A prologue often sits at the very beginning of the book and serves as a sort of strange introduction to the story you’re about to read. At first, the prologue may seem confusing, introduce strange characters and places, or throw you into the middle of the story at a random point. However, the prologue actually serves as an important piece of the story you’re about to read, even if you don’t realize it at first. So, for today’s post, I’ll be teaching you how to write a prologue for your book and how to make sure it sticks with your readers in a memorable way.
What is a Prologue and Why do Books Include Them?
A prologue essentially serves as a setup to the narrative of the story. It comes before the first chapter and before the real story actually begins. The prologue typically provides the readers with information about the story, the characters, the world, or something similar. It could also be some type of lore featured in your story, and if you want to learn how to write lore, you should check this post out.
The prologue also sets the tone of the story and this is a big one. If you’re going for a story that tends to run on the darker side, then the tone is a vital piece of setting the story up for the reader. If your prologue is dark, then your readers will be set up to perceive that the story itself is also dark.
Furthermore, the prologue can be a sort of foreshadowing tool, providing hints and clues about what the story will talk about.
You can also take the TV show route or the movie route where the beginning of the show/movie shoots you right into the middle of the story before the real first act when the story is supposed to begin for the reader. This is a pretty neat technique and could serve as an interesting way to show your readers what your book will feature. This is called in-media-res and I actually did this in my very first draft of Soldat, book 2 of my series, The Fallen Age Saga. I ended up changing it after many rewrites though to fit the overall tone of the story. However, most prologues tend to not follow this route.
Do You Need a Prologue?
No, you don’t actually need to have a prologue in your book. This is something that some writers like to do and it’s something that other writers skip. I don’t always include prologues in my book, to be honest. For example, in Malware, I didn’t include a prologue but in Soldat, I did include a prologue because I was showing readers a piece of lore from the world that gives some important context.
In my current WIP, The Blade of the Disgraced, there’s no prologue either. The story starts you out right in the middle of the characters’ lives, but I could’ve easily added a prologue in.
It’s completely up to you if you want to add a prologue, just know that it’s not required.
What Makes a Prologue Captivating?
The prologue will be the first page that your readers will interact with when it comes to your story, and I’ve talked before extensively about why the first page is VERY important to your story. The first page is your hook, and you have one page to realistically reel your readers in.
The prologue also needs to have a purpose for existing. Don’t just include a prologue for the sake of including a prologue, because it will feel pointless to the readers. If your prologue sets up an ancient conflict, make sure that that conflict actually bears weight on the story and isn’t just something mentioned in passing later on.
Additionally, a good prologue is concise, but packs a punch. You can’t make your prologue very long because readers will just want to get started on the story already. It can feel tempting to just keep going in your prologue, but that might hurt your long-term potential reader retention, which is not what you want.
Finally, you need to ensure that your prologue actually makes sense and is clear enough for your readers to understand. Having a prologue that doesn’t make sense is only going to confuse your readers more. They should be a little confused, but not enough to feel like dropping your story right away.
Before You Start Typing That Prologue Up…
First, you should try to identify if you actually need a prologue for your story or not. As I said earlier, not all stories need prologues and not all stories will have the same type of prologue.
Once you’ve decided that a prologue is necessary for your story, you’ll want to determine what exactly is going to go into your prologue. The content of your prologue entirely depends on what your story is even about. If you have to talk about an important ancient war before your story begins, then the prologue is probably a good place to put it. Your prologue can ultimately be about whatever it is that you need to make your story work.
You should also think about the perspective your prologue will be in. If your story is first person, your prologue can too, but I think a strong prologue tends to air on the third person perspective side of things. The prologue can also be from the perspective of your main character. Again, this mostly relies on what your prologue is going to be about in the first place.
Start Strong, Capture the Reader’s Attention!
The first and most important thing you need to do when you go to work on your prologue is to start as strong as possible and create an opening line that’ll make your readers want to keep going no matter what. That first line is your make or break and you need to hit readers with something that’ll make them feel a lot of different emotions.
Next is that you need to work on developing the overall content of the prologue. If you’re talking about an ancient war, don’t bore your readers with so many technical details. Get into the action and get your readers interested and excited.
The next thing you need to do is to ensure your readers still see the point of the prologue throughout the text. If your readers lose the point, then it’ll seem a bit confusing.
Finally, when you get to the very end of your prologue, you want to conclude in a way that keeps readers wanting to figure out what they’re going to encounter next in the story. The prologue should not bore, confuse entirely, or turn readers away. The point of it is to act as a hook and as a source of information for the readers to get them excited.
Avoid These Things When Writing Your Prologue!
As an avid reader myself, I often notice that writers make mistakes with prologues, thus rendering the prologue actually counterintuitive to what the writer wanted it to be.
For example, pushing way too much info into the prologue. This mistake is potentially very costly as a writer to make. This is because if your prologue is overloaded with information, it’ll feel like simply just an info dump for the reader, and this will not bode well because the readers will believe that this is your writing style the entire time.
Secondly, irrelevant prologues for the sake of including a prologue is a bad idea. An irrelevant prologue is a prologue that, in my opinion, exists for the sake of existing and not actually delivering any relevant information to your readers.
Making your prologue too long is a common mistake I see. If your prologue keeps dragging on and on, then your readers will get bored. The prologue, to most readers, isn’t really the start of the story. The start of the story for most readers is Chapter 1. When you have a prologue that is even longer than your first chapter, then you will confuse the reader.
Also, don’t try to use an insanely large number of big words in your prologue. I see this happen sometimes with some prologues where the author will feel like just including really big words for the sake of sounding smart and then that just confuses readers. Write as you normally would, this will make sense and keep your story consistent.
Prologue Alternatives if You Have Different Story Requirements
If a prologue doesn’t fit your story, you can decide to do something different. One of these I mentioned earlier is the in-media-res opening, which shoots the reader into the middle of the story and then the first chapter starts at a point decently before the in-media-res scene.
A flashback is another option to use instead of a prologue. A flashback is basically something that shows information about the main character and then the first chapter goes to the present day.
For the most part though, a prologue can really help enhance your story and make it more intriguing for readers. You need to make sure that you actually need a prologue and that the prologue makes sense in the context of your story. Additionally, you need to ensure that your prologue is well written and captivates readers instantly. Finally, make sure you don’t overwrite the prologue because this might end up boring the readers instead.
Before you head on out, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga and be sure to sign up for my newsletter so you get updates on all my latest books, WIPs, posts and more!