To Prologue or Not to Prologue
Depending on one’s preference, prologues in themselves can intrigue or disinterest a reader. I’m unopposed to prologues in general, but they pique my writer-brain and make me more curious with questions when I stumble upon one at the beginning of a story such as “What is the purpose of this prologue?” and “Is this prologue necessary?” From this writer’s experience, there are certain things about prologues that cause my interest or approval in a story to wane. But, before getting to that, I’ll start with the basis of what a prologue is.
Prologue: a separate introductory section of a literary piece.
In my opinion, “good” or “necessary” prologues involve some degree or variation of the following: foreshadowing, a hook, world-building, theme-setting, and tone-setting. There are likely other things I missed or that others would consider “good” or “necessary” for a prologue to include, but these are the main things I care about.
Foreshadowing
I consider prologues these discrete things that aren’t immediately related to the story as it progresses from chapter 1, but they aren’t so detached as to be irrelevant. A big part of what makes a prologue work (for me) are the expectations or promises it sets up, which can be largely attributed to foreshadowing. If a character, event, or object is introduced in the prologue, I tend to expect to see whatever it is to have some form of impact on the story later on. Perhaps the prologue is told from the antagonist’s point of view; in this case, I’d hope this character’s endpoint or ultimate foil is foreshadowed, or the story’s wider conflict is foreshadowed. An example of foreshadowing from Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember:
“The box ended up at the back of a closet, shoved behind some old bags and bundles. There it sat, unnoticed, year after year, until its time arrived, and the lock quietly clicked open.”
This excerpt and the overall prologue does well in foreshadowing the box’s discovery and ultimate impact on the rest of the story. In short, when I’m given a prologue I expect the information to supplement the story at some point.
A Hook
In addition to setting up some expectations/promises to later receive some payoff, I want to be hooked on the things going on in the prologue itself. This can be difficult, as it would be disappointing to have an engaging prologue that then leads to a less engaging (or uninteresting) first chapter. Perhaps the prologue evokes a thought-provoking question from the reader that could be as simple as “Why is this happening?” An example of the “this” is the well-known opening line from Stephen King’s The Gunslinger:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Several questions arise about who the man in black is, why he is fleeing, who the gunslinger is, and why he is following. Another example, to not-so-humbly reference my own story, is the opening line from The Disgraced Mage:
“I think it’s about time I retire.”
The questions of why the character wants to retire and why now come to mind. Notably, both of these opening lines involve more in-the-moment (i.e., in medias res or “in the middle of things”) narrative elements (Stephen King used action, and I used dialogue) which tend to do better at hooking readers as opposed to more detached narrative elements (e.g., exposition, info-dumping, or “Once upon a time,”). In short, when I’m given a prologue I expect to care about what’s happening in it.
World-Building
Since prologues come before first chapters, the burden of introducing and setting up the world of the story falls onto it. Details relevant to the ways of the story’s world would hopefully reference governance, races, classes, sociopolitical issues, life expectancy, science, geography, entertainment, history, and/or catastrophes among other things. I typically write fantasy which means a prologue I’d write would likely include enough details to reference whether there is magic and how it works. An example of world-building, probably in the broadest form, is Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
From this, the reader gets a good idea of the scope of the story encompassing and involving galactic events, and one ape-descended life form is relatively unimportant and primitive to the wider scale of things (and there is a reference to their technology). Another example of world-building is J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring:
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
From this, the reader is given names of places as well as a reference to how old a character can be expected to live. In short, when I’m given a prologue I expect to have an idea of how the world works.
Theme-Setting
Generally, stories have a theme or reason for their existence. This kind of overlaps with foreshadowing, as it would be a bit anticlimactic to give the story’s entire message in the prologue; setting up the expectation of what the story is about is necessary, even if it is vaguely set up. I’m going to cheat a little and provide an example of this from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit:
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
This is the first line of the first chapter, and, though it isn’t in a prologue, it evokes a sense of humility. Throughout the story, the humble lifestyle of hobbits is apparent, and is often contrasted with thrilling adventures. One of the overarching themes immediately evoked by this first line is humility, and is given a nice sense of closure or “payoff” in the same book’s final lines:
“ ‘You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!’
‘Thank goodness!’ said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.”
In short, when I’m given a prologue I expect to have an idea of the story’s theme.
Tone-Setting
It’s generally good to have an idea of what you’re getting yourself into in a story’s opening. If a prologue tells of sunshine and rainbows, then I expect the story to be a lighthearted experience to carry on with. On the other end of the spectrum, here is an example in Barbara Kingslover’s The Poisonwood Bible:
“Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened.”
The prologue goes on to describe, bluntly, the hardships of life. The opening line and the overall prologue sets the tone of the story as grim and tragic. If this prologue instead opened with, say, the tone of Jenny Colgan’s The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, and I continued on to get the events and tone of The Poisonwood Bible, I’d be put off. In short, when I’m given a prologue I expect to have an idea of the story’s tone.
That’s the gist of what I think makes a prologue good. I’d also add that prologues tend to work better being concise, so as to avoid readers latching on to characters or events that are absent or set aside in the opening chapters. Anyway, there is still the greater question: to prologue or not to prologue? If the narrative of a prologue isn’t significantly unrelated to the following chapters, I don’t see why it couldn’t simply be made to be the first chapter. If the narrative of a prologue isn’t related at all to the story, I don’t see why it would be included at all. As a writing exercise, it may be helpful to create a section for backstory or an alternative beginning to compare and contrast with the first chapter. Depending on how much it adds, it could be worthwhile working into the story.
Going back to my own book and example of The Disgraced Mage, the reasons I included a prologue were to foreshadow and world-build. Both the prologue and first chapter have hooks in their own right, but if I started with the first chapter I wouldn’t be providing the reader with a clear enough understanding of the type of magic to expect in the world of the story that the prologue provided. My prologue also gave me the opportunity to foreshadow certain political schemes and changes in status, which the latter helped emphasize status as being one of the story’s overall themes. Further, my prologue set up questions about the prologue’s POV character and his influence in the rest of the story as either a protagonist or antagonist. Without the prologue, these elements, while still gotten in the story, are less strong.
All that said, if I can definitively answer both of my initial questions when facing a prologue (i.e., “What is the purpose of this prologue?” and “Is this prologue necessary?”), it is probably “good” to prologue rather than not. A final caveat: while I think prologues aren’t ever really “necessary,” I think they are worthwhile as a supplemental or complementary feature of a story.
