Why Most Prologues Are the Wrong First Chapter

Most prologues are chapter 1 of a different book.

The writer can’t bear to start without context. So she writes three pages of backstory—a historical event, a character who won’t appear until page 200, a battle explaining why the kingdom is the way it is. She calls it a prologue.

The reader opens the book and meets people they have no reason to care about yet.

The prologue problem is structural. Readers don’t invest in characters until they’ve been inside a scene with them—felt their want, watched them fail. A prologue places a ceiling on that investment before the book has earned it.

There’s one case where a prologue earns its place: when it plants an unanswered question only the main narrative can resolve. If your prologue opens with “The town burned on a Tuesday, and only one person knew why” and you never name the person, the reader will chase you through 400 pages. The question must stay genuinely open.

Test yours. Put a blank page where your prologue is. Does chapter 1 still work as an opening? If the reader can orient and start caring, you don’t need the prologue.

If the answer is “but they’ll miss important context,” that context belongs in the story itself, smuggled into scene. Background is never urgent enough to front-load. It’s earned by the reader’s desire to understand someone they already love.

Write the prologue anyway. Sometimes you need to write it to know what the book is about. Just decide later if it’s a first chapter or a deleted scene.

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