How to Write a Prologue (And Whether You Should)

Prologues have a bad reputation in writing communities — and most of that reputation is deserved. Most prologues fail not because prologues are inherently bad, but because writers use them to do things that should happen inside the story itself. A great prologue, however, creates a hook that pulls readers past the opening chapter with urgency they can't quite explain. The difference is knowing exactly what work your prologue does.

What a Prologue Should Do

A prologue earns its place only if it does something the first chapter cannot:

• Set the tone before the story begins: A horror novel's prologue can establish dread before the protagonist is introduced. A literary novel can set thematic register. A fantasy epic can establish the mythic scope of its world.
• Establish dramatic irony: The reader knows something the protagonist doesn't — something that colors every subsequent scene. A prologue showing the ending (in a way that creates questions rather than answering them) can create this.
• Introduce a non-protagonist perspective: If the story needs one crucial scene from a perspective that will never appear again, a clearly labeled prologue is cleaner than contorting the main narrative.
• Create a mystery that motivates reading: A prologue that ends on an unanswered question — who is this person? what does this mean? — can pull readers through a slower-starting first chapter.

The Most Common Prologue Mistakes

• World-building dumps: A prologue full of history, mythology, and lore that the reader has no reason to care about yet. If readers don't know the characters or stakes, they have no frame for the information.
• The prologue as chapter one: Writers often write a prologue because they can't figure out where to start. The actual story beginning — the one that introduces the protagonist and establishes the inciting incident — keeps drifting later. If your prologue is just a chapter one you don't want to commit to, call it chapter one.
• The prologue nobody reads: Literary agents report that readers frequently skip prologues. If your story requires the prologue's information to make sense, you've created a structural problem.
• The disconnected opening: A prologue set in a completely different world, time, and cast from the main story, with no visible connection to chapter one. Readers feel whiplash.

The Test

Delete your prologue. Read the first three chapters without it. If the story is better — or at least equally good — the prologue wasn't earning its place. If something essential is missing, ask whether it could be woven into chapter one instead. Only if the material genuinely needs to exist separately should the prologue stay.