Does Your Book Need a Prologue? When to Include One and When to Skip It

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So you’re thinking about adding a prologue to your novel. Perhaps the last book you read had one, or your favorite author seems to begin every story with a mysterious death, an ancient prophecy, or some unfortunate soul making a decision that will have consequences for the next four hundred pages. Snce these authors seem to be doing rather well for themselves, you figure there must be something to it. Besides, a prologue sounds like something a proper novel ought to have, alongside a dedication, an acknowledgments page, and perhaps a map of a fictional kingdom whose name nobody knows how to pronounce.

But then you start looking for writing advice and discover that some authors swear by prologues, while others insist they’re unnecessary, that literary agents hate them, and that anything worth knowing before Chapter One should simply be worked into the story itself. Apparently, the same literary device that’s perfectly acceptable in a bestselling novel might be the reason your own manuscript never makes it out of the slush pile.

Which leaves you wondering whether your book actually needs a prologue, or whether you’d be better off starting with Chapter One.

I think the answer has less to do with whether prologues are good or bad than with what readers are expecting when they begin your story.

What Is a Prologue?

A prologue is an introductory section of a book that appears before Chapter One, usually after the table of contents, if there is one. It’s part of the story itself, rather than supplementary material about the book.

This is what distinguishes it from a foreword or preface:

• • Foreword: Typically written by someone other than the author to introduce the book or explain its significance.
  • Preface: Usually written by the author to discuss the book’s background, purpose, or how it came to be written.
  • Prologue: Part of the fictional narrative itself, presented before Chapter One.

When Should You Include a Prologue?

I think one of the strongest reasons to include a prologue is to establish the genre of your novel when the opening chapter doesn’t immediately make it clear what sort of story the reader is getting into.

Suppose you’re writing a psychological thriller, but your first chapter introduces a woman moving into a new house with her two children after a difficult divorce. She spends the morning unpacking boxes, getting acquainted with the neighbors, and wondering whether she’s made a terrible mistake by leaving the city. All perfectly reasonable things for a newly divorced woman to concern herself with, but nothing about the opening necessarily suggests that somebody might be trying to kill her before the book is over.

Without any additional context, a reader might reasonably assume they’re reading contemporary women’s fiction about a woman rebuilding her life after a failed marriage.

Now suppose you open with a prologue showing the previous occupant of the house being murdered under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps we experience the scene from the victim’s perspective as she gradually realizes that someone she trusts intends to kill her. We don’t know who the murderer is, but we know enough to suspect that the danger hasn’t necessarily ended with her death.

Suddenly, the entire reading experience changes.

When our protagonist arrives in Chapter One and begins unpacking her belongings, we already know something she doesn’t. The seemingly friendly neighbor who offers to help carry in her furniture might be a murderer. The strange noise she hears upstairs might not be the house settling. And when her youngest child announces that she’s made a new imaginary friend, we have considerably more reason to be concerned than her mother does.

Nothing about Chapter One has changed, but the reader now understands what kind of story they’re reading.They’ve been promised a psychological thriller, and they’re interpreting the ordinary events of the opening chapter through that expectation.

How a Prologue Establishes Your Genre Promise

Now, you might argue that readers already know what genre they’re getting into because they’ve read the book’s description, but I don’t think that’s always the case. A murder mystery and a psychological thriller, for instance, might have nearly identical premises, perhaps even similar covers, while offering two very different reading experiences.

Consider the difference:

• Murder mystery: Readers might expect to collect clues, question suspects, and try to figure out who committed the crime.
• Psychological thriller: Readers might be more concerned with anticipating danger, questioning whom they can trust, and wondering whether the protagonist will survive.

Both stories might begin with the same murder, but the way that event is presented can establish very different expectations. A murder mystery might encourage us to pay attention to clues that could help identify the killer, while a psychological thriller might place us in the victim’s perspective, allowing us to experience her growing fear and uncertainty.

Those expectations matter because they influence how readers interpret everything that follows.

In our example, the woman moving into her new house isn’t simply beginning a new chapter of her life. She’s unknowingly entering a dangerous situation, and the reader has been given a reason to anticipate what might happen to her. We don’t necessarily need another murder in Chapter One, or even anything particularly suspicious, because the prologue has already established the possibility of danger.

This is what I mean when I talk about a prologue establishing the genre promise. It isn’t necessarily about giving readers information they couldn’t learn later. It’s about shaping how they experience the story from the moment Chapter One begins.

I think this is something writers should consider before deciding that every thriller needs to begin with a murder, every fantasy novel needs to introduce a dragon, or every romance needs to open with two attractive people making prolonged eye contact across a crowded room. The point isn’t to cram recognizable genre conventions into the first few pages. It’s to establish the kind of experience readers can reasonably expect from the story.

Should You Rewrite Chapter One Instead of Adding a Prologue?

I think if you can establish the genre naturally within your opening chapter, you should probably do that instead. There’s little reason to add an entirely separate scene when a few changes to Chapter One would accomplish the same thing.

But sometimes Chapter One begins exactly where it needs to, and rewriting it to establish the genre would mean sacrificing something that already works. In those cases, a prologue may be the better choice.

So here’s how I’d approach the decision:

• Start with Chapter One if you can establish the genre promise naturally within the opening without compromising the story.
• Consider a prologue if Chapter One doesn’t establish that promise and rewriting it would weaken an otherwise effective opening.

Whatever you decide, make sure the rest of the novel delivers on that promise. There’s little point in opening with a terrifying murder if the next three hundred pages concern themselves exclusively with a woman’s attempts to establish a successful cupcake business. Unless, of course, the murderer turns out to be one of her customers, in which case I might actually read that book.