In The Beginning… Get Your Fiction Story Off to The Right Start

How you begin depends on the kind of story you want to write.

If it is an action tale think up an arresting incident with which to start it off. If you are going to rely heavily on the mood, then play up the interesting or exotic setting. Should yours be a character story, present the main character in a fresh, exciting way. Make the person sound like someone that things happen to, or someone who makes things happen.

The beginning is your chance to catch the interest of the reader, at a moment when there is the most curiosity about what you have to offer. At the same time, your reader is not yet involved with your story people, or what happens to them. Before the reader’s attention strays to something else, you must seize and hold it.

No matter what exciting things you know are going to happen on page five or ten or fifty, your readers will not stay with you that long unless you snag them on page one and lure them into reading on.