Getting the prologue right

Having apparently convinced a bunch of people last week that I hate prologues, I am going to spend this week talking about how and when to do them right.

Because while I still maintain that 95 to 98% of prologues are either unnecessary or really Chapter One … there’s still that 2-5% where a prologue really is necessary. One can never tell when one’s backbrain is going to hand one that sort of story. It’s best to be prepared.

As I said last week, a good prologue is there to do something that a) is important to the story, but that b) cannot be done in the main part of the story without violating major story conventions. The most obvious candidates are things like important general background or a key scene that doesn’t fit within the story’s timeframe or viewpoint. Less obvious but still common are prologues that act as frames or setup scenes. Backfill prologues are most often found in multi-volume series where the author needs to remind old readers or get new ones caught up to where the overall plot is (though these seem less common these days).

One of the most valuable – and often most subtle – uses of a prologue is to set up an underlying structural link between the otherwise disparate stories or events that make up the rest of the book. For instance, a brief prologue scene in which a poor miner dies retrieving a huge raw diamond, which he curses with his dying breath; the remainder of the book follows the stone through various unrelated owners who succumb to the initial curse in different ways. Without the prologue, it would likely take the reader a while to realize that the story follows the stone, rather than particular characters, and it might take even longer to recognize that the stone is actually cursed rather than merely an opportunity to display the greed and veniality of its owners.

The first thing to keep in mind when writing a prologue is that it should do its job as quickly as possible. There isn’t a set length – a prologue can be anything from a few lines to a few pages – but this isn’t the place to wander off into interesting side paths. The temptation is nearly always to put too much information in – to give the entire political history of the country, instead of three key details about the two powerful families that are feuding; or to begin with a couple of pages about the miner’s miserable life in an attempt to punch up the irony of the miner’s death in the moment of his triumph.

Being brief is difficult for a lot of writers, especially novelists, and most especially when they have a whole lot of fascinating and important information that they just know readers need to have before the story starts. One rule of thumb is that if the prologue is close to the same length as your average chapter, it probably is Chapter One, rather than a prologue.

The second, almost equally important thing to remember is that the prologue has to be just as interesting and intriguing as the rest of the story. By the time the reader finishes the prologue, you want them to be hooked. It doesn’t matter whether the hook is “How is that curse going to play out?” or “Was that guy framed or did he really commit that murder, and either way, why?” or “Oh, boy, there is trouble on the way!” What matters is that it intrigues readers and pulls them into the rest of the story.

Another rule of thumb to keep in mind is that the longer the prologue is – the closer it comes to being the same length as a chapter – the more intriguing it needs to be to keep the reader interested into Chapter One. Also, it usually is not the best plan to write a super action scene for the prologue and follow it up with a slow-paced chapter full of narrative summary and background. If your main story is character-focused, the prologue probably should be, too – maybe not the same character, but still focused on whoever is the center of that bit. If the main story is fast-paced action, the prologue should either lean in that direction or at least make really clear that action is what the reader will get in the rest of the story.

The third thing is that whatever questions the prologue raises and whatever promises the author makes in it (e.g., “By the end of this story, you will know whether this guy was framed and why the murder was committed”), the rest of the story has to deliver the answers and whatever else was promised.

The acid test of a good prologue is the effect it has on the way readers read the rest of the story. This can be difficult for a writer to see on their own. If one has enough test readers, try giving some of them the first three chapters without the prologue, and compare their reactions to some readers who got the prologue-plus-three-chapters. If you don’t have enough test readers to make two groups, start all of them off without the prologue, collect reactions, and then try again in a couple of weeks with prologue-plus-chapters.