Should My Book Have a Prologue

     If you are new to self-publishing and have not published at least one book, this question might be something you have wondered about.  In fact, even if you are published you might have wrestled with whether to use a prologue or not. 

     So what is a Prologue anyway?  A Prologue is defined as a separate introduction to your story.  Basically, the part at the beginning of a story, play, or a long poem that introduces it.  Generally, it is very short and to the point.

     Here is a video discussing this topic below:

     For me personally, I love prologues.  The reason is that it allows you to put something critical in your story that will draw the reader to want to read it.  For example; in my book series "Stranded by Deception", the book originally started with Chapter 1 and the first sentence was: It was a hot, summer day in San Francisco, California as Marissa pulled her car into the parking lot setting to the right of the busy, congested pier.

   Whereas, when I decided to add a Prologue it started with: 

     "Oh my God," Marissa exclaimed, "The boats on fire!" She didn't know why she should be so surprised by this latest revelation.  It wasn't like the day had started out on a good note. She knew she should have gotten off the boat the moment she first laid eyes on that dreadful man.  Looking back on it now, she wished she had listened to her inner voice.

     As you can see the Prologue is usually something very short and to the point.  This way when I started Chapter 1 with basically a flashback to how this all began with Marissa getting on the boat, the reader knows that a boat fire will happen, but they just don't know when.  This is how I generally use a Prologue in my books.  I use it to try and grab the reader.

     Sometimes Prologues are used in book series to catch a reader up if they decide not to read all of your books.  They can pick up any number in your series and quickly read the Prologue to know what happened previously.

     So the question still stands do you need a Prologue?  My answer is can your first chapter grab a reader in the first couple of pages?  If not, you might want to think about using a Prologue to grab your reader.

     In my next blog entry, I'm going to talk about how to write a Prologue.

     So stay tuned!