COMMENTS

  1. 15 Awesome Ideas To Get Your Story Started (With Examples)

    Idea #11: Disorient the Reader. Another great way to start a story is to disorient your readers. Throw them off-balance and make them re-read the opening lines more than once. A great example is from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.".

  2. 150+ Story Starters: Creative Sentences To Start A Story

    In this post, we have listed over 150 story starters to get your story started with a bang! A great way to use these story starters is at the start of the Finish The Story game. Click the 'Random' button to get a random story starter. Random. If you want more story starters, check out this video on some creative story starter sentences to use ...

  3. How to Start a Story: 10 Ways to Get Your Story Off to a Great Start

    If in doubt, go to the opening pages of bestselling books in your chosen genre and see how the masters did it. The beginning lines of a story should establish a character, in a setting, with a problem. Beyond that, there are so many ways to go. Here are ten ways to start a story you might consider: 1. Strong Voice.

  4. How to Start a Story: 6 Creative Ways to Get Up and Writing

    1. Dialogue. Nothing draws readers in like introducing them to your characters in the middle of an ongoing conversation. If you want to use dialogue to open up your story, you can choose to start with a heated conversation that leads to action, or even casual talk that introduces to the characters and their relationships.

  5. How to Start Writing Fiction: The 6 Core Elements

    These include writing backstory, giving characters goals and fatal flaws, and making your characters contend with complicated themes and ideas. This guide on character development will help you sort out the traits your characters need, and how to interweave those traits into the story. 3. Fiction Writing Tip: Give Life to Living Worlds.

  6. How to Start a Story: 10 Top Tips From Literary Editors

    9. Create tension that has room to grow. 10. Capture your readers' attention. 1. Craft an unexpected story opening. Some of the most memorable opening lines are ones that hook readers with something out of the ordinary. Literary editor Gareth Watkins often encourages writers to explore this in their own books.

  7. How to Write a Story In 6 Steps: A Complete Step-By-Step Guide to

    It's certainly exciting to think about all the different options that could be explored in a story. But where to begin? Every writer works in a different way. Some writers work straight through from beginning to end. Others work in pieces they arrange later, while others work from sentence to sentence. Whether you're writing a novel, novella, short story, or flash fiction, don't be ...

  8. Creative Writing: 8 Fun Ways to Get Started

    2. Start journaling your days. Another easy way to get started with creative writing is to keep a journal. We're not talking about an hour-by-hour account of your day, but journaling as a way to express yourself without filters and find your 'voice in writing'. If you're unsure what to journal about, think of any daily experiences that ...

  9. How to Start a Story: 10 Steps to a Compelling Opening

    Connect the readers and character. Produce intrigue. Elicit an emotion in your story. Start your story with a strong visual snapshot. Write a compelling first paragraph. Leave a hint. End the first chapter on a cliffhanger. End the first chapter with a bookend. What to AVOID in the start of a story.

  10. 8 Tips for Getting Started With Creative Writing

    Action: In creative writing, action should occur for a reason—characters' actions should be based on their motivations, their points of view, and their previous choices. A protagonist's actions should always propel them toward their main goal in a way that is related to the plot events at hand. A character's goals affect their character ...

  11. How to Start a Story

    The most important thing is authenticity and confidence. Don't use the voice of other writers when you begin. Instead, announce your presence on the page from the first sentence with a strong narrative voice, and have confidence in your prose and in your story. Introduce your distinctive voice from the get-go.

  12. How to Start a Story: 10 Secret Writing Tips for Openings

    2. Introduce a Compelling Character. Introducing a character as your opening move can create an immediate connection with the reader. This strategy involves presenting a character in a way that showcases their personality, desires, or conflicts, inviting the audience to invest emotionally in their journey.

  13. 7 Ways to Come Up With Great Story Ideas

    4. Start With a Creative Writing Prompt. Chances are, you've been told to use writing prompts, but not how to use writing prompts. The best way to write from a prompt is to freewrite from the story idea, then edit from there. For example, let's say you're given this prompt: Write a story about a psychic psychiatrist.

  14. How to Start a Story

    Pantsers: For now, write the scenes that are in your head. Write what you know — even if it's the very end of the story. You can rearrange those scenes AFTER the book is finished. Plotters: Write the first scenes in your outline. You can decide AFTER the book is finished if that's where you really ought to start.

  15. 25 Ways to Start a Story

    Click to continue. *****. 25 Ways to Start a Story. Man is running from someone or something in the moonlight. Woman is searching for someone or something in a thick fog. A loud noise startles a person awake. Narrator confesses something outrageous. An unmarked package is left on someone's porch. Two lovers explore an abandoned island.

  16. How to Start a Story

    We create a connection between the writer and the reader through emotions. That's pretty how it is with creative writing. Yes, there needs to be logic that comes with a story, but if you're not triggering emotions, the reader turns off, and they don't want to read anymore. 5. Inordinate attention to the commonplace.

  17. How to Start a Story: 11+ Simple & Proven Strategies for Authors

    The steps for starting a story are to: Write Unforgettable Characters: Develop and write relatable, memorable protagonists. Have Great Hooks and/or Openings: Begin with an intriguing question or statement. Include Tension & Conflict: Introduce suspense and drama early. Start With Action and Dialogue: Start with dynamic events or conversations.

  18. How to Start a Story + 25 Super Story Openers » JournalBuddies.com

    8 Tips to Hook Your Readers from the Start. Check out these 8 ways to hook your readers from the very first sentence. Introduce a mystery that creates suspense for the readers. Evoke emotions with a scene that connects readers to the characters. Engage readers by starting with a snippet of dialogue. Create a surprising dialogue for the opening ...

  19. Creative Ways to Start a Story: 5 Starting Points

    Here Are Some Quick Pointers: • Introduce Your Primary Character Quickly. For a lot of stories, readers care about the plot of the story just as they care about the primary character. So try to introduce your main character as soon as you start your story, as readers tend to build an emotional relationship with him or her.

  20. 10 Ways to Start Your Story Better

    Here are 10 ways to do it. 1. Build momentum. The first cardinal rule of opening lines is that they should possess most of the individual craft elements that make up the story as a whole. An opening line should have a distinctive voice, a point of view, a rudimentary plot and some hint of characterization.

  21. 10 Creative Writing Prompts for Story Ideas

    10 Creative Writing Prompts for Story Ideas. Whether you're trying to start a new story, or struggling with writer's block in the middle of one, ideas may seem difficult to come by. To discover your next novel or short story idea, exercise your creative writing muscle with this list of creative writing prompts and story starters that will ...

  22. 101 Unique Story Starters You've Never Seen Before

    21. As the clock struck midnight, a phone rang in an empty office, and the message was for you. 22. Short stories written by a deceased author started to come true one by one, and I was the next character. 23. Through the window, the moon was red, and people were walking upside down. The dream was real.

  23. Story Starters: Creative Writing Prompt Ideas

    Whether it's your personal goal to sit down and write or you'd like to inspire your children or students to write, we have 25 story starters and creative writing prompt ideas that'll up the ante on your creative writing panache.

  24. How to write a novel in 15 minutes a day

    The first time I tried to write a novel I was 23. I had all the time in the world. I was a full-time graduate student. I lived alone, I had no children, and it took me three years to finish a ...

  25. How to Write a Short Story (Step-by-Step)

    A robust theme gives life to your story and provides it with meaning beyond the superficial plot. 5. Setting: Not always a focus, the setting might hold a big part in your short story. It provides for time and place where the story develops or happens; it sets the atmosphere and impacts the actions and decisions of the characters.

  26. 4 Reasons to Start Using Claude 3 Instead of ChatGPT

    Claude Is Better at Creative Writing . Besides occasional science homework, programming tasks, and fun games, one of the most popular use cases of AI chatbots is creative writing.