: Re: Can the prologue be the backstory of your main character? A friend and I are writing a story based on our characters. We brainstormed some ideas and now we know what the basic idea of our

@Pierce369

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It can, but there are other ways you might want to handle it. The risk of making a prologue a backstory is you might end up with an info dump. Sometimes they are useful, but take it too far and you risk alienating the reader.

There is the iceberg method where most of what you create never appears in your work and only exists to colour and inform what you write, making it more subtle.

I tend to sprinkle information throughout my piece, trying to minimize the info dumps.

One character of mine spent years infiltrating Columbian cartels and eventually destroying one responsible for the death of her brother. Knowing this influences how I write her, but the most that is revealed directly to the reader is that she once worked for a cartel, maybe one line about destroying those responsible for the death. Sometimes I have her compare her current situation with her previous, but I do not give more information than is required.

For my main character, you meet him before you learn a word about his history. He reflects a moment and the reader learns he and his sister are close and why. Much later, I have a character ask him directly about the incident, which he then describes.

Depending on the type of story you want to write, the prologue could work quite well. Just be careful, backstory can be like spice - you don’t want to overdo it but strike that balance.

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