Many times a prologue is unnecessary. Writers include prologues thinking that they're enhancing the work, or making it unique in some way. Often, this attempt fails miserably. Readers often skip prologues, believing them to be a waste of time. Why bother with this extra bit when they can simply jump into the meat of the story?
Before you include a prologue in your novel, ask yourself a few key questions.
Do you really need a prologue?
Readers don't appreciate an unnecessary prologue. If you've added one thinking it adds interest or depth to your story, be wary. Often prologues serve only to annoy the reader from the first page, which is not what you want to do. A simple way of determining if your prologue is vital is to remove it and then read the story. Undecided? Send it to a beta reader. Ask yourself or your reader if it feels like anything important is missing? Does removing the prologue take away information that is necessary to the plot? If the answer to these question is yes, change the prologue to chapter one and read again, considering the same questions. If moving the prologue to the first chapter changes nothing in terms of plot, then leave it there. If the prologue does no more than create atmosphere before the real story begins, either delete it or call it chapter one.
Can the information given in the prologue be woven into the plot?
Writers sometimes try to use a prologue to provide backstory that may or may not be necessary to the plot. Often these details can be doled out in small bits throughout the story using dialogue or small amounts of narrative. Including backstory in the form of a prologue is as much of an info dump as if you'd included it in a large section of narrative or exposition somewhere in the story. In other words, it's not good. Examine the information you've put into your prologue. If you can distribute it (without dumping) into the main text, do so and delete the prologue. If the information cannot be distributed, for example an event that takes place long before the story that the reader must be aware of, then the prologue may be necessary.
Is the prologue written from the POV of a main character?
The voice of the prologue should match the genre and storyline of the main text. For this reason, it's often better to write the prologue from the point of view of a main character or the narrator. While it should feel different than the story itself, a prologue must be relevant to it in some way. If the prologue is in the POV of a character that has limited presence in the story, or doesn't show up at all, consider rewriting from another POV or make sure the presence of this "voice" is felt somewhere in the timeline of the story.
Does your prologue fulfill its function?
This is probably the most important question to ask yourself. A prologue's function is to introduce the story by providing essential information you can't convey any other way and by establishing setting which can't be created within the storyline. To determine if this is what your prologue does, go to the first question once more and determine if the reader must have this information before she reads chapter one. Don't use a prologue to hide a weak opening or to set a better scene than you've done with the first pages. Prologues aren't an opening into the story itself and shouldn't be used as such. The prologue shouldn't directly connect to the main story at all. It should be distinct and the reader should feel a difference when moving into chapter one.
The place to set atmosphere or tension is in your story, not a prologue. If the answer to any of these questions is no, odds are you've got yourself a chapter and not a prologue. Another possibility, if you've included information in your prologue that is factual and that provides the reader a recounting of actual events or details, is that you've written a foreword.
Renee Miller - Co-author of Writer's Companion, a reference manual for creative writers, and freelancer/fiction writer.
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