THE CONSEQUENCE ECONOMY - OR, THE CASE OF CARRIE
If you’ve had any exposure to creative writing (or writing classes in general) you will have heard this classic advice, often repeatedly:
Start strong. Grab your reader’s attention. Begin with a good hook.
Whether one is talking about literature, plays, comics, movies, or video games — strong openings have become a ubiquitous narrative strategy — thanks in part to the Hollywoodization of all narrative, but also because these openings tend to fucking work.
Beginning with viscerally engaging material will almost always help you capture your audience’s attention — at least for the short term. The best of these openings, when combined with a smart follow through, can sink hooks so deep that the reader will find it almost impossible to escape. Consider how The Hunger Games introduces the Reaping in its first chapter and how from that moment on neither Katniss nor the reader can escape from the novel's tightening trap — until the very end.
When done right, strong openings have a lot to recommend them — they can whet, excite, and intrigue a reader’s imagination — literally hook the reader into the narrative — and they can also give a writer narrative breathing room to establish characters and world and set the conflict into motion.
But the best strong openings often fulfill a dual function — sure, they grab the reader in all the ways we’ve described, but they also help establish the story’s consequentiality — its consequence economy.