So You Want to Build a Prologue?
Virtual Office Hours #2
Note: This is one of a series of “ask me anything” posts I did for a group of writers I worked with in fall 2024.
Q: I’m thinking of using a prologue to give the reader the background information they need, then going straight into the action of the story in Chapter 1. Is a prologue a good way to set the stage for my story?
A: Generally, no. Prologues should be used rarely and to accomplish specific purposes, and those purposes don’t include providing background information or setting the stage. Here’s why.
A good prologue doesn’t feed the reader background information to set the stage for the story. Rather, a good prologue gives the reader something more, something the reader can’t get inside the story, something that adds to the story.
Generally, I’d advise against writing a prologue to solve a problem you, as the writer, have, such as getting in background information and exposition to set up your story. We’ve all read these kinds of prologues. Or not—I have at least one friend who skips prologues as a rule. These kinds of prologues are boring. They’re just another form of throat clearing.
Instead, write a prologue if and when it makes your story better to start with a prologue. A good prologue is going to engage the reader and make them want to dive into your story.
One of my favorite examples of a great prologue is the prologue Colson Whitehead wrote for The Nickel Boys. The prologue is short and set in the present. It starts with the line, “Even in death the boys were trouble.” (There’s one of those killer opening lines I’ve mentioned!) It goes on to describe the discovery of a secret graveyard on Florida property which had once been a reform school campus. The graveyard is filled with the remains of missing boys who’d been students at the school. The press picks up the story, and it goes national. In New York City, a former reform school student hears the news. They’ve been able to identify most of the bodies, but seven remain unidentified. He has been avoiding the other survivors of the reform school, but now he knows he is going to have to return to Florida and face his past.
You can read the prologue on the publisher’s website, here: Read an extract from The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I suggest you read it before continuing.
I’ll wait.
Okay.
As you can see, the prologue poses questions: What happened at the reform school? What happened to these boys? Who are the unidentified boys? He doesn’t pose them explicitly, in an expository way. He entices the reader into asking these questions.
We’ve talked about the opening of a book posing a question, and this prologue does that. But it also poses questions we won’t even realize were posed until we get to the ending of the book. (No spoilers here!)
Chapter 1 of the novel then goes back in time to Christmas 1962 and begins to answer the questions posed in the prologue.
Notice the things this prologue does:
It’s brief—at 1,500 words, it’s much shorter than a typical chapter.
It introduces the protagonist in the present.
It begins to characterize the protagonist in the present.
It gives us the protagonist’s status quo in the present.
It starts in the middle of the action, in the present. Something big is happening in this prologue. It’s not a throat-clearer.
It gives us the big change in the present—because of the discovery of the secret graveyard, a man is now being forced to return to his past. There will be another big change in the main story.
But most importantly, in my view, this prologue builds tension right from the outset of the book.
It engages readers—they want to know what happened, they are interested in the story Whitehead is about to tell, and they are feeling something—emotion, sadness, outrage. They want answers.
It gives us something we can’t get in the main story, because the main story is set in the past, and this prologue gives us the horror in the present that will live with us throughout the story.
It tells us ahead of time how the story is going to end, but it doesn’t ruin the story for us, because (1) the story is about how the ending came to pass; and (2) there are more surprises in the story. (No spoilers here!)
This prologue accomplishes all the things we talked about the opening of a story doing. It does so in the present, and then we move into Chapter 1, which is set in the past—the protagonist is being forced to return to his past in more ways than one.
Notice the things this prologue does not do:
It does not provide information through exposition—it’s an engaging story opening.
It does not give us info dumps—it weaves the things we need to know into the story in an interesting way.
It does not provide background information it thinks we will need in order to understand the story—it gives us another piece of the story that will make the main story more engaging, more interesting, more emotional, and more meaningful.
In other words, this prologue doesn’t take the easy way out and feed us information—it serves the purpose of making the story better and giving us something we can’t get in the main story. Knowing what we know after reading the prologue raises the stakes of the story we are about to read.
Writing for Writers Digest, literary agent Meg LaTorre says, “[T]he biggest question [isn’t] ‘should I write a prologue’ but ‘does a prologue improve my story?’ … As a reader, when I start reading a prologue, I’m usually impatient to get to chapter one. But by the end of a good prologue, I’m wondering about the subsequent story and excited to see how the event fits into the rest of the plot.” (The Great Debate: To Prologue or Not to Prologue?)
Writing for Jane Friedman, editor Tiffany Yates Martin says, “Like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each unsuccessful prologue is unsuccessful in its own way, but what they have in common is often that they are used as some form of ‘cheat’—shortcutting the actual work of storytelling to circumvent potential pitfalls.” On the other hand, she continues, “A [successful] prologue can open the door to your story and entice the reader in ….” (Why Prologues Get a Bad Rap.)
Writing for Jericho Writers, author Dr. Sharon Zink says, “[Prologues] are a source of debate in writing circles as they can tempt writers to add too much ‘backstory’ about their characters and the setting in one go, before the main plot begins in Chapter One, leading to an overload of information which can be off-putting.” (What Is a Prologue and How Do You Write One?) Zink offers a few other contemporary examples of good prologues: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams; Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton; and The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum.
By now, I think you’re beginning to understand that, if you’re going to write a prologue, you need to have a good reason to do so. Will your prologue accomplish some of the things a great prologue should accomplish? Or are you considering it because it’s challenging to get certain things into your story in other ways? If it’s the former, then start writing your prologue. If it’s the latter, ditch the prologue, but never fear—there are lots of ways to get backstory and other information into your story organically, without using the cheats of prologues, exposition, or infodumps. We’ll talk about those things soon.