If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here.

Because I recently launched a new online course on determining whether, why, and how to use a prologue, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this much-maligned story device.

In speaking with authors about what most vexes them about using prologues, several topics repeatedly came up, so I decided to switch things up a little in today’s blog and address some of those most frequently asked questions about the poor, put-upon prologue.

Why do so many agents and editors tell authors to avoid prologues?

Because they see a lot of unskillful ones. 😊 Misusing a prologue to compensate for story weaknesses elsewhere is a not-uncommon pitfall for authors, and industry pros who read a lot of manuscripts wind up seeing many variations on that theme.

It’s the same reason for the frequent prohibition of flashbacks, adverbs, semicolons, etc. Anything that is easy to misuse or overuse in story, agents and editors have seen a lot of. Often I think it’s easier for them to just serve up a blanket injunction against those tricky devices; already overwhelmed industry pros don’t always have time to articulate to authors why a prologue may not be working well, or how to use them powerfully and effectively to serve a story.

Read more: “Why Prologues Get a Bad Rap”

So will they read my submission if I have a prologue? Should I include it when querying agents and editors?

There are differing thoughts on this. I’m not of the antiprologue school, so in my opinion it’s fine to do so—as long as your prologue essentially serves the story (I offer some guidelines for that here, and expand on them in the course).

If your prologue is intrinsic to the story, then to me it might hamper the effectiveness of your pages not to include the prologue.

For instance in Rochelle Weinstein’s novel Where We Fall, the prologue offers key insight into the relationships and dynamics among the three main characters—two are a couple and one is secretly longing for her best friend’s boyfriend. Yet in chapter one the best friend is absent and the other two characters are long married.

The prologue creates a fantastic story question that would be missing without it—how did these two wind up together, and what happened to the third member of their formerly tight trio? The prologue heightens the meaning, stakes, and suspense of chapter one, and sets up the whole story. Leaving it out would significantly change the impact of the opening pages.

That said, industry pros—like Jane Friedman—often suggest that if agents/editors ask for a shorter submission (say, less than ten pages), it might be a good idea to send pages starting with chapter one—especially because so many agents may have a die-hard prologue prejudice.

But if you follow the Prime Directive of Prologues—keep it brief (as a general rule of thumb I advocate for no more than a few pages, and shorter is usually better)—then even in this case, if it’s essential to the story and carries its weight, I would still think it may be okay to include it.

One little “cheat” that might be helpful if you’re worried: Try not labeling it as a prologue. Many books start with what is essentially a prologue but may not be labeled as such; they may begin with a date line, or a title like a character name or something as simple as “Before,” or even no label at all, as Sonali Dev does in the opening to her latest novel, The Vibrant Years, with an unmarked fable about the full moon and the earth.

What about with preview pages on Amazon, or giving a reading for an audience? Should you start with the prologue?

I see it both ways on Amazon. As with submitting to an agent, this may be specific to each author and story. If it’s short and absolutely sets up the story essentially/intrinsically, I say use it—Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, for instance, would read very differently without its prologue that sets up the main story question of the novel. And if it doesn’t meaningfully impact the main story, you might question whether you need the prologue in the story at all.

Also, not including the prologue, especially in the Amazon preview, may feel like a “cheat” to readers if they buy the book and see there is one—you might as well advertise what you are actually offering, so to speak.

Readings are a little different—many authors don’t even start with the book’s opening, but with a passage from elsewhere in the story. Guidelines there are more about choosing an excerpt that’s brief and engaging enough to hook an audience, and whet their appetites to buy the book.

What about just including the prologue as part of chapter one?

A prologue should be as strong and as intrinsic to the story as your first chapter is—otherwise you may wind up with a “cheat” prologue that is trying to do the heavy lifting to compensate for a weak chapter one.

But as for including it within that first chapter—sometimes that works, sure. But with some stories—like Abi Daré’s excerpt from a fictional reference book that becomes central to the protagonist’s story in Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice, or Aaron Elkins’s opening anecdote about a famous unresolved theft of the Mona Lisa in his art-heist novel A Long Time Coming, the prologues aren’t really related enough to the first chapter for them to feel cohesive with it.

That would also apply to framing-device-type prologues, as in many historical fiction novels, for instance, or flash-forward prologues that begin with a “preview” of action that unfolds later in the story, like Water for Elephants. Rolling them into the chapter wouldn’t feel organic, or even make sense in most cases.

So is using something that happens later in book as a prologue or “teaser” common? And is that a good way to get into the action right away and start “en medias res”— for instance if the first chapter is a little quieter and not as strong a hook?

It’s certainly not uncommon—but it risks feeling like a cheat. I call this common prologue misstep an “exciting event preview,” where authors slap a more engaging scene onto the beginning of their story to compensate for a weak chapter one. (I.e., “Stick with me! I promise it’s going to get good….”)

This can be one of the most frequent culprits of prologues that don’t work, despite that in some stories they very much do—as I feel it does in Water for Elephants.

If you can vary the scene so it isn’t simply a cut-and-paste carbon copy of the scene, that helps. Pick out only those elements that make it narratively necessary at the beginning. Then later when we see it actually occur, you can give the “real time” or expanded version—as in Elephants, where we get more of Jacob’s (the protag) reactions, perspective, thoughts in the moment, and the full identity/picture of what actually happened. Or tell it from one POV in the prologue and another one in the story, etc. Use the version of the scene in the actual story to deepen the “teased” version of the prologue—and make sure that the prologue version serves as more than a way to compensate for a first chapter without a strong hook of its own.

Read more: “Are Prologues Bad or Aren’t They?” (with summaries of reasons prologues may not work, and how to use them effectively)

What if readers need to know certain backstory or setup to understand the story? Especially in a series sequel, for instance.

Frontloaded backstory dumps are one of the most common prologue missteps I see in manuscripts, where the author feels that readers need certain background to fully understand or engage in the story, like the old-fashioned narrator intro: “When our story begins, we find the hero…”

Opening with backstory risks feeling like a dump: It can stall pace, offer extraneous info readers may not yet have reason to care about, and/or fail to illuminate the main story and move it forward.

Nine times out of ten readers don’t need nearly as much backstory as authors think they do to engage in a story. If you’ve done your job of introducing a character we have reason to invest in, shown some tension or conflict or question they’re navigating from the very beginning, and put them and the story into action, you can salt in what info readers need little by little as you move the story forward.

Read more: “Backstory Is Essential to Story (Except When It’s Not)”

“How to Weave in Backstory without Stalling Our Your Story”

Learn more: How to Seamlessly Weave in Backstory (without Stalling Out Your Story)

Why do you so strenuously advocate shorter prologues? My longer one serves many important functions—and wouldn’t trying to put all of it as backstory in later parts of the story slow the pace of the later parts, and take away meaning, depth, and context for the early chapters? Tolkien uses really long prologues in The Fellowship of the Ring—and he has four of them!

Every story is different, but I will say (as I often do) that an author is potentially handicapping themselves quite a bit with a prologue that long—with not only agents and editors, who are already leery of prologues, but with readers, who may be put off by a long one and skip it.

I have rarely found in my work with authors that all the info they believe to be indispensable in the prologue is actually necessary—and skillfully woven backstory won’t slow a story’s momentum later on (see references above).

With a long, backstory-heavy prologue you’re asking readers to “bank” a lot of info that has no context or meaning for them yet, and also asking for loyalty and trust and patience that they may not yet be willing to grant you as an author.

That said, I certainly have seen it work. It’s subjective—get feedback on your specific situation from a few beta readers and crit partners and see what you hear most consistently.

As for Tolkien, keep in mind that different genres have different conventions and reader expectations—fantasy/SF readers tend to be more accepting of longer, world-building prologues. And also that markets and reader preferences can shift. Attention spans are shorter than they once were, and story audiences have become less tolerant of slow-build openings; they often expect to jump right into the story and get the action moving.

If you want to dive deeper into effectively using prologues, my new course “Powerful Prologues” offers explanations of the most common prologue “cheats” and why they may hamper your story; reasons to consider using a prologue and how to determine whether it serves your story; and specific ways of incorporating a prologue to heighten reader engagement and the story’s impact.

Over to you, authors—where do you stand on the prologue? Are you turned off by them when reading other people’s stories? Have you used them in your own—or wanted to? If so, what techniques do you use, or guidelines do you keep in mind—that help you keep your prologue on track and serving the story? What challenges have you faced in incorporating a prologue in your stories?

If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here.