane to the story as you unspool it. Stage Setting (also known as the Rabbit Hole): Tolkien fans … I know that The Fellowship of the Ring opens with no fewer than four sections of prologue setting up the Hobbits, the Shire, the finer point of pipe smoking, and the Ring. But excessive story groundwork can be an off-putting barrier to entry for modern readers (and agents and editors). It doesn’t matter how complex or beautiful the world of your story may be (we’re looking at you, SF/fantasy authors); don’t pack your prologue with swaths of description or world-building.
Commit any of these deadly prologue sins and readers will indeed be likely to put your book down before they’ve even gotten started. So how do you employ a prologue that will draw them further in?
“A prologue is not a substitute for initial action or a strong hook, a way to ‘cheat’ in initial backstory or bring the reader up to speed, or an explanation of the story readers need to orient to or make sense of it.” —Tiffany Yates Martin
Writer’s Digest
What Makes a Prologue Work?
An effective prologue serves a specific and intrinsic story purpose.
It may establish key characters and/or story events—as in Nadia Hashimi’s A House Without Windows, which introduces one of the protagonists, an Afghan woman whose trial for murder is the main focus of the book, in the immediate aftermath of the death of her husband.
A functional prologue might provide essential context or clues about the story that enhance readers’ experience of it, as in Rochelle B. Weinstein’s Where We Fall, whose brief opening prologue shows a scene of the college love triangle whose unexplained reorganization when the story begins significantly ups stakes and suspense as readers wonder what changed the dynamics.
It might offer historical or factual perspective, as Ruta Sepetys does in The Fountains of Silence, whose prologue offers a brief overview of fascist Spain under Francisco Franco, the essential backdrop of the story.
Or it may foreshadow some key aspect of the story, as Charmaine Wilkerson does in Black Cake, whose brief prologue foreshadows a central plot event that links the book’s two timelines together.
A prologue is not a substitute for initial action or a strong hook, a way to “cheat” in initial backstory or bring the reader up to speed, or an explanation of the story readers need to orient to or make sense of it. Effective prologues serve an essential narrative purpose and should be intentional and intrinsic to the story.
How to Create an Effective Prologue
If you’re going to be a renegade and risk alienating the admitted cadre of industry professionals and readers who truly do find prologues off-putting, first make sure you really need one.
Make It Essential
Ask yourself why you are beginning your story with a prologue—and be ruthlessly honest about your answers.
Are you trying to start the story with something exciting? Readers don’t care what’s happening until we care who it’s happening to. The most pulse-pounding prelude in the world won’t draw them in unless they have reason to invest in your characters. Because you fear your first chapter has no hook or a weak hook? A powerful prologue is no substitute for a strong first chapter (and beyond). Every chapter and scene of your story should capture your readers’ attention and engagement—especially opening ones—and keep it throughout the story. You can’t compensate with the appetizer for a lackluster first course, and drawing readers in only to let them down in chapter one leaves them feeling manipulated or tricked, and you risk their goodwill—and worse, their continued engagement. Because you think there are things readers need to know before they can invest in the main story or characters? Some backstory is genuinely essential to set up the main story—arguably the most famous movie prologue in history, the Star Wars: A New Hope opening crawl, offers crucial information that orients readers to the world, the situation, and the players of the story. But very often the information authors are certain readers require to care about the story isn’t truly essential to their investment. The most effective and engaging stories often plunge readers into the middle of a compelling situation a character is wrangling and fill in necessary context in a brushstroke at a time amid the forward movement of the story. Because it sets up something important that gives the story impact or establishes stakes? The movie Up starts with a nearly wordless, minutes-long prologue that sums up a couple’s entire life together, from childhood to old age. The story hinges on a key element of their relationship: He promised her a life of adventure, but instead, their years were filled with quiet comfort and companionship. The prologue potently sets up not only that essential information, but also the man’s powerful love for her, and his self-castigation for the disappointing life he feels he delivered that has made him a curmudgeonly hermit literally stuck in place, and in doing so it adds powerful resonance, impact, and stakes to what might otherwise seem a ridiculous goal: to put his house on a cliff where she always wanted to go. To introduce/set up a plot line? Murder mysteries frequently start with the murder—a necessary event that is often found in the form of a prologue, and readers of this genre often expect it. But ask yourself whether—and why—it’s necessary to tease in your plot with a prologue. Because the crime in a mystery, thriller, or suspense story is frequently the basis for the entire plot (and often unknown to the key players until they uncover the clues that lead them there) but isn’t actually part of the story itself, it often works well to use them in a prologue.Yet if there’s no compelling and organic reason plot events need to be held separate from the main story in the form of a prologue, consider whether you might simply call it “chapter one” and launch readers directly into the story.To set a tone or mood? Tone and voice are important in a story, and often play a large part in what draws readers into one. But on their own they are simply atmosphere, hovering like fog—and like fog, they can keep the reader from seeing what’s actually happening. Stories that start this way feel static and offer little hook for readers.
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Here’s a good test: Take out the prologue and see if it materially affects the story or the reader’s experience of it. If the answer is truthfully no, consider whether it’s worth risking reader, agent, or editor investment by including it.
Use It Purposefully
Too often the intended purpose of a bad prologue seems to be to compensate for a lackluster story opening and convince readers to stick with the author until it gets good.
That’s not a very good ploy, any more than a meticulously staged front porch will compensate for a ramshackle foyer. Real estate buyers may not make it to the rest of the house, no matter how HGTV-perfect, if the entryway and living areas are a letdown.
A purposeful prologue is one that deepens readers’ understanding or investment in the story; adds layers or meaning; increases story impact; sets up something pivotal to the plot. In the previous section, we looked at specific ways authors can achieve those ends. Good prologues may accomplish any one of those ends or others—and often more than one of them, working on multiple levels.
Colson Whitehead in The Nickel Boys, for example, uses his prologue to set up the main premise of the story: A secret graveyard full of children’s injured bodies is discovered on the grounds of a boys’ school in Florida and prompts an investigation that reopens wounds never fully healed in its former students.
Whitehead also introduces a central character and offers crucial story context: A man who was incarcerated at the school as a child and experienced severe abuses that have never before come to light. And he foreshadows a later major twist in the story … all in an economical 1,500 words.
That brevity is the final major ingredient in writing a successful prologue.
Keep It Tight
Yes, older stories often tend to have lengthy or involved prologues—but modern readers’ attention spans have shortened.
Think of a prologue as an antechamber into the world of the story your reader was promised, and every word is an additional step before they can enter it. Be very judicious with how much forbearance you ask of them.
Thumb through current titles’ prologues and you are likely to notice most are very brief—often no more than a page or two. If your prologue takes more than that to serve its essential purpose, you risk the attention of your readers—who are often skimming through a story’s opening pages to see whether it hooks them. Too much play in the line risks losing that hook.
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Prologues get a really bad rap—but used effectively, with purpose, and economically, they can serve as a powerful entrée into your story.
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