Prologues have been a sort of hot topic for a while now. Are they good? Are they bad? People can’t decide between vehement hatred of them and sheer adoration. It’s remained a subject for division in the writing community for a long time, and especially when you enter the territory of speculative fiction.
Personally, I used to be 100% against prologues and would skip them every time I saw them. I have since come around from this, but I still find myself wary of a prologue when I see it. It makes me wonder about the rest of the book—and not in a good way. They can be good, though, if they’re done properly.
So what do I think are the keys to a good prologue?
The first key is they need to be wrote with the same quality as the rest of your book. This should be a given. If you have a prologue, it’s the first bit of writing anyone will see from you. As such, it needs to be just as good as the rest of the book. You cannot afford to slack.
The second key is it needs to have a purpose. As in, if you removed it, would the story change at all? Would it be worse off? All too often, I see “prologues” that just serve to infodump the lore of the world. While it may be information we don’t get in the rest of the book, is it actually interesting? Can it be delivered a different way? Ask yourself when you are writing this prologue what it has to offer the narrative as a whole. For example, for the first time in a very long while, I added a prologue to A Sharper, More Lasting Pain. Why? Because the contents of the prologue is a key to the main plot of the book and offers a major hint to the mystery.
The third key is that not all stories in fact need a prologue. This ties to my second point, really. Some writers add prologues for one reason or another, but all it does is drag out the word count and hamper your story. The general consensus I’ve seen from writers is if they see a prologue, they will skip it. What is it about your prologue that makes it unskippable? Can it not be implemented elsewhere? Why are you adding a prologue to your work?
How do you feel about prologues? Have other tips you want to suggest? Let me know them down below!