What are prologues? What can we learn from prologue examples by Tolkien, G. R. R. Martin, Paula Hawkins and others? Learn more about these useful story elements.

Many authors include a prologue to their story that gives context, exposition or backstory. What is a prologue exactly? Read on for definitions, examples and tips for using them in your own books:

What is a prologue?

The word ‘prologue’ comes from the root word logos meaning ‘speech’ and the prefix pro- meaning ‘before’. It’s literally the before-word.

Prologues’ origins are the introductory spoken parts that would often precede early modern stage dramas. Bharti Kirchner over at The Writer gives a great prologue definition:

A prologue is a preliminary act, a teaser, if you will, used to usher a reader into the story, generally happening in a different time period and place. It sets the stage for the main actions to take place. It tantalizes.

Bharti Kirchner, ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Prologues’, The Writer, Updated October 21, 2018.

Authors often use prologues to:

·        Give readers exposition that explains their world without having to use info dumps in the main story

·        Show a key event, setting or situation that is significant for the remainder of the story

·        Establish a scenario that provides context for the events of the following story

We’ll get to prologue examples below as well as tips for writing a great prologue.

Prologues: 4 functions in stories

Here are several ways you could use a prologue (with examples along the way):

1.   Use prologues to give context for your world

2.   Include prologues to unify story elements

3.   Add history using wiki-like prologues

4.   Describe significant background events

1. Use prologues to give context for your world

Many authors use prologues to supply context for the reader: A means to understand or frame what will follow.

Paula Hawkins begins Into the Water (Doubleday, 2017) with a prologue that gives context for the dark, thriller nature of the story in describing a woman being bound and drowned.

Prologue example: Creating context in a preface

If you’re wondering how to write an epic prologue, look no further than George R. R. Martin’s prologue to A Game of Thrones (Bantam Spectra, 1996).

This is an excellent example of giving rich context through a prologue. Martin’s example establishes:

·        Setting: We learn about ‘The Wall’, a barrier of stone, ice and magic between the Seven Kingdoms and the dangerous northern wilderness. The men who venture beyond the wall in the prologue discuss the cold, one revealing his ears were cut off due to frostbite

·        Key conflict between groups: We learn about some of the groups dangerous to the Seven Kingdoms’ human inhabitants living beyond the wall (‘wildlings’ and ‘Others’) in a deadly encounter between humans and Others

·        Broader values and norms: We learn about societal practices in Martin’s world, such as the character Will who was a poacher until he was caught red-handed and forced to join the Night’s Watch or lose a hand. We immediately learn that punishments in the Seven Kingdoms are harsh

This example shows how a prologue for an epic fantasy novel can combine dialogue, description and characterful interaction to illustrate context.

Agent Andrea Brown gives a caveat to writing prologues, which Martin avoids by making his prologue read as immersive and engaging as a first chapter:

“Basically editors and most agents hate prologues,” says agent Andrea Brown, president of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc. “They are sorely overused and seem like a cheap device. Much better for authors to be creative—come up with ways around them and start the novel with a great first chapter.”

Andrea Brown, quoted by Kirchner, ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Prologues’.

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2. Include prologues to unify story elements

A prologue or epilogue should be relevant to the story. It brings together key elements (the way, for example, George R. R. Martin’s prologue to A Game of Thrones brings together two key worlds – the world of humans and the world of The Others beyond The Wall).

Another way you may decide to use a prologue is to bring together themes or even story characters in a single place or image, as in the example below:

Prologue example: Unifying characters in Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann’s complex novel Let the Great World Spin (2009, Bloomsbury) features eight central characters, including a monk, an artist-meets-addict, a cynical judge and a prostitute.

The novel begins by describing the day in August 1974 when Phillipe Petit walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Down among the spectators are all eight of the story’s characters. The audacity, dreaming and ‘recklessness’ of the act is reflected in their individual arcs. The tightrope-walker image unifies them in place, and in all the act symbolizes.

Like Martin’s prologue, this prologue example conveys a sense of place too, in the rattling off of New York street names, for example:

Those who saw him hushed. On Church Street. Liberty. Cortlandt. West Street. Fulton. Vesey. It was a silence that heard itself, awful and beautiful. Some thought at first it must have been a trick of the light, something to do with the weather, an accident of shadowfall. Others figured it must be the perfect city joke – stand around and point upward, until people gathered […]

Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 3.

3. Add history using wiki-like prologues

The introduction to Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) is also a good example of an effective prologue. It is interesting to compare Tolkien’s approach to George R.R. Martin’s in terms of the narrative devices each author uses.

Martin uses the individual incident to illuminate the whole (an unexpected skirmish beyond The Wall illustrates the nature of his world). A specific scene, specific conversation, gives context.

By contrast, Tolkien’s lengthy prologue is more encyclopedic.

The prologue to Tolkien’s cycle is divided into 5 parts with a table of contents. ‘Concerning Hobbits’, ‘Concerning Pipe-weed’, ‘Of the Ordering of the Shire’, ‘Of the Finding of the Ring’, and ‘Note on the Shire Records.’

This expansive prologue allows Tolkien to share primary information about the history and nature of the race of Hobbits, as well as the history of ownership of the ‘One Ring’. We read social history, as well as the history of an object of greatest significance for the plot.

Tolkien gets all the explanatory detail out of the way in his prologue. It’s a ‘user’s manual’ of sorts for the coming story. When we encounter mention of Hobbits or the One Ring, we already have background – a frame of reference.

Prologue example: Giving wiki-like details

As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk. They dressed in bright colors […] Their faces were good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (George Allen & Unwin, 1954), p. 7.

The details given about Hobbits in the above extract of Tolkien’s prologue read like an encyclopedia entry. There’s a sense of broad strokes and generalizations very different to Martin’s approach.What is especially interesting is the contrast between this rosy picture of Hobbits in Tolkien’s prologue, the ‘scientific’ style of the Hobbits’ description, compared to the visceral danger and raw emotion his characters experience in the story (the story itself having a more illustrative and immersive style).

4. Describe significant background events

In the section of Tolkien’s prologue titled ‘Of the Finding of the Ring’, the author also recaps key events.

We learn, for example, how Bilbo Baggins set out on the adventure whereby he came to possess the One Ring that is the object of the quest in The Fellowship, too:

As is told in The Hobbit, there came one day to Bilbo’s door the great Wizard, Gandalf the Grey, and thirteen dwarves with him: none other, indeed, than Thorin Oakenshield, descendant of kings, and his twelve companions in exile. With them he set out, to his own lasting astonishment, on a morning of April, it being then the year 1341 Shire-reckoning, on a quest of great treasure […]

Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 14

If you’re planning to write a prologue to describe significant earlier events, ask:

·        Which characters are worth introducing now?

·        What do these events illustrate, what key to understanding what follows in the story will these details give my reader?

Example of significant background given through a prologue: Into the Water

Paula Hawkins’ novel Into the Water (2017) begins with a brief, half-page section titled ‘The Drowning Pool’, before the chapters listed under ‘Part One’ in the contents begin.

The section titled ‘Libby’, all in italics, describes a disturbing scene:

Again! Again!The men bind her again. Differently this time: left thumb to right toe, right thumb to left. The rope around her waist. This time, they carry her into the water.

Paula Hawkins, Into the Water (Doubleday, 2017), p. 3.

Hawkins gives the viewpoint of a character named ‘Libby’ as she is drowned. The reader only learns much later about this specific event and it’s fuller background, however. The following sections focus instead on events leading to other characters’ near-drownings.

Hawkins thus delays revelation explaining the events depicted in her prologue, yet it’s still relevant to multiple characters’ experiences across multiple time periods in her book.

Reading the above examples, how can you write a strong foreword that adds to your story by introducing key events?

1.   Use detailed action. Both Tolkien and Hawkins include moments of tension and drama in their descriptions of background events.

2.   Create elements of mystery. The reader will likely wonder why Bilbo’s adventure led to his ‘lasting astonishment’ or what happened to ‘Libby’ in Hawkins’ example.

3.   Keep prologues concise or well-structured. Even though Tolkien’s prologue is one long piece of narrative, his table of contents identifies the 5 separate subjects it covers so that as we read it, we notice we are learning about five aspects of his world

4.   Use standalone events to introduce important themes of your story. Hawkins’ prologue, for example, highlights the violence against women that is part of the issues the book explores. This issue recurs throughout the book across time periods.