The first few pages...

Just start writing. When you get to the end, odds are you'll know how it needs to start. At that point, you can go back and rewrite the beginning. I do this... oh, 100% of the time.

Just Jack said:

Your right.
I always have this mindset of getting things done perfectly, I never really even examined the option of a re-write.
Which I understand is insane if you want to write, but oh well.

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I agree with KTC, there is no such thing as a perfect first draft (at least not for me) If I tried to get everything down perfectly, I would never have finished anything- allow yourself to suck, get to the end and then go back and make it perfect.

At the very very beginning of anything I write, I usually just have a stack of unrelated scenes that I have visualised. I don't know where and how the story will start until I have the entire story pieced out in my mind. Even then, I don't know where the best "entry point" is. I generally don't even try to concern myself with such things till I am about 100 pages in.

This answer may be a little too simplistic for what you're asking, but...

I prefer to kick off with an action, or an emotional reaction, or a personal observation that inserts the reader into the POV character's head right away. The story/situation can wait for a moment -- what's the character doing or thinking right now that might interest me? And hopefully, the reader.

...Having said that, I was curious whether I took my own advice so I looked at several files in my WIP subdirectory. Yep. (Whew.)

-Derek

You can try starting the story with the character already present in mid-action ("starting in the middle") as if the reader already knows who this person is and why they're doing this--almost like you've skipped the first chapter or some such. Then, when the immediate first action is over, you can get into the introducing--why is this character here and why is he/she doing this?--what's going on?

So many stories are difficult to start because we're tempted to tell the reader all the important information ahead of time so they understand it all in context--like we'd do when telling somebody something in real life. But in fiction, that can always wait until later, after a reader's interest is piqued.

tehuti88 said:

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So many stories are difficult to start because we're tempted to tell the reader all the important information ahead of time so they understand it all in context--like we'd do when telling somebody something in real life. But in fiction, that can always wait until later, after a reader's interest is piqued.

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Plus, it does help to credit reader with a little intelligence - readers work things out from context, and a good reader also trusts that the author is going to answer the questions he or she raises in the opening.

Of course, if the author doesn't, then..*shrugz*

bye bye reader.

Start anywhere, write as fast as you can, don't worry about continuity or keeping things in order, don't worry about pretty language. Finish the story. Now you may have a huge pile of crap, but a huge pile of crap will grow you far more potatoes, cabbages, and rose bushes than a thin dust of nothing.

Intros are always hard for me.

With my first novel, I wrote a really crappy intro, but just kept going. More than 50K words in, I knew my character much better, and I wrote an all new intro that fit the story... When I was querying, I included the first five pages with my letter, and one agent (who rejected the full script) told me it was the intro that had intrigued him.

With my second novel, I had a freaking hard time introducing my MC. I wrote pages and then deleted them. And then one day, as I was driving, her opening sentence literally just popped into my head. I pulled over immediately to write it down, and when I got home, I wrote that and the paragraphs to follow.

I guess this doesn't help much x.x My experience is that it just comes when it comes. If your intro isn't there, just write something for the time being and keep going. And as you're writing, keep asking yourself "would this character trait be a good way to open the story?" or something like that. It's what helped me with my first novel. My character turned out to have had a near-death experience as a child, which I didn't realize until a few thousand words in, and that ended up being my opening.

Here is a great link for "Pulling the Reader In"

This was compiled by several AWers listing what it was that makes them interested in a story.

Pulling the reader in

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78571


I encourage you to go to the beginning of the thread. It isn't too long and is extremely helpful

Mel...

Just Jack said:

I have this great story, but the first few pages are always the toughest for me...

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Join the club My opening paragraphs are my sticking point. I'll write and rewrite, revise and bin, revise and bin until I get it right. Just start anywhere. You'll know when you have it right but it may take you a few tries before you're satisfied. Don't let uncertainty paralyze you. You aren't writing in stone. It can always be changed. No one ever needs to know about or see your haulting first attempts. Once you begin it gets easier. Promise!
Linnea

I always manage my novels by breaking it into 5 sections. The 1st fifth is intro and initiating incedent, the middle 3/5ths are rising action, and the last 5th is "the final action" character and action climax. Sometimes I tag a resolution on the end. So, if the page length is to be 350 pages, then each of these sections will be 70 pages long.

So, in this novel I have 70 pages in which to tell the reader who, what, when, where, why.

To introduce the character, you begin writing about the character's day to day life. Steven King called this the "steady state." You need to show the reader what "normal is" before showing them what "abnormal" is. In the first Harry Potter, we learned that he lived under the stairs, was not considered a real "son," had wishes and dreams about being part of a "real" family, which was granted later on when he joined the Witch community. There was a flashback to the day Harry was left on the doorstep. I believe we also learned that he was able to communicate with snakes. The inciting incident was the letter from Hogwarts. This was all "needed" information which could have been related in a paragraph. The point of the novel is "showing" so you can't tell people he can talk to snakes, you need to devise a scene in which he talks to snakes-- which was the whole point of that Zoo scene.

Extrapolating from that, you need to write a list of the things that the reader needs to know about your character in order to "suspend disbelief." If your character can fly, you need to create a scene showing that character flying, or learning about the power of flight. If your character is an unwed mother barely making it on the dole, you need to go through what it is like to live like that. In other words, you need to devise scenes that "show" what you need to tell the reader about the character.

The Genre often governs how you start the work. A techno-thriller would have you pacing a large explosion in Afganistan right at the beginning, with no explanation, where as a Suspense thriller might like to keep that for later, so you need to know the conventions of your genre. Some genres begin quite subtly, with people chatting in a park, others begin with a large car wreck.

Apropos of absolutely nothing relevant, just wanted to let you (Jack) know I love the DK's emblem you're sporting for your avatar. I had the t-shirt back in the day ... though I may have merely hallucinated it; that whole late 70s/early 80s period is mostly a blur these days. Come to think of it, they were a blur at the time they were happening.