Great openings...

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Darkflame
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Great openings...

Postby Darkflame » 27 Jan 2015, 23:56

Random discussion;

What great opening "hocks" do you know from tv/film/books/comics/anything?

Things that just present a neat concept or something that makes you want to carry on experiencing it. The thing doesnt have to be good overall or anything - just something that grabbed you straight away.
==
One I read recently in a comic.
You see a image of a call centre. Girl picks up the telephone.

"What Emergency service do you require? Police, Fire, Ambulance or Physics?"
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Amake
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Re: Great openings...

Postby Amake » 28 Jan 2015, 01:32

The technical term is "story hook", but you were close.

One that I like is the beginning of the first episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where you see the characters atop the head of the enormous robot atop the gigantic battleship on the head of the cyclopean robot fighting a battle of astronomic scale. Just your basic "look how powerful our heroes are going to become eventually" preview, but it does such a good job of showing the show's concept of going to the absolute most ludicrous limits of excess and then a step further, and it does it with such fluid grace. If you went into it not knowing what to expect (somehow), I think that introduction would give you a good idea and make you want to watch more of it. So, an effective hook.

A good comic book can have a ton of hooks: The cover to make you buy it, the first couple of pages to get you started, the bottom right panel on every odd numbered page to keep you turning pages. I've read so many great comics by great writers - Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis - I'm sort of used to it, even though I rarely notice it consciously unless someone points it out to me. Which is very good. If you make the hooks too obvious, they'll be detrimental to rewatching or rereading a work. It's funny, they're essential to storytelling, to gain an audience's initial interest, but entirely useless to story, to an enduring story that people come back to. I mean Little Red Riding Hood doesn't have any hook, but it's been told for centuries in many different forms. And in the year 3000 we'll probably say the same thing about Pootie Tang.
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vgmaster831
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Re: Great openings...

Postby vgmaster831 » 28 Jan 2015, 01:34

The opening to Lexapros and Cons is as follows.

"In the past year, I masturbated exactly 468 times. That's an average of 9 times a week and 1.28 per day. I'm not sure what impresses me more, though--the fact that I jerk off so much, or the fact that I actually kept a running tally for an entire year. But I did. On a growing stack of Post-its, in the drawer of my nightstand. Jerk off, make a note of it, go to sleep, routine."

I love that opening paragraph, and the book too. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes contemporary YA fiction.
Darkflame
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Re: Great openings...

Postby Darkflame » 28 Jan 2015, 10:03

Amake wrote:The technical term is "story hook", but you were close.

One that I like is the beginning of the first episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where you see the characters atop the head of the enormous robot atop the gigantic battleship on the head of the cyclopean robot fighting a battle of astronomic scale. Just your basic "look how powerful our heroes are going to become eventually" preview, but it does such a good job of showing the show's concept of going to the absolute most ludicrous limits of excess and then a step further, and it does it with such fluid grace. If you went into it not knowing what to expect (somehow), I think that introduction would give you a good idea and make you want to watch more of it. So, an effective hook.


Oh, yes, of course. I know the term. Just somehow slipped my mind.

I do mean specificly hocks at the start though as obviously with any ongoing thing they try to introduce new reasons to keep reading as they wrap up others. (at least when written well, leaving too many hocks unresolved is just asking for trouble latter). I also love Warren Ellis writting but I confess I cant remember any starts. I would check my own collection - but somehow I have ended up owning Planetary Vol 3 and 4 but not 1 and 2. I got NextWave somewhere but not sure where. [/not organised]
--
That anime sounds like my sort of thing.
Sounds like it might have inspired Xenoblade - a game where at one point near the end a guy in a mech suit climbs into another robot which itself climbs into a robot controlling the whole games world....which is a robot.
===

Anyway a few from films;

"Stranger Then Fiction" - Starts with a narrator summing up a guys life and habits. Almost Amelie or Pushing Daisy's like in tone (highly detailed numbers and stats).

But then the protagonist hears the narrator.

"City of Ember" - Footage of a important package being sealed and being passed from generation to generation then abandoned. Not sure why it hocked me exactly. Just elegant I guess. Might have worked better without the voiceover though.

Paprika - Too much to some up. Just awesome. Couldn't look away.
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Re: Great openings...

Postby Garwulf » 07 Feb 2015, 12:15

The opening of The Prestige I think is one of the great openings. It shows you everything about what's happening, reveals all the secrets...but because you don't know what you're looking at, it just draws you into the mystery.
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Prospero101
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Re: Great openings...

Postby Prospero101 » 07 Feb 2015, 12:41

For me, the best opening story hook is that line that opens each and every Fallout game:

"War. War never changes."
It's all over but the crying. And the taxes.

"Perfectionism might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's kind of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties."
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Arclight_Dynamo
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Re: Great openings...

Postby Arclight_Dynamo » 07 Feb 2015, 12:45

One that's always stuck in my mind is the opening prompt from the interactive fiction game "For A Change." It opens like this:

The sun has gone. It must be brought. You have a rock.


Brilliant.
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Re: Great openings...

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 07 Feb 2015, 16:23

Opening of Elfen Lied is pretty much "errm, what?"

The opening credits of The Musketeers (2014-present) TV series was a huge hook. I was like, "yep going to watch the shit out of this".
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Re: Great openings...

Postby eostby » 10 Feb 2015, 23:45

It's been quite a long time since I've actually seen it, but the opening for the movie "The Illusionist" is quite good at setting the scene and leading into the story it tells.
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