Should You Start Your Novel with an Origin Story?

This session will present a vision of what a prologue should do in a novel: it should be forward-looking, offering a sneak peek of what is coming later in the story (either thematically, hinting at what the story will build up to, or by flashing forward to share a preview of a future scene).

However, many writers instead feel like they need to ground their story by showing how the protagonist came to be in their current situation. While, yes, anything can work in art, this session will argue that this impulse is misguided.

In other words: should you begin with a short introduction of the protagonist's life-defining challenge or struggle, so that the reader can enter chapter one with all the critical information necessary to understand what's really going on inside that character?

Examples... 

Let's say your protagonist is, on chapter one, a troubled grad student at Stanford. Should you start with a prologue showing her parents fleeing Iran and making their way across Europe?

Or say your protagonist begins chapter one unable to trust anyone who gets too close. Should you explain why he's like that by showing (in the prologue) a scene, five years earlier, where he caught his spouse in bed with their accountant?

This session will argue -- no. 

Just to be clear, this is NOT because the session is, as a whole, against prologues as a concept. This is a pro-prologue zone.

But while anything can work in art, in general, I don't believe an "origin story prologue" is a good idea. Indeed, I think its presence can spread rippling problems throughout your plot -- for three reasons.