How to Write a Perfect Prologue

A prologue comes before the first chapter of a story. The prologue of your book can captivate readers, set the stage for your story, and be the key to hooking a reader early on, keeping them turning the pages late into the night. The word itself comes from the Greek Prologos, meaning “before word.”

The prologue is separate from the main story but will include important information about what’s to come. This allows the author much creative freedom.

Understand the purpose of a prologue

Before you start writing, it’s essential to understand the purpose of a prologue. A prologue should serve one or more of the following functions:

Your prologue can be used to:

• Set the tone for the story you are writing
• Provide the character’s backstory
• Provide information on the world
• Provide foreshadowing
• Introduce key characters or events which will play a significant role later in the book

Keep it simple

Prologues are generally short pieces, usually only a few pages, so try to avoid cramming too much information into this space. They are designed only to offer the reader a glimpse into the story.

The prologue is your opportunity to capture your reader’s attention. Consider where the tension or drama is in your story. It may be in a dramatic event, a line of dialogue, or a character’s decision.

Set the scene

Use vivid and descriptive language to create an engaging setting for your prologue. Whether it’s a cabin in the forest, a castle on a hill, or an underground station, transport your readers to the world of your story. Immerse them in the atmosphere you want to convey depending on the genre of your novel.

Revisit It

After you’ve completed your manuscript, you will need to revisit the prologue because, as the rest of your story has taken shape, the content of your prologue may need adjusting.  Ask yourself if it still serves its purpose. And whether it gives readers the right level of intrigue and context for the story.

Now that we have covered what a prologue is, and what you should do, here is some advice on what not to do.

• Avoid info-dumping. This is relevant advice to follow throughout your story, but even more so in the prologue. This tends to be more of a problem in fantasy and sci-fi stories, where the reader needs some background information concerning the world. Too much information dropped in the first few pages can be overwhelming for a reader. You should aim to separate the information the reader needs in the details of the narrative throughout the story.
• A common mistake new writers will make is to use the drama, tension and excitement they create in their prologue to excuse a slower first story chapter. Both the prologue and the first chapter should be compelling for the reader.
• Offer a teaser, not a spoiler. Be cautious not to reveal too much when writing your prologue. If you give away any spoilers, you could instantly lose your reader’s interest. Your aim should be to leave a reader with a question that encourages them to keep reading.

If your story has a prologue, this is likely to be your reader’s first interaction with some of the characters in your story. For this reason, the characters need to be intriguing from the first page, the first line if you can write it. They should also have a significant impact on the story – but they don’t necessarily need to be the main character. Their role in the story can be small if their impact is large – this is the case when the prologue is written from the point of view of a minor character. It’s a perspective that may not be used again, however, the events in the prologue have to be referred to – otherwise, there would be no point to the prologue.

An example of this might be a character writing a letter to the protagonist informing them that they were adopted when they were young. The story doesn’t need to be about the person who wrote the letter, the story is about the protagonist’s search for their birth parents.