Prologue Problems: Should You Cut It? (Honest Advice)
Outline, plan, and fix your story in StoryDev — AI that knows your entire story, on a visual canvas.
Start Free →Founding members lock in $5/mo forever · No credit card required
Many agents say they skip prologues entirely. Many readers skip them. And yet — some of the best novels in genre fiction have prologues that work. The prologue isn't inherently a problem. The kind of prologue most writers write is a problem. Here's how to tell the difference.
Prologues That Don't Work
- A scene set in the distant past that explains the world's history — this is exposition with a scene wrapper, not a prologue
- A dramatic action scene featuring characters the reader doesn't know yet — action without character investment generates no tension
- A scene that could be chapter 1 but was labeled "prologue" instead
- A scene that establishes the villain's menace in isolation — this tells instead of shows, and delays getting to the protagonist
- A character's backstory told as a scene before the main story begins
Prologues That Work
- A scene from the story's future — the reader glimpses where things are headed, raising the question of how we get there
- A scene featuring the main characters but set before the main timeline — establishes voice and character before the plot machinery starts
- A mystery-raising scene: something happened, and the reader will spend the novel finding out what
- A short, haunting scene that sets tone so effectively that readers enter the story in the right state of mind
How to Decide Whether to Keep Yours
Ask yourself: if you cut the prologue, what does the reader lose? If the answer is "important information," the prologue is probably an info dump that should be cut and redistributed. If the answer is "a question they're now asking from page one," the prologue might be working.
Also ask: is the prologue's best content more powerful as a prologue than as chapter 1? Some prologues work better as chapter 1 with no label change. Some chapter 1s work better cut entirely so that a strong prologue is the new entry point. And some prologues — after honest evaluation — simply don't exist for the reader's benefit. They exist for the writer's comfort.
Fix It Faster With StoryDev
StoryDev gives you a visual canvas to map your story structure, track character arcs, and brainstorm scene by scene. When you're stuck, the AI knows your full story — not just the last few lines.
Try StoryDev Free →