Starting your story right in the middle of a scene with zero setup, forcing the reader to catch up on the fly.
A cold open drops the reader directly into a scene without any preamble, context, or introduction. There is no setup chapter, no character introduction, no world-building warm-up. Instead, you throw the reader into a moment that is already happening and trust them to piece together the situation from context clues. The technique is borrowed from television and film, where shows like Breaking Bad and Lost open episodes mid-scene to immediately hook the audience.
Your first page is an audition. Agents, editors, and readers are all deciding within the first few paragraphs whether to keep going. A cold open makes that decision easy by offering something immediately compelling. It also forces you as a writer to resist the urge to over-explain, which tends to make openings stronger and leaner.
The novel opens with Katniss waking on the morning of the Reaping. There is no Chapter 1 primer on Panem's history. Collins drops you into Katniss's fear and lets you absorb the dystopia through her eyes.
No prologue. No explanation. A man and a boy walk through ash. The entire post-apocalyptic world is delivered through cold, immediate detail rather than exposition.
Laia's opening chapter begins with her already in hiding, watching her grandparents through a window. Tahir trusts readers to piece together the world through the danger of the scene.
A cold open skips setup, but it still needs to orient the reader. Give them one clear character to follow and one clear situation to understand, even if they do not have the full picture.
A car chase means nothing if we do not know who is in the car or why it matters. Ground your cold open in a character's feelings, not just events.
If you open cold and then immediately spend three pages explaining everything, you have just delayed the problem. Weave context in gradually through scenes that have their own forward momentum.
Open a blank page and write the first 250 words of a story that begins mid-scene. No character introductions, no world-building, no backstory. Drop the reader into a moment where something is already happening. Then read it back and ask: would you keep reading?