Avoid the Novel Prologue. Here’s Why.
Last month I was asked my opinion on novel prologues, and I promised a more robust answer than the reply space allowed. Anita wanted to know:
“Can backstory that happened years before the protagonist was born be considered “Chapter One?” Or should it always be a prologue?”
The question itself highlights why many industry professionals recommend against novel prologues. The key word is backstory. You want to include as little backstory in your opening as possible, yet sometimes you feel you need to explain certain elements to the reader up front, so a prologue seems like an obvious solution. So why do so many people advise against them?
Your story sprouts in Chapter One. Why start before the beginning?
Drawbacks to Novel Prologues
My short answer was “The reader wants to be immersed in the character’s world, and to start in one place and then jump to another (whether it’s a few years or a few centuries later) can cause them to disconnect. Ask yourself why it’s important for the reader to learn information before the protagonist. Generally, we want to experience the story as the character does, so if we have more information than the protagonist, it actually creates a sense of false tension.”
When I read submissions that include prologues, I almost always recommend the writer consider rewriting the opening so the details included in the prologue can be organically incorporated into the story, allowing the reader to learn this information along with the protagonist.
In most cases, this is because the novel prologue:
Distances the reader from the actual story
Gives too many out of context details—say, a fantasy prologue that sets up what’s happening, explaining circumstances—that mean nothing to the reader, creating the sensation of too much information at once without developing a sense of the story itself
Creates a world markedly different from the world introduced in chapter one.
Extracts a scene from later in the story to try to hook the reader, which gives away too much information about where the story is going. This makes the reader impatient to get back to the world set up in the prologue, and ultimately makes the beginning of the book less captivating.
Has a different narrative voice than that in the main story. (For example, a third person omniscient narrator in the prologue, and then a close third or first person narrator in the rest.)
Effective Novel Prologues
There are a few exceptions, and occasionally (very rarely, actually) I’ve suggested a writer consider a short prologue. In one case, it was because the story was about the aftermath of a catastrophic event in a character’s life. For the reader to truly appreciate the impact, I thought a prologue would be helpful for the reader to share the character’s devastation as the event happened, and then better appreciate the emotional turmoil that followed. Because the story opened after the event, we were told how upsetting it was instead of experiencing it firsthand.
In published works, there are certainly novel prologues that are used effectively. A commonly cited one is the opening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which takes place eleven years before Harry’s close third-person story begins, but works to set up the world and hook the reader on the promise of the story. Yes, we learn Harry has magical abilities before he does. And we meet characters (Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall) who won’t come into play for a while. The effect of the prologue, though, is that it makes us curious about this world, and about this baby in particular. Then, when we transition to Harry’s life ten years later, we’re vested in the story, and our curiosity is maintained as we learn the details of the wizarding world alongside Harry. The prologue gave us a taste without overwhelming.
I’ve seen other successful prologues in mystery and suspense novels. Mary Downing Hahn uses a prologue effectively in Took, a Ghost Story to set the scene, build the reader’s anticipation, and give an intriguing hint of what’s to come without spoiling the story. Then, when the main characters are introduced in chapter one, we’ve already been spooked and wish we could warn them away from the inevitable. In Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache cozy mysteries, she often uses a prologue to give the reader a glimpse of the world of the story before anything happens. This creates a sense of ambience, drawing the reader in. It promises the story will be an escape from the reader’s reality, no matter how the story itself unfolds. It establishes the setting and a sense of foreboding, putting the reader on alert to pay attention to the details, because a crime is sure to follow.
Novel Prologues That Fail
One recent example (in my opinion, of course) is Mindy McGinnis’s Heroine. The prologue opens with the line, “I wake up and all of my friends are dead,” and then ends two pages later with “I did not just watch my friends die. / I did not leave their bodies cooling in a basement. / I am not an addict.” This is a powerful opening. It evokes strong emotions. It grips my attention. So what’s wrong with it?
This scene is from the end of the story. When I continue to chapter one, there is none of this compelling drama. What follows is the story of an athlete who gets into a car accident and ultimately gets addicted to pain killers and then illegal opioids. It’s a realistic story of how an average person can slip into drug addiction. The problem is, because of the prologue, the entire story is backstory, and most of it reads like an account, when as the reader all I want is to get back to that basement and find out what happens next. The book isn’t a story about how a teen deals with her friends’ deaths, or with the repercussions of being the only survivor, or how she fights an established addiction. The prologue set my expectations high, and the story that followed never delivered. In fact, it made me think this scene was plucked solely to grab readers’ attention, because the story itself failed to do so.
Avoid Prologues
When your story is revised and polished, and you’re ready to submit it to agents or editors, they generally only ask for the first ten pages. They want to read the story itself, not backstory or a tease what the story might become. Focus on hooking your reader in the character’s current world, reveal the inciting incident, and use that momentum to drive the story. When in doubt, cut the prologue out, and write a compelling first chapter.
