In the original outline draft of my novel, I didn’t tell the protagonist’s back story until chapter three or four. The back story was revealed to the reader through dialogue that takes place between the protagonist and a secondary character. The back story, save for the climax, is one of the most action packed scenes in the book. My professor suggested that I move this scene into the prologue. After completely agreeing with her, I went home and searched Google for information on how to write a prologue.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

Prologues tell a part of your story, but do so in a way that doesn’t match up with the rest of your book — otherwise, you would simply write it as a chapter. This page contains a list of what a prologue should and shouldn’t be. According to them it should have something to do with the main story (makes sense), and should not be used for world building or as an information dump. They also say it shouldn’t be specifically used to hook a reader, but everything we write should be used to hook readers, so I’m on the fence on that one.

One common approach for prologues is to write them in a different point of view than appears in the rest of the novel. In my brief amount of research I’ve found prologues written as diary entries, some in first-person (attached to novels written in third-person), and vice versa. I also read that some authors have written prologues from the antagonist’s point of view, and that got my wheels turning.

In my novel, the antagonist was once best friends and business partners with the protagonist. In an attempt to get rich quick, the antagonist forms an alliance with a group of drug runners, who use the pair’s business to hide their operations. When things go wrong, the antagonist burns down his own marina, joining the drug dealers for good but accidentally killing his best friend’s wife and daughter in the process (and framing his friend). Or maybe the drug dealers shoot the protagonist’s family. I haven’t worked out the details yet. The point is, this is the exact scene in which everything began, and the moment that the antagonist became a bad guy. What better scene to start the book with and tell from his point of view?

Writing continues…