When Not to Skip the Prologue

by K.M. Weiland @ Word Play

If you read last week’s post, “Skip the Prologue,” you’ve hopefully seen some of the reasons why prologues are almost always a bad idea. Even prologues that escape being boring information dumps tend to delve into the dangerous waters of distancing a reader from the main story. Having invested their interest and emotion in a prologue, a reader is jarred when suddenly he must switch gears and turn the page into Chapter 1.

But does all this mean that prologues are always a bad idea?

To put it as plainly as possible - no, it does not.

Without doubt, prologues have their place in a writer’s bag of tricks. So long as a writer understands how to use this particular trick, he can utilize it to great effect. But, be warned, effective prologues aren’t for the faint of heart or the unskilled. In order to pull off an effective prologue, one must have a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t; when a prologue is necessary and when it isn’t; and how to pull it off in a sparkling show of lights that sucks a reader into your story’s main body.

Over the past year, I’ve read several books that have utilized effective prologues. By effective, I mean a prologue that accomplishes everything it’s supposed to do: hooking the reader without distancing him from the story he came to read.

In my personal opinion, the only effective prologues are those that are short (containing little else other than the hook itself) and very sparse on character or story development. Since, by their very nature, prologues are distanced from the main body of the story, the reader tends to be distanced as well. As we discussed last week, that’s deep tapioca pudding right there.

From time to time, most every writer struggles with the need to include a prologue. The question is—how do we make it work? what constitutes a good prologue? In my humble opinion, here’s the answer:

A good prologue doesn’t even attempt to draw the reader into its characters or its story narrative. It exists merely to impart some important information (be it a bad-guy perspective, an event that occurs previous to the story, an event that occurs after the story, etc.). If the writer delivers that information as quickly and sparsely as possible, he’ll hopefully be able to convey the necessary information and still leave the story itself (including its arc and natural character progression) fully in tact.

For example, in his best-selling novel The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum opens with two “newspaper” articles, conveying information about the story’s antagonist and effectively setting the scene for the hero’s entrance. Because the prologue is short, snappy, and doesn’t require the reader to invest his emotions only to reinvest them at the beginning of Chapter 1, it is, I believe, very successful.

In the Star Wars novel Tatooine Ghost, author Troy Denning opens with a brief snapshot of a nightmare, experienced by Leia Organa Solo. The dream sequence, told entirely in italics, is snappy, haunting, and gripping. It hooks the reader quickly, without forcing him to delve into character studies and action scenes. I should note that in the case of Tatooine Ghost, Denning does have the profound advantage of characters with whom most readers are already very familiar. However, I believe his prologue still presents a valid example.

In contrast, Thorn in My Heart, Liz Curtis Higgs’s 18th-century Scottish retelling of the Biblical story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, begins with the drawn-out description of Rowena McKie’s pregnancy, labor, and—finally—her delivery of twin boys. Beyond the obvious Biblical tie-in, this scene brings nothing of importance to the story. Not only it is a slow and boring opening scene, but it misdirects readers, first encouraging them to attach themselves to Rowena as the obvious main character, only to discover later that the story in fact revolves around her younger son and his female cousins.

Finally, The Eye of the World, the opening volume of Robert Jordan’s long-winded fantasy series The Wheel of Time, begins with a complicated and prolix recounting of the historical event that shoved Jordan’s fantasy world into turmoil. The prologue, although necessary backstory, fails to engage the reader with important characters and their struggles. It is a classic example of backstory that could easily have been woven into the body of the story later on.

So, in short, may I suggest two “rules” to govern your use of the prologue:

1. Unless absolutely necessary, skip the prologue.
2. If a prologue is unavoidable, make it short, snappy, with a solid hook and as little characterization and drawn-out narration as possible.