Starting a Story

Do you struggle with starting your stories? Grabber sentences just not coming to you? Words evading your thoughts, lines refusing to be written? Fear no more, valiant author, because with the help of this article you'll be out of trouble in no time.

Beginnings vary from story to story, but there are three colloquially-known ways to begin:

• Dialogue ("Dear," said John, with a rather horrified look on his face, "dear me, did we shut the heater off?")
• Action (She was not fifteen feet into the room when the klaxons started to sing.)
• Description (For all its beauty, Veridis Lake was not a place to be reckoned with; its waters were chill green with the coming of summer and its leaves were budding anew from the frost of a terrible winter.)

There are, of course, other ways to begin a story, but as these are the main ones, we'll be sticking with them.

Dialogue

To start with dialogue, you've got to be pretty good at dialogue. Make it catching. Interesting. Make your reader want to keep reading! They have no idea what they're getting into, make them enjoy it! You might want to use this confusion to your advantage ("Oh, Ruby, grab that potato for me, I haven't seen a pebble snake in years!"), or you might want to go a little easier on your reader ("Whenever you're ready, Lars. Rocket's ready to go."). Dialogue typically works best in stories centered around characters or stories where there's more talking than doing.

Action

Starting with action is, in the author's honest opinion, the easiest way to begin. Throw your reader into the scene weaponless and terrified and let them crawl out in as many pieces as they wish. There's really only one way to go about this (The halls warped around him as he ran, feet slipping, arms flailing, chest heaving; he could hear them far behind but they seemed so close and their breath was so warm on his neck--), so pull that around to your advantage. Action typically works best in adventure, action, and war stories where the main plot revolves around things getting blown up, thrown off of cliffs, run over, attacked, or a mix of those. It's versatile: you can drop grammar here to increase that urgent, panicked mood that your character is feeling.

Description

Description is a very peaceful approach to a story's beginning. Here, you're opening the door gently for your reader, holding their hand and telling them it's all going to be okay. It's soft, it's gentle, it can be very harsh or it can be very vague. This is a highly customizable option: you can do anything with it, so long as you remain describing the thing you came there to describe (Dungeon Four was like a prison in some ways and a palace in others: those towering walls held secrets not even they wanted to hear, the lichens spoke dreams of charcoal, the cobbles whispered glorious victories in the ears of the weary warrior.) and don't segue into something else. Description typically works best in scenes where your setting is the focal point, such as a garden, a home, or a castle.

Something very important to remember is that someone somewhere has very likely begun a story with a very similar hook as yours. Don't worry - it's not the result that matters, it's how you got there. Don't nick openers from other authors; try and create something on your own. It's a lot more rewarding that way.

Nothing in this article is concrete. Take it and interpret it as you will; everything here is the author's thoughts on story starting and what it means. This is only a bare-bones guide to creating whatever introduction you please - there are some truly beautiful ones out there, and perhaps, yours is one of them.