Fabulous First Page: Prologue Edition

This prologue gets it right from page 1!

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The Great Prologue Debate

You will often hear agents and editors say they dislike prologues, or that writers shouldn’t use prologues. Then, you pick up books in the bookstore and see that —what the what?! — half of them have prologues. What gives?

I think what agents and editors dislike is a prologue that acts as an attempted band-aid for a lackluster first chapter. They dislike authors using a prologue to say, “see, look, the story gets good eventually!” when the story needs to be engaging from the very first chapter.

Wait, what even IS a prologue?

It’s a short (well, I think it should be short) pre-chapter before Chapter One that usually does one of the following:

• Gives us a glimpse at something that is going to happen later in the story. Usually chapter one then goes back in time and we start learning about the events leading up to the scene from the prologue. This can help with foreshadowing and reader investment. Readers want to read on to see “how we got here.” See, for example, the prologue in The Last Session by Julia Bartz.

• Gives us a glimpse at something that happened before the story starts. This might help with context or world-building, and help us understand the story events to come. (See my Fabulous First Page post on The Invited by Jennifer McMahon, with another prologue that works.)

• Engages the reader by setting the tone, foreshadowing, and/or hinting at the overall themes of the story. See the prologue in The Maid by Nita Prose, or the prologue(s) in Doll Parts by Penny Zang*

*In Doll Parts the prologue isn’t labeled as a prologue. It’s not labeled as anything (sneaky, sneaky!) but it comes before Chapter 1, so it must be a prologue.

In fact, my agent and I are trying something similar with my new manuscript. Instead of labeling the prologue as “Prologue,” we’re just labeling it with a character name and location, and then, underneath the heading of Chapter One, we’re putting “ELEVEN MONTHS EARLIER.” Will editors like it better since we didn’t label it as a prologue? Only time will tell…

Sometimes prologues are written in a different style or from a different perspective than the rest of the novel. I think that’s another reason agents and editors say they don’t like them. If they are only reading the first 5-10 pages of your manuscript and you have a 5-10 page prologue, they might not be getting an accurate taste of the point-of-view and narrative style of the rest of your manuscript.

A prologue still counts as the first page

Since the prologue is still the first page a reader, agent, or editor will encounter, it should still try to do all (or most) of the things that I recommend a first page should do.

A first page should:

• Hook the reader right away and invite them into the story.

• Set the scene and/or the overall tone of the novel.

• Introduce a main character (and/or introduce a main setting or theme).

• Hint at a conflict, situation, mystery/secret, or question.

• Set reader expectations.

For more on first pages, check out:

• This post about first pages from Karin Gillespie.

• This post on Jane Friedman’s blog about first pages.

The following book does it all with the prologue and has a seriously great opening line, so, without further ado, let’s find out the book and read it’s fabulous first page…