Prologue yes or no?

Some hate them, others can’t get along without them — prologues. These often superfluous actions before the actual action are a nuisance for many readers. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Whole books have been written about the subject of the prologue, but basically, the most important things can be said very briefly. That is precisely what this article does. Here is a quick overview of the most essential pros and cons on the subject of prologues.

What is a prologue?

In a novel, a prologue is a text that precedes the first chapter. It serves to give the reader the information he needs to understand the main story.

Sometimes, for example, it is impractical to jump back in the middle of the main text to a distant event that the reader must know to understand the further course of the story. Long retrospects inhibit the flow of reading and tear the reader out of the actual story.

Such central events, which take place before the beginning of the main story, can be accommodated in a prologue.

In science fiction or fantasy novels, a prologue can also help explain the world in which the story takes place to the reader before he or she even gets into the story.

A good example would be a story set in a post-apocalyptic world. If the reader needs to know what ruined this world so much, then the prologue is the place for it.

Show the all-destructive comet impact, the outbreak of the zombie epidemic or the attack of the aliens under whose yoke the characters of your main story must live for centuries.

Because the prologue is the first thing the reader sees, it must, of course, be written at least as excitingly as the main text. So the prologue has the task of drawing the reader into the story before it has even begun.

It is essential that the prologue does not refer to any side aspect of the actual story, but directly affects its core. To describe the development of a minor character in a prologue is, for example, entirely superfluous.

What is not a prologue?

The most important thing at the beginning: A prologue is not a foreword. Your novel doesn’t need a foreword — never. If you are an important and world-famous writer, you can deviate from this rule, but then the preface is usually written by another, equally important writer, and not yourself.

But even then, a foreword is not a prologue. Never write the word prologue over a foreword. Do not write a foreword at all.

But now to the prologue:

I often see, especially with inexperienced authors, that the prologue serves as a garbage dump for everything that the author found out during his research on the book, but which he could not use in the actual story.

If the prologue has nothing to do with the main plot, it’s not a prologue, it’s an unnecessary appendage.

If the prologue is misused as an infodump, it is not a prologue, but a feeble attempt to compensate for narrative incompetence.

As a rule, the only thing that belongs in a prologue is what has to be told and cannot be made understandable in the story by carefully dosed flashbacks, dialogues, or inner monologues.

A prologue is not there to explain the story to the reader in advance.

The story must explain itself. If it does not, it is not well written.

Much of what the author knows, the reader doesn’t need to know in advance. Some authors create long character studies of all their characters before they start writing. As a writer, it can often be useful to know that in his childhood, the hero had a formative experience that made him the person he is today.

For the reader, however, such information is usually wholly superfluous. Therefore, such information does not have to be squeezed into a prologue.

Nor do they have to tell the story in advance how the technology that appears in your space epic has evolved over the centuries (don’t laugh — it’s all been done before).

So should I write a prologue or not?

I claim that in more than ninety percent of cases, the answer will clearly be no.

Most of the prologue stories I read would have done without it. I would even say that these stories would have been even better without the prologue.

Why do so many authors write prologues anyway? I think to start with a pop effect. So a particularly brutal murder at the very beginning can, of course, draw readers into the story.

After the prologue, however, it often turns out that the story is very calm for a few chapters, until at some point, in the fourth chapter, something happens that is as gripping as the murder from the prologue.

So if you’re wondering how to spruce up your somewhat lengthy story with the most spectacular prologue possible, you’d better work on your story.

But if your story is one of the few in which a prologue can be used meaningfully because it offers added value, then write the prologue.

Just be aware of why you need it and what it does for your story.

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