The words that come at the start of a story whether told or written are much significant. They lay a basis of how the story will flow and end. A start provides the audience with a clue of what the story is about thus capture their attention to reading the story. It as well helps you build on the story. It can be embarrassing to start a story that will end in the middle because you started it wrongly. This leads to heavy losses in terms of writing resources, time and effort. When selecting the opening words, you should be entirely devoted to ensure a great start. While it can seem a hard task, here are significant tips on how to start a story.
You should develop momentum. The foremost rule of opening lines in a story is that they should have elements that make up an entire story. Lines in the beginning should have distinct point of view, voice and bits about characterization. Unless one has a reason of withholding, the coming to an end of the first paragraph should reveal what a story revolves around.
You can resist the temptations to start early. Before the action begins, one may be compelled to begin a story. The reason we begin this way is the failure to allow the narrative build its own momentum. We rather try forcing our way into the narrative. Elements including the persona waking up to a challenging day can appear in the flashback.
Do not overtake your readers. Among the probable challenges is starting a narrative with a line that can confuse readers who read only the starting line. Some of the audience that is lost may restrain from reading the other story parts. However, it can apply well since additional information is available as one continues to read. Only be sure it has sense to categories of readers at the start and end of the story.
You can try a mysterious start. While this has a possibility to lose some readers, presenting a puzzle is much effective especially in instances where the author is as well puzzled. This develops partnership of the reader and the narrator in certain ways. Questions whose answers are not availed can cover the entire narration.
Keep talks minimal. In case you are compelled to start a story with a dialogue, keep in mind that you can possibly lose your readers. One of the most probable way to go about this is to start with a single line dialogue and then offer additional context prior to proceeding with further conversation. Sequences of long dialogues as the story starts can be scarcely followed.