To Prologue Or Not To Prologue

Hmmm, that is a question. I expect there are many different answers to it, nearly as many as there are writers. I know some people who never read prologues and hate them passionately, yet they persist.

Prologues are used in a number of ways – some good, some bad. I find them most useful in multi-book stories to fill in needful background on what has happened already, without cluttering up the current book with a lot of backstory. In this way, the information is there for anyone who missed the earlier books and it can easily be skipped. I recently read the second book of a series where I wish the author had written a prologue synopsis of the first book. Instead of the beginning of the story, most of the first chapter was talking heads discussing what happened before. Not a good way to start off. If I had not known the author’s work better, I would have put it down. Once you got past that, it was captivating.

Of course, a prologue is not the only way to do that. You can fill in bits of background as needed through the story in a natural way. All of us think about our personal past on a regular basis. Allowing the characters to do it occasionally simply makes them real. Seldom is all this information actually needed right up front for someone new to a series. It is really a matter of style though.

I used a prologue in Dream Song for a slightly different purpose. There was a significant event that was foundation for, not only the main plot, but also one of the subplots. This was originally supposed to be the ending of the first book, but feedback from my beta readers changed my mind. Unfortunately, it had to happen for the second book to work. It also was not the start of the actual story arc in the second book. It was a head scratcher. I finally used it as a prologue. I think it worked fairly well.

Another good use can be found in Andre Norton’s Witch World series. There are quite a lot of them covering different times and continents. In some, she used a prologue to instantly ground the reader in the time/place for the story.

So far, I have talked about the good points of prologue use. I am actually more of the kind to ignore a prologue in most cases. I can think of several works that use them for detailed world building that, not only isn’t necessary, it’s often boring. Nearly all of those are fantasy works. World building is a part of the fabric of the story. If the story is well crafted, the reader will discover it on their own as they explore the world through the story. What happened 500 years ago on that world will be important only when it is important to the characters. If a writer is that interested in what happened in the past of their worlds, they should do what I am doing – go back and write about it.

The other kind of prologue that’s annoying is when it really seems like it should be Chapter One. I have never figured out why some writers, well established writers, put a scene in a prologue that is clearly the beginning of the story. It seems dishonest somehow.