Prologue

In practice

A prologue is an opening section that comes before the main story and sets it up: an earlier event, a piece of backstory, a frame or a voice that tells the audience how to read what follows. Romeo and Juliet begins with a Chorus who reveals in fourteen lines that the lovers will die. The Fellowship of the Ring film opens with a history of the Ring before the story reaches the Shire.

For screenwriters, a prologue is a scene or sequence set apart from the main action, often years earlier or in another place, that the story will later pay off. It can plant a mystery, establish the stakes or give the audience information the hero does not have. Many thrillers and horror films open this way, with an attack or a crime whose meaning becomes clear only later.

The common mistake is using a prologue to unload backstory the story could reveal on its own. A prologue earns its place when it creates a question or a tension that pulls the audience into the first act. If the main story would work without it, it is probably a delay, and readers of a spec script notice.

A prologue that plants a mystery

The prologue is short, sealed off by a date and a cut, and it ends on a question: what happened to the ship, and why did the light fail? The main story begins decades later, but the audience now watches Maya with information she may not have. That is the job a prologue should do, and it does it in under a page.

What a prologue is

A prologue is an introductory section of a play, book, poem or film that comes before the main action. Merriam-Webster defines it as the preface or introduction to a literary work, and also as a speech, often in verse, addressed to the audience by an actor at the beginning of a play. The word comes from the Greek prologos, from pro, "before," and logos, "speech."

In Greek drama, the prologue was the opening part of a tragedy before the chorus entered, often a speech by a god or a character explaining the situation. Elizabethan plays kept the idea as a speech by a Chorus or a single actor. In novels, the prologue became a separate opening chapter, often set at another time or told from another point of view.

Today the word covers any opening that stands apart from the story proper. It may be labeled "Prologue" or not. What makes it a prologue is its separation: a different time, a different place, a different character or a different voice from the first act that follows.

Prologue examples

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet opens with a sonnet spoken by the Chorus, beginning "Two households, both alike in dignity," that tells the audience the lovers are "star-crossed" and will die. Henry V opens with the Chorus's "O for a Muse of fire," apologizing that the stage is too small for the battles it will show and asking the audience to imagine them.

In film, the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring tells the history of the Ring, narrated by Galadriel, before the story moves to Bilbo and Frodo. Many films use a cold, unexplained prologue: the opening attack in Jaws, the bank robbery that opens The Dark Knight, the flashback to the young Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The opening of Up is often called a prologue. In a few wordless minutes it shows Carl and Ellie's whole marriage, ending with her death, so that the adventure that follows is driven by a grief the audience fully shares. Its success shows how much emotional weight a short prologue can carry.

Prologue vs. cold open and flashback

A cold open is a scene that starts a film or episode before the titles. Many cold opens are prologues, set apart from the main story, but many are simply the first scene of the story itself. The term describes where the scene sits in the running order; prologue describes how it relates to the story.

A flashback interrupts the present story to show an earlier event. A prologue comes first, before there is a present to interrupt. If the same lighthouse scene appeared in the middle of the film, triggered by Maya finding an old logbook, it would be a flashback rather than a prologue.

A prologue is also different from a preface or an introduction in a nonfiction book. Those are usually written by the author, or someone else, about the book. A prologue is part of the story, told within its world.

How to format a prologue in a screenplay

Screenplays rarely need a heading that says PROLOGUE. Write the prologue as ordinary scenes, with scene headings, and mark its separation with a time or place: a SUPER over the first image that gives a year, a different setting, or a transition such as CUT TO: or a title card when the main story begins.

If the time jump matters, make it clear on the page. A reader should never wonder whether the scene they are reading happens before or after the one that follows. A line such as SUPER: Thirty years later at the start of the first act is enough.

Some writers do label a prologue, especially when it has its own tone or narrator, and centered text reading PROLOGUE is acceptable. Keep it short either way. In a feature, a prologue usually runs one to five pages; a long prologue delays the hero's introduction and can lose a reader before the story starts.

How to write a prologue

Ask what the prologue gives the audience that the first act cannot. Good answers include a mystery the story will solve, a threat the hero does not know about, or an emotional foundation the story depends on. "Backstory the audience might need" is rarely enough.

End on a hook. A prologue should close on a question, an image or a death that makes the audience want to know what comes next. The lighthouse scene ends with the light out and the horn falling silent, which is more gripping than an explanation of what happened.

Connect it to the climax. The strongest prologues are paid off at the end of the story, when the event that opened the film is finally understood or repeated with a different result. If nothing in the last act refers back to the prologue, consider cutting it.