The article on how to write a good story starter gives an overview on strong ways to begin your stories. This article will provide some more direct prompts to get your inky juices flowing and keyboard fingers a-tappin’!

1.Yup, he’s dead. Death brings out emotions and intensifies relationships. People in love turn to each other for comfort and support. Splits in families can widen, brought to the surface by grief. Death is a change-bringer, shifting relationships, power and goods. Empires rise and fall with changes of dynasty. Relationships end.

2.Outsider’s view. An observer can note events happening without getting caught up in them. Consider writing the opening to your story from the point of view of someone materially irrelevant. Introducing your antagonist by having them kill someone at the start of a story is a great way to build suspense. Starting to ‘get to know’ a character for a page or two, only to have them die, jolts us out of complacency. We sit up, pay attention, and wonder when the villain might return.

3.Betrayed! Let us see how characters respond to the unexpected. The great thing about betrayals is they raise deeply interesting questions. Why did the betrayal happen? What brought it about? Was it justified? Is this revenge final? What sort of reciprocations might happen now? Is this finishing, or escalating?

4.Drop us into a storm. Wind, thunder, lightning, that sort of thing. If that doesn’t suit your setting, make an earthquake. An explosion. The details don’t actually matter for the purposes of your story starter. This idea’s about pushing your characters to their limits. Crises demand reactions. Don’t let your characters have an easy life. Wrench them through trauma. Be brutal. What does a maelstrom bring to your story?

5.Promotions and advancement. Expected or unexpected. What shifts? Who’s envious? Is the new power wielded well? What new responsibilities come with the position?

6.Firings and demotions. The devastation you can cause here is thrilling. Families can be cast down. Circumstances reduced. How do your protagonists fare with having no income? The loss of social esteem? Will they get desperate? Toughen up? Run and hide? Ignore the new, unpleasant truths they’re faced with?

7.Throw a party. Begin with an event that brings people together. Festival, carnival, party, riot, wake, house-warming, official opening. What better place for people to meet, mingle, hatch plots, fall in love?

8.Start with a non-event. Have something spectacularly fail to happen. Have a party be a flop. Have nobody turn up to a riot or protest. Get the date wrong. Forget to invite luminaries. Have people cancel at the last minute. Have your story starter detail a blunder of epic proportions. Ohhh, look at that! Awkwardness! Bitterness! Boredom! Recriminations!

9.Get chatty. Let us overhear some gossip. Let us see something nobody else does. Let us hear private thoughts. We can figure out who’s important without being lectured for three pages. Everyone loves hearing something they aren’t supposed to. Why do you think we read? Indulge our voyeurism.

10.For the record… Interviews and interrogations are great ways to begin. Detainees and celebrities are interesting, attention-grabbing people. Your story starter can use an interrogation/interview format to quickly establish backgrounds, facts, and then move onto the action with a minimum of fuss.

11.Non-story material. Technical papers, media releases, user notes, newspaper letters, opinion articles. Color. Background. Use sparingly, and be cheeky where you can get away with it. Over-used, non-story material is wearying. Also be aware some readers will dismiss anything in italics as unnecessary and skip onto normal fonts.

12.Get caught. Synonymous with thrilling, seven letters, starting with c?
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Capture. Especially the running, panting, thrashing variety. Why are they running? Who are the pursuers? What’s going to happen next?

13.Escape. Possibly even better than capture. You get all the tension of the attempt, plus the clear danger for the balance of the story of being re-captured. What else could you want for your story starter? An all-you-can-write buffet of mystery, excitement and suspense, and it isn’t even Chapter 2 yet!

There you are: 13 different ways to begin your story. Don’t forget to read the story starters overview if you haven’t already.
Now you have your beginning, what do you want to do from here? If you want to look at building a world for your story, check out the Creating Worlds series. Hunting for names for your protagonists? We’ve got it covered. you’ll also find more material in the archives to keep you going.
Hopefully, though, the article’s inspired you to…
Go write!