If you find yourself in this scenario, what you need to know is that a prologue, no matter how exciting or emotional it is, it's not going to save a weak chapter one. In fact, it can only delay the moment that readers encounter that chapter one. Welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. My name is Savannah Gilbo, and I'm here to help you write a story that works. I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming. So each week I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable, and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, I'm sharing three signs your novel might not need a prologue and how to know whether the prologue you currently have is helping or quietly holding your story back. So if you're someone who already has a prologue written but you're not totally sure it belongs at the front of your story, or if you're someone who has a prologue written and something just feels off about it, then this episode is for you because I'm gonna walk you through the three signs your novel might actually be better off without a prologue and what to do instead so that your opening still works and hooks the reader's attention and pulls them into the rest of your story. But before we get into what those three signs are, we need to get clear on what a prologue is actually supposed to do because the bar it has to meet is actually higher than most writers realize. And I have a whole other episode on this topic. It's episode number 215, and it's called How to Write a Prologue Readers Won't Skip. So I'll link to that in the show notes for you. But in a nutshell, a prologue earns its place when it does something that your first chapter can't do. So not something that your first chapter just hasn't done yet, but something that it structurally can't do. And that usually means that the prologue will take place in a different time period. It'll be shown from a different point of view that might not be present in the rest of your book, or it shows the reader something that your protagonist isn't present to witness. Now we'll talk about this a little more in a minute because there is a caveat to that last thing I just said. But for now, I just want you to keep this little test in mind as we go through this episode. And really the test is a question. If you removed the prologue from the front of your story, would it drastically weaken your story? Not just make it a little different, actually weaken it as in, does its absence reduce tension, remove context that's essential for later choices to make sense, or break the emotional logic of what follows? And if you hesitate when you ask yourself that question, or if you find yourself building arguments for why your prologue should stay instead of feeling certain that it should, then keep listening because one of the signs we're about to talk about probably applies to your prologue. Alright, so speaking of that, let's dive right into the three signs that your novel might not need a prologue and what to do instead. Sign number one is that your prologue's current purpose is to deliver information. And this is the most common reason writers reach for a prologue in the first place, and it shows up in a lot of different forms. Sometimes it shows up as backstory, so a character's painful history, or the event that set everything in motion years before your story really starts. Sometimes it's world building, so maybe showing readers the history of the kingdom or how the magic system works, or the political structures that readers need to understand before meeting the protagonist in chapter one. And sometimes it's both of these things woven together in something that feels kind of like a natural opening, but is really just a delivery system for information. And the underlying instinct here is completely understandable. When you've been living inside your story for months, it can feel really hard, maybe even impossible, to imagine a reader stepping into your story without knowing what you know. So you build them this kind of on-ramp to your story in the form of a prologue. But here's what I want you to know Readers don't need that kind of on-ramp. And I want you to think about it this way. Imagine you meet someone at a party who, instead of saying nice to meet you, immediately launches into their entire family history, their hometown's zoning laws, and the economic structure of their county. You would be looking for the nearest exit, right? Well, readers feel the same way when they open a book and they find a prologue built out of information rather than the story. And that's because they need a character to ground themselves into, they need conflict to get them engaged, and then you can deliver the important information as context as the story moves forward. And so if you recognize this as something your prologue does, here's what I want you to do instead. I want you to start chapter one by dropping us into your character's life on the day that things start to change. So drop us into your character's life and trust that the context that you want to share in the prologue will find its way into your story naturally. Now, here's what that looks like in practice. Instead of opening your story with a prologue that explains your character grew up in poverty, you could open with a scene or your real chapter one where the character hesitates before ordering the cheapest thing on the menu, even though they can afford it now, right? So you're showing the effect of the backstory on the present moment. And in this scenario, readers don't need the backstory explained just yet because they feel it. And now they're curious about it, which means when you do give them more context, a few pages or a few scenes later, they actually want it and they're eager to hear it. So I'm not saying to delete the backstory or to delete the history. I just want to encourage you to put it in the story the moment it actually means something. So when it affects what's happening on the page in that scene. And I want you to let readers get to know your character a little more so they feel invested and can actually understand the significance when you do dole out that history or that backstory. All right, so that is sign number one that your current prologue might not be working the way you want it to, and that maybe it's not actually necessary in your story. Now, sign number two is that your prologue spoils what your story should actually be building toward. So what do I mean by this? Well, this kind of prologue usually looks like a flash forward, so maybe a glimpse of a future betrayal, a peek at the climax, or a scene that reveals how things will eventually fall apart. And the intention is to hook readers by showing them something dramatic before the story begins. And we think that that's enough to evoke tension in our readers. But more often than not, what actually happens is the opposite. The prologue actually leaks tension before it's even had a chance to build. So I want you to think about it this way: if your prologue reveals that a trusted character is going to eventually betray your protagonist, then readers already know that betrayal's coming long before it arrives. So every single warm or friendly scene between those two characters becomes tinged with dread more than tension, which can work if dread is what you're going for. But if the betrayal is supposed to land more like a gut punch or a big twist, then you've already softened the blow before the story even begins. So the same goes for plot twists, deaths, and major turning points. Once readers know what's coming, those moments can't land with full force. And that's because the surprise, the shock, the gut punch, whatever it is that you've been building toward, it's already gone before the reader gets to that point in the story. So the question to ask yourself is this Does revealing this information in the prologue create tension in the reader? Or does it release tension before it can even be built? And the key thing here is that I want you to answer that question from your reader's perspective, not your own intention. Because many writers set out to build suspense with a prologue and they genuinely believe it's working because they already know how the story unfolds. But remember, the reader is coming in cold and they will probably feel that mystery deflate rather than deepen. So intention and effect aren't always the same thing, and this is one of the places where they diverge the most often. Alright, so if knowing this thing up front makes the journey truly more interesting for readers, if you're going for dramatic irony and if it genuinely enriches the scenes and the rest of the story that follows, then your prologue might be earning its place. But if the reveal is meant to be more of a payoff or a twist or some kind of surprise reveal later on, then unveiling it in your prologue means it's not going to land with the impact it could have if you saved it for later. All right, so let's say that you're in that second boat and as you heard me talk through this sign, you're like, I have this problem in my manuscript. What are you supposed to do instead? Well, I want you to find the moment in your story where the revelation will hit the hardest and put it there instead. Usually that's somewhere in the middle or near the end of your story when readers are invested enough in your characters for it to actually land. And all of that buildup to that moment or that big reveal or that plot twist, whatever it is, that's all something that you can work on in revision once you know where the payoff is actually going to live. Okay, so that is sign number two that your story might not need a prologue. And that is if your current prologue spoils what your story is building toward and releases that tension that you probably want to build as the story goes forward. All right, now sign number three that you might not need a prologue is if your current prologue exists because you're not yet confident that your first chapter is strong enough. Now, I want to say this gently because I know how much work has probably gone into your opening pages, including your prologue. But I also want you to know that this feeling is really, really common. And it doesn't mean anything about you as a writer or the quality of your story. It usually just means that your first chapter isn't quite doing what it needs to do yet. And instead of reworking it, you might have found a workaround that felt like a solution. And that's how you ended up with a prologue. So let's back up a second and talk about how I usually see this happen. Usually a writer will complete chapter one, maybe they'll even finish their draft, they come back around to chapter one and they feel like something's off. Maybe they've started in the right place, but what's happening in that scene doesn't really grab them. It doesn't feel urgent or immediate enough, but they're still pretty sure that they're overall opening in the right place. And sometimes that is true. Sometimes the story does begin in the right place overall, but the way the first chapter is executed isn't quite there yet. So what tends to happen is writers in this scenario will write a prologue and they'll choose something more dramatic, more emotionally charged, you know, something like that to give readers a reason to sink into their story and keep going past the slower chapter one. And so if you find yourself in this scenario, what you need to know is that a prologue, no matter how exciting or emotional it is, it's not going to save a weak chapter one. In fact, it can only delay the moment that readers encounter that chapter one. And so what I want you to do instead is try deleting your prologue. So remove your prologue entirely and read your first three chapters as if you're a brand new reader. I know that's hard to do, but maybe read it out loud or maybe have whatever software you use, like Microsoft Word, whatever, have it read your pages to you, because sometimes that helps get a little bit of that distance back. But I want you to read your first three chapters as if you're a brand new reader, and I want you to ask yourself, does the story pull you in and does it make sense without the prologue? If your answer is yes, then the prologue was likely covering up for more of an insecurity that maybe doesn't need to be there. And it could just be a matter of tightening up that first chapter or figuring out a way to get the beginning of that first chapter to be a little bit more hooky, right? So if overall the opening of your story works and the first three chapters work, but maybe chapter one could be a little bit more exciting, that's what I want you to drill into, and that's where I want you to spend your revision time. But if you answered no to those questions and if you feel like something genuinely important is missing, or if your story doesn't start at the right place or something like that, then the solution is to zoom out and figure out how to address that within chapter one and not to keep the prologue as kind of a band-aid. Okay, so if your first chapter needs work, the most common culprit is that you're probably starting the story too early. So before the action, the tension, or the character decision that actually pulls readers into the rest of the story. And if that's the case, then I want you to try asking yourself, what is the first moment in my story where my character wants something, faces a problem, or has to make a tough decision? And that's usually where chapter one should begin. But if you're still not sure, I'm going to link to another episode in the show notes. It's episode number 18, and it's called Five Mistakes Writers Make in Their Opening Pages. And in that episode, I talk through the mistakes and also some ways to troubleshoot your story's opening pages. So I will link to that in the show notes for easy access. But that is the third sign that your story might not need a prologue, and that is if your prologue only exists because you're not feeling super confident about your first chapter. Now, just to quickly recap what those three signs are that maybe your novel doesn't need a prologue. They are sign number one, your prologue's current purpose is to deliver information to the reader. Sign number two, your prologue spoils what your story is building towards or it preemptively releases that tension you're trying to build. And then sign number three is that your prologue only exists because you're not feeling confident about your story's opening chapter just yet. Now, if you recognize your prologue in any one of these signs, I want you to try a really simple test. Delete your prologue and read just the first two or three chapters on their own, because you might realize the prologue isn't actually the problem. Maybe the problem is that chapter one simply needs to start a little later or a little closer to the central action of the story. You might be surprised what you find. And just to be really clear, I love prologues when they work. But in most cases, with most of the drafts I've seen over the last 10 years, they're kind of just tacked on and added to the front of a story to solve problems that a prologue is not meant to solve. Alright, so cutting a prologue isn't about following trends or appeasing agents, it's all about clarity. Because when a prologue truly earns its place in your manuscript, it doesn't need to be defended or explained. It feels inevitable and like an organic part of your story. And if something feels off right now, or if you've identified your prologue in one of these signs in today's episode, that's not a failure. It doesn't mean that your story's broken or anything like that. It's just your craft awareness that kicked in and has now been validated by this episode. All right, so just to reiterate, prologues aren't inherently wrong. It's just rare to find one that works in front of a chapter one that works. And when prologues do work, they work because they're doing something that no first chapter can do. Your job is not to protect the prologue that you wrote. Your job is to choose the best opening that works for your story and for your target reader. And hey, if you've listened all the way through this episode and you still want to write a prologue that works, I totally support that too. What I want you to do next is check out episode number 215. That one's called How to Write a Prologue That Readers Won't Skip. And in that episode, I break down the five different types of prologues that actually hook readers and pull them into the rest of your story. One more time, that's episode number 215, How to Write a Prologue That Readers Won't Skip, and we will link that for you in the show notes for easy access. Alright, so that's it for this episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy Podcast. Head over to SavannahGilbo.com forward slash podcast for the complete show notes, including the resources I mentioned today, as well as bonus materials to help you implement what you've learned. And if you're ready to get more personalized guidance for your specific writing stage, whether you're just starting out, stuck somewhere in the middle of a draft, drowning in revisions, or getting ready to publish, take my free 30-second quiz at savannaGilbo.com forward slash quiz. You'll get a customized podcast playlist that'll meet you right where you're at and help you get to your next big milestone. Last but not least, make sure to follow this podcast in your podcast player of choice because I'll be back next week with another episode full of actionable tips, tools, and strategies to help you become a better writer. Until then, happy writing.