The One Job Most Writers Get Wrong
If you’ve ever asked, “What is a prologue, really?” or “Should my novel have a prologue?” let me save you from starting with the wrong question. The better question is this: What does your prologue change about the way the reader experiences chapter one?
Every writer knows what a prologue is. Far fewer can tell me what it’s for.
Almost every manuscript that crosses my editorial desk with a prologue makes me pause. Not in a bad way. More in an “All right, darlin’, tell me why you’re here” kind of way.
More often than I care to admit, I finish reading it, open my editorial notes, and type four little words: Why is this here? Occasionally, I add one more: Cut?
Which, yeah, may sound harsh, but I’m not anti-prologue. I’m anti-pages loitering in the doorway without a job.
Ask a writer why the manuscript has a prologue, and I usually hear some version of “It sets up the world,” “It gives the reader important backstory,” or ever-hopeful “It’s cool, right?” And listen, it might be very cool. It might even be beautifully written. You may love it more than certain relatives. None of that automatically means it belongs before chapter one.
In my more than twenty-five years of editing manuscripts for major publishers and independent authors alike—more than 1,200 books (and no longer counting)—I’ve read a lot of prologues. Most of them shouldn’t exist. Not because prologues are bad, but because the writer loved the world so much they tried to explain it before the reader had reason to care.
Chapter one can (and should) establish the world. Chapter one can reveal backstory (just a touch). Chapter one can introduce a mystery, a danger, or a deliciously complicated character. If the only thing your prologue does is something chapter one could do just as well, you don’t need a prologue. You may just need a stronger chapter one.
And, please, before y’all come after me with a rolled-up fantasy map, let’s talk about what a prologue can do. And why, when it does that job well, it can be magnificent.
Where the Word Comes From
The word prologue comes from the Greek pro, meaning “before,” and logos, meaning “word” or “speech.” Literally, it’s the words spoken before the main speech begins. In Greek theater, the prologue wasn’t simply the first scene of the play. It was a separate address that framed how the audience should understand what came next.
So, what is a prologue structurally? It’s certainly not an earlier scene in your novel. It’s actually a piece of framing that sits just outside the main story.
The One Thing
A prologue’s job is to change how the reader experiences chapter one. Not simply to tell a separate story that happened earlier.
That’s the job. One job. Prologues don’t need a side hustle.
The worldbuilding, flashback, flash-forward, mysterious cold open, family legend, battlefield disaster, or body in the library is only the vehicle. The real job is to change how the reader sees what comes next. Your prologue hands the reader a lens, and suddenly chapter one means something a little different.
If the prologue doesn’t change how the reader understands, anticipates, worries about the scene that follows, then it’s not functioning as a prologue. It’s an extra chapter wearing a fancy hat.
Why It Matters
Here’s the mechanism many writers miss: A prologue’s power comes from dramatic irony, not merely from information.
Readers are nosy. We love being let in on a secret, right? Nod your head. I see you agreeing.
When you show us something before the protagonist knows it, you’re not simply delivering exposition. You’re changing our relationship to every scene that follows. We’re no longer discovering the story at exactly the same pace as the main character. We’re watching that character walk toward something we already half-understand and perhaps desperately want them to notice.
That gap between what the reader knows and what the character knows is where tension lives. A pleasant conversation can feel ominous. An innocent object can carry a warning. A character can make a perfectly reasonable decision while the reader quietly screams, “Oh, honey, no, no, no.”
This is why a prologue that merely explains things often falls flat, while one that reveals and withholds at the same time pulls us forward. Information alone doesn’t create dramatic irony. A promise does. A threat does. A single unanswered question, planted early and left to grow roots, does.
If your prologue’s only function is “Here’s some history the reader needs,” you’ve built an encyclopedia entry, not a frame. The test isn’t simply whether the reader knows more. The test is whether the reader now watches chapter one differently than they would have without it.
A Case Study: The Prologue to A Game of Thrones
Spoiler Alert: Skip ahead if you haven’t read or watched the series.
George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones is a useful example because its prologue breaks one of those rules editors repeat constantly—do not open on a character who won’t return—and still works beautifully. It gets away with the broken rule because it understands the prologue’s real job.
The prologue follows a small patrol of Night’s Watch rangers beyond the Wall. They encounter something ancient and lethal in the dark. It goes badly. Spectacularly, icily badly. None of these men is a central protagonist. One barely survives, flees south, and is executed in the next chapter by a man who dismisses his story as the ravings of a deserter.
Structurally, the prologue hands the reader one piece of truth that almost every important character in the book doesn’t have. For hundreds of pages, noble houses will scheme, betray one another, and go to war over a throne. The reader watches all of it knowing that a much older, much colder threat is stirring in the north while everyone else fights over a chair.
That knowledge changes everything. The prologue isn’t backstory. It’s a promise: This matters more than any of these people currently understand, and I’m telling you before I tell them.
Notice what the prologue doesn’t do. It doesn’t explain the political history of Westeros, introduce every noble house, or hand us a glossary and wish us luck. It chooses one small, terrifying scene and lets the reader glimpse the danger before anyone else does. From that point on, every council meeting, family dinner, and political betrayal unfolds beneath the shadow of that opening scene.
Martin didn’t need a prologue because his world was enormous. He needed it because the reader had to possess a truth the characters lacked. That’s the difference. That’s what makes it a prologue rather than merely an extra opening scene.
What to Do
Before you decide whether your prologue stays, put it through this test. Be honest. Your prologue can handle the feedback, even if it doesn’t survive the revision.
1. Name what changes. Write one sentence: “Because of my prologue, the reader will now read chapter one differently because ______.” If you can’t finish that sentence, you probably don’t have a prologue. You’ve got a deleted scene that hasn’t accepted its fate.
2. Check the gap. What does the reader know after the prologue that the protagonist doesn’t know yet? If the answer is “nothing,” you haven’t created dramatic irony. You’ve simply added pages.
3. Cut and compare. Read chapter one with the prologue, then read it without the prologue. Does the chapter feel more tense, more poignant, more dangerous, or more meaningful because of what came before? If it lands exactly the same either way, the prologue isn’t earning its place, no matter how lovely it is on its own.
4. Ask what it’s promising. A good prologue makes an implicit promise about what kind of book this is and what will ultimately matter. It might promise an old danger returning, a buried secret surfacing, a wound that never healed, a truth the protagonist isn’t ready to face. If yours promises nothing and explains plenty, it’s not doing the one thing a prologue is for.
If you run this test on your own prologue and get stuck, drop a comment below. I read and respond to every one.
So, then, what is a prologue when it’s working properly? It’s definitely not a storage closet for all your gorgeous research, mythology, family history, worldbuilding, yadda yadda, that you couldn’t bear to leave out. It’s a lens you hand the reader before the story begins, so everything afterward means something slightly different than it would have on its own.
If it isn’t doing that, cut it. I say this with warmth, affection, and a very sharp red pencil.
Cause cutting the prologue isn’t about making the book smaller or stripping away what makes it yours. It’s about making sure every page does the work only that page can do. You can love a scene without making the reader pay admission to it.
Sometimes the best thing you can do for a beautiful prologue is save it in your cut-scenes file, thank it for its service, and let chapter one get on with the story.
Want to run this test on your own manuscript? Grab the Prologue Test: a 10-point checklist that walks you through this exact diagnostic, scene by scene.