The reason a chronology is rarely the best order

The natural way to tell what happened is to start at the beginning. The beginning is usually the least interesting part, because nothing yet depends on it. Chronology sorts by cause, and audiences sort by consequence, which is why the strongest openings are frequently taken from the middle.

What everyone sees

Non-chronological telling is read as a stylistic device, associated with literary fiction or with journalism trying to be dramatic. The assumption is that chronology is the neutral default and rearrangement is decoration. Both halves of that assumption fail: chronology is itself a choice, and it is a choice optimised for the wrong variable.

What is actually happening

Genette separated the order of events from the order of the telling and catalogued the systematic differences between them, treating anachrony as normal rather than exceptional narrative practice. Bordwell’s analysis of narration develops the consequence: the telling manages what the audience knows at each moment, and that distribution of knowledge is what produces interest. Once interest is understood as a function of the audience’s current knowledge state, chronology has no privileged claim. It is simply the ordering that ignores the audience entirely, which is why it so often opens on material that cannot yet matter.

Why it stays hidden

Chronology survives because it feels like honesty. Rearranging events resembles manipulation, and a timeline is defensible in a way that a structural judgement is not. The cost is paid by the audience, who abandon early, and is recorded as disinterest in the subject rather than as a consequence of the order chosen.