To prologue or not to prologue?

If you want to start a row in a room full of writers, bring up prologues! Some authors rarely start a novel without one; they love how they can act as a teaser, a promise, a frame. They relish the opportunity to flash forward or back from a story’s main starting point, to experiment with a different style or viewpoint from the rest of the book. Others call prologues a distraction, a gimmick – or just plain “annoying,” according to Elmore Leonard! A reader shouldn’t be asked to start a story twice, the sceptics say; anything in a prologue can be woven into the core narrative instead.

I’m here to argue that there’s a lot you can do with a smart prologue. But, like any scene in your book, it must earn its place.

A promise

Prologues are common in my genre, domestic suspense, because they allow the writer to start with a brief, heart-pounding scene (‘cold open’) before easing off the throttle to introduce the characters and world of the story. You’ll often see this in TV shows: the opening might be a terrified person running through woods, or a body washing up on a beach, before a quieter, more character-focused scene after the credits. The prologue is a promise: things might seem ordinary once the main story starts, but something extraordinary is waiting around the corner.

It's dangerous, however, to rely on a prologue because you’re worried your first chapter isn’t engaging enough. A prologue should work with the subsequent narrative, enhance the tension of the ordinary world, rather than make up for a lack of it. If in doubt, ask yourself why your prologue exists. The answer should be anything but “because my first chapter’s too boring!”
 

A flashforward

The prologue of my first novel, The Downstairs Neighbour, is a scene I lifted from the middle of the book and reproduced, with tweaks, at the start – in which one character finds a bloodstained T-shirt in another’s wardrobe. I had the idea on my way home from a workshop run by crime writer Lucie Whitehouse, who talked about opening with a ‘fresh, arresting image,’ rather than something a reader might’ve seen many times before.

I thought about that phrase ‘arresting image’ and a scene I’d already written came into my head. I realised it would make a good prologue: it contained a strong visual, and could work with my first few chapters to strengthen the novel’s initial hook. For the prologue version, I removed the characters’ names, so the reader wouldn’t yet know whose T-shirt it was, or whose blood, or who found it. And I added two sentences to the end: This is the moment I know I’ll have to do something. The moment that sets it all in motion. My own promise that this scene would become pivotal.

This approach – showing a flash of something from later in the story, before rewinding to the start – is perfect for thrillers exploring the build-up to a crime. As in The White Lotus TV series, or Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, the prologue can reveal (or partly reveal) the big climax, leaving the rest of the narrative to unravel how the characters get there. Even small things then become charged with extra significance and potential. Whose violent ending have we glimpsed, and what’s happening now that will lead back to it?
 

A flashback

More traditionally, a prologue might show an event that precedes the main narrative. Elmore Leonard says this is unnecessary, that backstory is better drip-fed in as a story progresses – and it’s true that sometimes the very word “prologue” can make a reader impatient or frustrated. But in my fourth novel, My Darling Boy, a flashback prologue solved a problem. I was struggling because that book has two inciting incidents: a manslaughter that devastates a village community; then, years later, the disappearance of the killer on release from jail. The latter is the ‘real’ starting point, kicking off a new chain of events. But adding a prologue let me portray the night of the initial murder without flooding chapter one with exposition – it allowed me to show, rather than tell, a crucial slice of backstory. The key was keeping it short and punchy. Pages and pages of flashback prologue can slow down your opening and turn off your reader.

A lens

Maybe good prologues aren’t just promises, then, but lenses, colouring the scenes that follow. A glimpse of a bloodied T-shirt in a wardrobe casts instant darkness over a story that starts (proper) with a teenager failing to come home from school. A young man’s disappearance on his release day from prison has greater poignance if we’ve just seen the tragic moment that led to his imprisonment. Your prologue is not just a stand-alone attention-grabber. Choose its content well, and the reader will carry it into your opening chapters and beyond. 

Helen Cooper is a writer of psychological thrillers from Derby, currently living in Leicester, UK. Her novels include The Downstairs Neighbour (2021), The Other Guest (2022), The Couple In The Photo (2023), and My Darling Boy (2024). She's been described as a master of the twisty plot!

Before becoming a full-time writer, Helen was Head of Learning Enhancement at the University of Birmingham. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University and is president of Leicester Writers' Club.