Tycho, I think that the most common reasons for a slow start are that the author either needed to 'warm up' to the story; or doesn't understand where a story opening most properly resides.
In my own case, for a long time it was a bit of both. I'd often open with setting description (really a form of mental warm-up), and then try to find 'a tense or unusual situation' from 'early in the plot'.
As I discovered painfully over time, this was inadequate. There are actually some strong dramatic principles that tell you where the story starts, and some good reasons for those principles. And worse (in my case at least), if you start from the wrong place, you can end up developing the wrong story.
A great tutorial on story openings is Les Edgerton's
Hooked( Writer's Digest, 2008). A good reference on them is Jack M Bickham's
Scene and Structure (WD, 1993 - if you only buy one writing book in your life, buy this one; if you buy two though, buy them
both). What follows is my potted, spiced, parboiled version, covered in aspic and sealed into a little flat tin:
You actually need to know several things about your story before you can work out where to start it.
1) Who's your main character?
2) What is your main character's ruling passion?
3) Where is the story set?
4) What is the inciting incident that causes an initial problem for your main character?
5) What is the deeper story-worthy problem that makes this story worth reading?
Once you know these five things, you can pick your opening. You pick it in a way that introduces the main character in the setting either just before or just after the inciting incident occurs. You have the character react to the incident in a way that kicks the story off, and somehow introduce the story-worthy problem as part of the reaction.
I'll explain what the terms mean in a minute, but here's an example I did in response to a
SYW thread. It's the first part of a possible first chapter:
'Come on baby', I prayed to the beast in the cornfield. 'C'mon. Bite me again.'
My hands sweated around the butt of the old shotgun like they'd sweated on the fours-over-deuces I'd held at the hotel last night. And standing there bandaged and shaking on the dark, empty highway, beside a pile of stinking road-kill with Jeff's gun and the silver restaurant dining-fork I'd stuffed down the barrel, I wondered if this time, I'd finally pushed my luck past breaking.
The night before, the poker hand had only cost my car. But tonight, I knew that a second brush with the howling monstrosity could cost me my life.
But better that, I figured, than I go home with its taint in my blood... home to Janey and little Bree.
Here are my five opening elements:
Main character: Jim, a travelling salesman
MC's ruling passion: Jim's a compulsive gambler
Setting: A country location somewhere in Iowa, modern era
Inciting incident and initial problem: Having lost his car to a poker game, Jim is attacked by a werewolf on the walk back to his motel-room. Now he dare not go home for fear of attacking his wife and child.
Story-worthy problem: When the reward is high enough, Jim ignores the risk
Since I don't know your story Tycho, I don't know what your starting elements might be. I can say though, that I'd often start my stories without understanding my MC's ruling passion or the over-all story-worthy problem - and this made it hard for me to know where to start.
In your post you asked about the 'crisis/flashback' style of opening (such as those used in
Battlestar Galactica,
Firefly and others). I've been reviewing these openings for some time now and can say that they don't work universally well.
In Firefly, for instance the episode 'Out of Gas' starts off with the spaceship's captain collapsing alone on the ship, with oxygen running out. His crew are all left and he's trying to carry a part to the engine-room to repair the vessel. It works because the inciting incident (the ship running out of oomph) gave rise to the story-worthy problem (the independent, tough-as-nails Captain needs his crew) at
just the point where he collapses.
By contrast, if you started
Lord of the Ring with Frodo fighting Gollum at Mount Doom, it
wouldn't work - because the story-worthy problem (that Frodo must learn to be a hero) doesn't begin there, but much further back, when Frodo inherits his uncle's magic ring and follows in his footsteps on the road.
In short, while there can be some very clever ways to
present the opening, there's only one good place to
start it - and that's where your story-worthy problem (which is really just one end of your story's major
theme) begins.
How do you know when your problem is story-worthy? It's my personal opinion, but it's when your character's ruling passion sinks its teeth into the problem created by the inciting incident. If this doesn't occur then I reckon you either have the wrong inciting incident or the wrong ruling passion - or maybe you don't understand the problem well enough.
Why must a character have a ruling passion? Because dramatic stories are supposed to be
interesting, and it's character emotion that makes them so.
Hope that this helps.