When I begin to read a novel that has a prologue the first thing I usually think is: Can’t we just skip the prologue and get right to the action?

There have been plenty of times I have wanted to skip prologues because I’ve read so many before that were dull and slow. I never felt like they did anything to bring me into the story that was worth my time reading them. I swore that when I started writing a novel I would never write a prologue.

Guess what? I’ve written a prologue.

I’m only into the first chapter of my novel and it’s been sort of slow going as I figure out how I want to tell the story and what information I should be including this early and what I should be saving for later, what narrative mode should I follow and should I show what another character is doing, what are the right and wrong things to do in a first chapter, and so on.

But with all that going on I knew I needed a prologue. Why? Because I felt that there was a scene which takes place in the past, without the protagonist, which I felt really sets the stage nicely for the book’s style and genre. I personally don’t consider this book to be science fiction, but it will contain an element that goes beyond what is scientifically possible in our “real world”. So by those standards it will probably be categorized as science fiction. The protagonist however, doesn’t discover that sci-fi element until maybe chapter 2 or 3 (I haven’t gotten that far so I can’t say for sure). Since he doesn’t discover it in chapter 1, I felt that a prologue was necessary to give the readers a sense of what they were in for before they got a couple chapters in and say, “I hate science fiction, I just wasted my time reading this.”

So that’s why I’m writing a prologue. I should have more to share on my book very soon. Stay tuned.