I saw Pulp Fiction on opening night in 1994, and I remember two things with perfect clarity. First, the audience burst into applause after the opening scene, not the ending, the opening. I’d never seen that before. Second, I spent the next two hours with a question humming in the back of my brain like a fluorescent light I couldn’t turn off: What happened to those two people in the diner?
Tarantino had me. And he wouldn’t let go for two and a half hours.
Here’s the thing, the technique he used isn’t avant-garde. It isn’t some postmodern experiment. It’s one of the oldest psychological tricks in the book, and once you understand it, you can use it to make anything you write more gripping, more persuasive, and harder to walk away from.
I call it the Open Loop, and it’s about to change how you structure every piece of content you create.
How an open loop works
Years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I came across an article about fraud in the relief efforts. It began with this sentence:
“An Illinois woman mourns her two young daughters, swept to their deaths in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters. It’s a tragic and terrifying story. It’s also a lie.”
Now, I would have read an article about Katrina fraud regardless. But that opening had me riveted. I read every word of a long, detailed piece that I might have otherwise skimmed.
The payoff, the explanation of that opening sentence, came 1,136 words later. It was the first bullet point in a list of false claims.
That’s an open loop. You open with a revelation, a mystery, or a promise, and you delay the resolution. The reader keeps going because the human brain literally cannot tolerate an unanswered question.
Psychologists call this the Zeigarnik Effect, our tendency to remember uncompleted tasks and unresolved situations far better than completed ones. Waiters can recall every detail of their tables’ orders until the food arrives. Then, poof, it’s gone. The brain closes the loop and moves on.
Your job as a writer is to keep the loop open. Because as long as it’s open, you have the reader’s attention. And attention is everything.
James Bond and the art of the setup
Every James Bond film follows the same pattern. Early in the movie, Q gives Bond a briefing on his new gadgets. A watch with a hidden buzzsaw. A pen that doubles as a grenade. An umbrella that transforms into a helicopter. (I may be exaggerating one of those.)
Later, Bond is dangling over a vat of sharks, and the villain is monologuing. Bond twists his watch, the one with the buzzsaw, and cuts through the ropes. Escape achieved.
Why do we accept this? Because the setup was planted earlier. The buzzsaw was introduced, shelved in our memory, and then retrieved at the crucial moment. The loop opened with Q and closed with the sharks. The result is satisfaction, a deeply pleasurable feeling that the story has been building toward this moment all along.
That satisfaction is the secret weapon of persuasion. When a claim or a conclusion arrives at the end of a well-constructed open loop, the audience embraces it. They feel as though they’ve arrived at the conclusion themselves. And honestly? They kind of have.
Loops that sell
Here’s a radio ad written by Roy H. Williams for a diamond merchant called Justice Jewelers:
“Antwerp, Belgium, is no longer the diamond capital of the world.
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Thirty-four hours on an airplane. One way. Thirty. Four. Hours. That’s how long it took me to get to where 80 percent of the world’s diamonds are now being cut. After 34 hours, I looked bad. I smelled bad. I wanted to go to sleep. But then I saw the diamonds.
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Unbelievable. They told me I was the first retailer from North America ever to be in that office.
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Only the biggest wholesalers are allowed through those doors. Fortunately, I had one of ’em with me, a lifelong friend who was doing me a favor.
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Now pay attention, because what I’m about to say is really important: As of this moment, Justice Jewelers has the lowest diamond prices in America, and I’m including all the online diamond sellers in that statement.
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Now you and I both know that talk is cheap. So put it to the test. Go online. Find your best deal. Not only will Justice Jewelers give you a better diamond, we’ll give you a better price, as well.
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I’m Woody Justice, and I’m working really, really hard to be your jeweler. Thirty-four hours of hard travel, one way. I think you’ll be glad I did it.”
Notice what happens. The ad opens with a loop: “Antwerp is no longer the diamond capital.” Okay, so where is the new capital? We never find out. The loop stays open. The city is never named. The exact prices are never revealed.
To close those loops, you have to take action. You have to visit the website. Compare prices. Engage.
A less artful ad would have led with “Lowest diamond prices in America!”, a claim that triggers instant skepticism. Instead, the story earns your attention, the setup makes the claim credible, and the unresolved questions drive you to act.
This works everywhere. Landing pages. Email opt-ins. Sales letters. Webinars. Open the loop, make them need the answer, and make the answer available only through the action you want them to take.
Back to the diner
As promised, let’s return to Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.
In case you need a refresher: Pulp Fiction opens with a man and a woman sitting in a diner, calling each other pet names. They’re criminals, they’ve been robbing liquor stores, which Pumpkin thinks is too dangerous. He proposes they start robbing diners instead. Starting with this one. Right now.
Honey Bunny, all sweetness and light up to this point, leaps up with a gun, screams threats at the terrified patrons, and the credits roll over Dick Dale’s “Misirlou.”
Then the movie proceeds without them. For hours. Characters come and go. Storylines braid and unravel. And somewhere in the back of your mind, that fluorescent light keeps buzzing: What happened to Pumpkin and Honey Bunny?
The final scene brings us back to the same diner. We see Jules and Vincent, our gangster protagonists, sitting at a table. And there, in the background, are Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, just as Honey Bunny leaps up with the gun.
These two fools, in their quest for safer crime, picked the absolute worst diner in the city. The scene plays out. The loop closes. The audience exhales.
Incredibly satisfying. And that satisfaction is earned, it wouldn’t exist without the wait.
Here’s the confession you may have already guessed: I’ve been running an open loop on you this entire article. The headline promised you a Pulp Fiction technique. I mentioned the film in the opening. Then I made you wait, through hurricane fraud, James Bond, diamond merchants, and Zeigarnik, before delivering the payoff.
Maybe you noticed. Maybe you were too caught up to notice. Either way, you’re still here.
That’s the power of the open loop. It doesn’t just hold attention. It deepens it. And the deeper the attention, the more persuasive the message.