Prologues: Will They Ruin Your Life?
More and more, aspiring writers are advised not to include something in their manuscripts – the dreaded prologue. Why is this? Anecdotal evidence strongly indicates that many readers don’t think they’re useful, and some just skip over them entirely.
Why skip a prologue? The main reason is that, well, a lot of them are unnecessary and skippable. There’s a problem, particularly in the Fantasy genre, with authors using prologues as “lore dumps” – a primer for the reader on the history of their made-up country, complete with lists of rulers who will never matter again and sometimes even run-downs of how the economy works or the topography of the land. This may have worked for readers a hundred years ago, but today, most of us want to get invested in a plot and characters right away when we crack open a novel. If I want to know more about the lore of the world after I’ve gotten immersed in it, I’d much rather check out an appendix at the end of the book than get slapped in the face with all that stuff at the beginning.
So what are prologues actually for, anyway? Are there good prologues? Yes, under certain circumstances.
Prologues can help further your main story in two ways. One is giving the perspective of a non-POV character who can provide important information we wouldn’t get otherwise. For example, say you’re writing a story that begins with a murder. Since the main POV character of the book is probably going to be someone trying to solve the murder, if you want the reader to get to see the crime up close and personal, you may include a prologue from the killer’s POV, or even the victim’s. This is technically a prologue, but it gets the reader involved right away and provides action from page one. An opening like this might even contain a few clues as to who did it.
Another way a prologue can add to and lift up the main story is by showing the reader a relevant event that occurs some time before the main events of the story. If the main character spends a lot of the book coming to grips with a traumatic thing that happened to them ten years ago, you may choose to open your novel by showing the reader that thing. This also counts as a prologue, but it’s giving additional context and important information that matter to the plot.
Sometimes, a book with a slower-paced first act can benefit from a prologue-type opening as well. If the reader gets a few paragraphs letting them know that later somebody’s going to fight a dragon, or the hero will be embroiled in a high-speed car chase, or the villain is hard at work on their evil plans, that can compel them to read on, in a classic “You’re probably wondering how I got here” scenario.
So, how do you know if you should include a prologue in your book? The short answer is: only include one if it makes sense. Does hearing from another character or seeing an event that happened in the past add information the reader needs in order to appreciate the story? If you removed the prologue, would it change anything? Beta readers and critique partners can help you figure this out. If the information given in the prologue is non-essential but might be fun for the reader to know, such as the lore dumps I mentioned earlier, that can still be included, but put it at the back of the book so interested parties can peruse it later, after they’ve read the story.
Lastly, if your prologue is from the main character’s perspective and doesn’t take place outside the timeframe of the story’s other events, then it probably doesn’t need to be a prologue – it can just become Chapter One. Because we know that a chunk of readers skip them anyway, avoid prologues if you can. Even if you do decide one is needed, there’s no need to label it “Prologue”. You can call a beginning section of your book “One Month Ago”, or “Somewhere in Borneo”, and by the time the reader realizes they’ve read a prologue, the information you needed to get across is already in their heads! Mission accomplished.
