Luke’s Coffee, Inappropriate Flirting, and the Best Kind of Prologue
Does your story really need a prologue? Depends on the story, but Lorelai’s definitely did.
The first scene of Gilmore Girls is a master class in setting up a story without an info dump. Lorelai is walking down a cute street in a New England town and makes her way into a funky little diner. She begs for coffee and the diner owner obviously knows her. A very young man hits on her in a mildly sleezy way, she rebuffs him with a literary reference. Rory shows up, they banter about makeup and music, Lorelai gets coffee for Rory, the young man hits on Rory, and we learn that Rory is Lorelai’s daughter, even though they look too close in age for that to be possible.
And scene.
Whew. It’s a lot of information in just a few minutes. We get setting: location, season, time period. We get character: literature, music, makeup, fast talking, jokes, coffee. We get relationships: not just mother/daughter, but also friends-with-some-sexual-tension.
Most importantly, though, we get the tone of the entire show. The vibe.
In Media Res
If you ask a hundred publishing professionals, “Where should I start my story?” you’ll get like two answers. Maybe five of…
