Here are seven crucial necessary for a your story opening.
Catch the interest of your reader.
The most important consideration in working out your opening is the audience for whom you story is intended. With this in mind, present characters in whom your particular reader is likely to be interested, doing something which is likely to be of interest. If your opening action concerns characters who are much older or much younger than the reader, he or she may reach for another book on the shelf.
Introduce the characters.
Since the reader has been preconditioned to assume the first character to be introduced is the main character, be sure to open immediately with that character on stage and show the story through his or her viewpoint. It is seldom possible or necessary to introduce or even to mention all the characters in the beginning, but the existence of each one should be indicated in the same way as soon as possible.
So get the main character in. Introduce him or her by name. Indicate personality or background quality. The first glimpse of your hero should put the reader in sympathy with the person. Show him or her as a likable person, with some human weaknesses and troubles, but willing to fight.
If you must open your story with just one character on the scene, be sure to show him or her doing something interesting before you allow the character to think about anything. You can simplify the job of characterization by having an animal, a creature he or she can talk to or pet.
Set the stage.
The reader must know what the setting is: the time, place, and social atmosphere. You must let him or her know at once if you are dealing with the present or if this is a period piece, a space opera, or some other kind of fantasy.
Introduce the problem.
Or introduce the situation that will bring on the problem. The sooner this in done the better. Right away, mainly in the first paragraph for a short story.
Set the mood.
Letting the reader know what kind of emotional tone will dominate your story is one of the best means to catch his or her interest. Indicate quickly whether one may expect to laugh or cry, feel romantic, brave with adventure, or all shivery over a mystery. You can do this with some typical dialogue, a characterization, or your description of the setting.
Suggest the complication.
Begin to reveal the story gradually by hinting at the various things to come, not necessarily the main problem, for it may take time to develop and reveal it, but indicate some difficulties that beset your hero or heroine.
Hint of a solution
Even in the beginning, the final solution of your hero’s or heroine’s dilemma must be prepared for, so that when it comes, it will be convincing.
One way to make fiction believable is to show the readers how things happen and prepare them for things that might happen. Such preparation beforehand consists of two literary devices called plants and pointers.
When an author plants something, he or she lets the reader know that certain conditions exist. The author might plant the knowledge of certain skills the character has, or equip him or her with special characteristics, like courage, stubborn perseverance, or a lively curiosity, which will then lead the character into or out of certain situations.
Your beginning should be full of plants that unobtrusively inform the reader and make everything that happens in your story later sound plausible to him.
To point of foreshadow is to indicate that a certain thing might, could, or will happen later on in the story. This device differs from the plant in that it suggests an event that will follow.
The seven point of the opening, as I have outlined them for you, must be covered quickly and effectively, in an interesting manner. They need not to be used in the order in which I have stated them, but until they are covered, your beginning in not complete.
