BEGINNING A STORY - Terrible Writing Advice

Starting a story is easy! Just drown the reader in so much info dumping and exposition that they can’t possibly escape! Once the reader is stuck, then trap them in a web of flashbacks, in medias res, and prologues. They will never escape then and will be forced to read the rest of your story. Don’t forget to use a mirror to describe how the main character looks!

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[wakkaseta]

You can tell just how inaccurate the Pie Chart is by how small the *"Showing off how awesome Mary Sue is"* slice is and the conspicuous absence of a *"Love Triangle"* slice.

[lampgirl]

Don't forget to begin with the main character complaining about their day to day life. Readers love reading about petty complaints.

[tzisorey]

Best story opening EVER:
"Hi, I'm Edward, and I'm the linebacker in our college team - I'm a 6'11 blonde beefcake with a huge 10 inch d***, and here I am at my 18th birthday. Oh, did I mention I'm also the reincarnation of Merlin?"

I wish I could count how many times I've read a story that started like that. Honestly, they're probably not *all* terrible....but with an opening like that, I'm not going to find out.

[BFedie]

Best opening line in a book:
"The sky was the color of cat puke"

From 'Uglies' by Scott Westerfeld. He also then proceeds to describe what the cat would have had to eat to get that specific color.

[winterlarsime]

Not to make the wattpad joke again, but this is totally something people on Wattpad needs

[sclair]

I want a story where they wake up and do their daily routine but one thing is out of place.

"I woke up, took off my elaborately described Pajamas, and replaced them with my less elaborate outfit. Brushed my teeth. Murdered the traitorous rebel, and then stood in line for my breakfast rations."

[cryptidcreates]

I'm proud of myself. My first sentence:
"It's easier to pull the trigger if you look away."

[timothymclean]

Doesn't weather automatically establish the atmosphere? After all, the mere presence of weather provides all sorts of information about its composition and density.

[dzigayu]

Another great advice, I'm using them in my book, I titled it "Twilight".

[degenerate]

I know when I read a story, the *first* thing I look for is the flow chart!

[SamGlaze]

Don't forget that while gazing at their physical reflection they should also be contemplating all of their emotional and internal traits while recalling their entire backstory and paper-thin motivations

[StylusShade]

"Reades rarely get distracted while reading a boo-Bored now." Why am I laughing so hard at this throwaway joke?

[playerdude]

Don’t forget to use a mirror to describe how the main character looks!

- Stephenie Meyer in a nutshell

[johnlance]

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia still has my favorite opening line:


"On an otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window."

Now tell me that doesn't make you want to keep

[terrancevanliew]

There is nothing wrong with a setting up a fake main character, so long as you make their death interesting and important.

[kajetanradulski]

"A quiet day of surfing the internet at the local library was interrupted when Nazis kicked in the front door." That's it. I'm out

[sambauman]

Hours...
And hours...
And hours of character description.
That's what they story is really about, right?

[WillcraftAnimations]

I'm currently trying to begin a story. That is to say, I finished writing the entire story, scrapped it, and now I'm starting over. Which somehow is even harder now that I got the plot and the stacks upon stacks of lore all figured out, as I try to avoid these pitfalls. Pretty sure I'm at that point where the story is going to burn in purgatory forever as my life flies by.

[maximusthedude]

I once tried reading the original Peter Pan book. By the time I gave up, I had no idea whether the book was talking about the river system of the Neverlands, human anatomy, or a map. I'm not joking.

Then I skipped to the end, but I got even more confused when Peter Pan decided to kiss the mother of the three children he had just brought back from Neverland and everyone was ok with that, even though he was the one who broke in during the middle of the night and stole them from that very room a few decades ago.

I can only hope that I'm just an idiot who can't read, because people make children's shows out of this book.

[iluvlittenanimations.]

“It was an average day in the fishing town of Aron, a breeze was blowing, the fish were swimming, and about half of the town was on fire again”