Why Starting Your Novel with a Prologue Is Almost Always a Mistake

I say this as a fantasy writer who wrote a prologue. Prologues feel necessary when you're writing them. You've got a world to establish, a history to explain, a tone to set. The prologue feels like the responsible thing to do. Give the reader context before you drop them into the story.

What you've actually done is delay your story.

Readers Bond with Characters, Not Worlds

Readers don't bond with worlds. They bond with characters. A prologue that doesn't center a character the reader is already invested in is asking them to care about something before you've given them a reason to care about anything.

Most readers will tolerate this. Some won't make it to chapter one.

The Writer's Need vs. the Reader's Need

Here's the honest truth about most prologues: they contain information the writer needed to understand their own world. You lived with this world for months or years and the prologue is where you put everything the reader "needs to know" before the story starts.

But that's the writer's need, not the reader's. The reader doesn't know yet what they need to know. They haven't met your protagonist. They don't know what the stakes are. Context without investment is just information, and information without investment is just delay.

The Right Question

The question isn't whether what's in your prologue is important. It probably is. The question is whether your reader needs it before they meet your protagonist. Almost always, the answer is no.

That information can be woven into the narrative itself, delivered through character experience rather than front-loaded as setup.

Start with your character. Let the world emerge through the person living in it.