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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43228
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Starting "in the middle of things" is an absolutely classic technique, and i see it done quite frequently in published fiction. I would prefer not to label such a thing as a Prologue, unless it is really outside the main story. Simply make it chapter 1, and start chapter 2 or 3 with your flashback. It is usually better to find some what ot make it clear what is a flashback. It can be as simple as:

> When Jill first walked into the mansion five years previously, she was not expecting to meet Jack. It was a sunny day, and her mind was entirely on her new position.

Some link between the previous action and the flashback, perhaps in place, or subject, characters present, is often helpful, although not required.

A somewhat extreme but in my view very successful use of this technique was the late Roger Zelezney's _Doorways in the Sand_. In that novel, each chapter started with a scene of crisis of soem sort. The next scene then flashed back to just after the end of the previous chapter, followed by several scenes which showed how the crisis developed, then several more showing how it was resolved or the action moved on.

Chapter one has, say scenes D, A, B, C, E, and F (in that order0; chapter 2 had J, G, H, I, K, L, Chapter 3 had P, M, N, O, Q, R, and S. And so on. It worked well, but then Zelezney is a very skilled stylist as a writer.

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