How to write a prologue

Should this book open with a prologue? It is one of the first structural decisions a writer faces, and craft sources treat it with deliberate suspicion, because the prologue is both a legitimate opening device and the most common disguise for material that chapter one should be carrying. This guide is the decision path: what prologues genuinely do well, the failure modes readers and editors name, the alternatives, and what changes when the book is a serial whose first published installment has to earn the next tap on its own.

What a prologue is

A prologue is "an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details," often an earlier story that ties into the main one, as the catalog's glossary term summarizes its reference (as cited by the glossary term). Reedsy's craft guide puts it more plainly: a prologue is "a short 'chapter' that comes before the main narrative of a book begins," one that sets the scene, provides context, foreshadows events, hints at themes and pulls readers in. It sits after the front matter and before chapter one, and it is usually shorter than a standard chapter.

What separates a prologue from a chapter is not length but license. As Reedsy's editor contributors put it, "a prologue usually breaks one of those rules on purpose": it may follow a character we never see again, jump decades away in time, or unfold in a place the main story never revisits. The device earns its separate label exactly when it does something a chapter is not allowed to do.

What prologues do well

• A promise of tone and genre. Reedsy's editors list "establishes genre" among the jobs a prologue can do, and the guide notes prologues are "common, even expected, in fantasy, thrillers, and mysteries," while "more rare in literary fiction and contemporary romance." Its worked example is The Name of the Wind, whose prologue establishes the genre, the rules of the world and the atmosphere in a few pages. The prologue tells the reader what kind of book they have opened before the protagonist's ordinary world does.
• A distant-past or other-POV window. The alternative-POV prologue shows the story from a vantage the main narrative cannot use: the antagonist at work, a victim years earlier, a character who appears once. Reedsy's examples include A Game of Thrones and Me Before You, and its list of prologue types includes the flashback prologue and the dramatic-irony prologue, where the reader knows something the cast does not.
• An in-medias-res cold open. A prologue can create tension in medias res, dropping the reader inside an event with the exposition withheld. The craft instruction matches the term's: it "should focus on something happening," not on an account of what happened.
• A ticking clock. Editors name "sets a ticking clock" as a core prologue job: an event whose consequences are approaching while chapter one's cast is still unaware of them.
• A planted theme or motif. Reedsy's guide describes images and ideas readers "subconsciously draw on throughout the book"; its example is the class disparity Crazy Rich Asians establishes in its opening pages.

One nuance the sources insist on. Prologues about the past work as scenes, not summaries: Reedsy's editors warn that "prologues that tell something about the past are not as effective," because revealing the past upfront "defuses, rather than increases, narrative tension." Show the kidnapping; do not summarize the war. (The Cruel Prince, one of the guide's examples, shows the abduction as a scene rather than recounting it.)

The failure modes

• The disguised infodump. The most-named failure: a prologue that is history or worldbuilding wearing a costume. One editor quoted by Reedsy is blunt: "history lesson prologues never ever work."
• A scene the story does not need. The test Reedsy offers is deletion: "the simplest way to check whether your prologue is necessary is to imagine your book without it," and if removing it changes nothing, "that's a good sign that the prologue can likely be cut." A prologue also "shouldn't just be a substitute for an interesting first chapter," and editors flag mere ambience, worldbuilding or character development as not enough to justify the detour.
• The wrong kind of mystery. Confusion is not curiosity. There is "a fine line between causing confusion and evoking curiosity," and dream sequences and other less-than-real openings tend to land on the wrong side, producing "what's going on?" instead of "I need to know more."
• Delaying the real opening. However good, a prologue sits before the story the reader was promised, and every page of it is a page the narrative hook is not working. A prologue that is merely strong is not the same as a prologue that is needed.

The alternatives

• Chapter one. The default. If the material can live in the opening chapter, it should: "if you can do that with an opening chapter, you don't need a prologue." Editors' fixes include blending the prologue into the main text or simply renaming it Chapter 1. The aggressive version: "find the chase, and cut to it!"
• A cold open. When the itch is immediacy rather than distance, in medias res does the job inside chapter one, skipping the setup and filling it in later through dialogue and scene.
• Drip-feeding. Backstory does not have to arrive in one block. Scatter it through scenes as the story needs it (the exposition term describes this technique), or deliver the past as an actual flashback when it becomes relevant; how to write flashbacks covers that craft in detail.

Prologues in serialized fiction

Serialization raises the stakes on the decision, because in a web serial the prologue is not preliminary matter; it is the first published installment, and it competes directly with chapter one for the reader's attention. A browsing reader decides within the first update whether to tap next, which means the history-lecture prologue sits exactly where the hook belongs, and a prologue that ends flat wastes the one ending every installment gets. The chapter endings logic applies to the prologue too: its final lines should hand the reader "a question, an image, a threat, or a promise."

Two practical adjustments follow, offered as catalog consensus rather than sourced fact. Keep the prologue shorter than you would in a standalone novel, since serial readers experience it as an installment, not as front matter. And consider Reedsy's labeling tip: date the scene or name its place instead of titling it "Prologue," which reads less like homework to a reader scrolling a table of contents. The deeper framing of what chapter one owes a reader, when chapter one is also the product, is in how to start a novel.

The decision path

1. Run the deletion test. Imagine the book without the prologue. If nothing changes, cut it; and notice that what you have found is chapter one's problem, not the prologue's.
2. Name the job. Tone, a POV window, a ticking clock, a planted motif. If the only answer is "context" or "backstory," use an alternative carrier instead.
3. Make it a scene. One scene, something happening, hints rather than explanations; Reedsy's length guidance is "a few hundred words to a few pages," typically under a thousand.
4. Tie it to chapter one. The prologue's question should be the one chapter one begins answering, and the inciting incident should advance the prologue's material rather than duplicate it.
5. Revise it last. Because it frames everything after it, the prologue is the page most worth rewriting once the book exists, and beta readers can verify it: "if their answers match what you intended, your prologue is doing its job."

The prologue is a tool with one narrow talent: putting the reader somewhere chapter one cannot go. Use it for that, and it earns its place at the front of the book. Use it to sneak in a lecture, and readers will do what editors admit they do: skip it.