What is the best way to start a story? What method draws the reader in the most?

I like when a story starts with a seemingly random quote.

Place the hero or heroine in a seemingly impossible predicament right from the first page, then get him/her out of it before then end of the first chapter, forshadowing the much larger predicament they will be in by the middle of the book. : )

Seriously tho, sometimes one of the best methods for perfecting what works best is to view examples of what does NOT work and attempt the opposite.

To see many humorous examples of what to avoid, head over to

www.bulwer-lytton.com

This is the site for the annual contest. It has its moments.

Start at a point which pushes the hero inexorably down the path to the climax of the story. That means starting with action. It doesn’t have to be shoot-‘em-up type action. It can be simple, but it has to be action that irreversibly forces the hero down the slide toward the climax of the storyline.

If you’re writing a murder mystery, then start with blood on the floor.

If you’re writing a romance, then start with some point in the heroine’s life that forces her to move down the path to meeting the man of her dreams.

In other words, it has to be a point of no return.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta:
the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps
down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.
Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.
She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Damn this party is boring. I’d go home except that I can’t remember where I left my knickers and bra.

‘a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.’

‘Once upon a time…..’

Start at the end the entire story is then told in retrospect.

I thought pianos falling out of windows and onto people’s heads was just something that happened in the movies. But there was Colin’s head. OK, it was Colin’s head a moment ago. Now it was some mashed up bits of mucus, brains, cartilage and bones under a smashed piano that had fallen away from the pulleys and hooks somewhere above. Talk about “the dying of the light”.

Well. It’s what he gets for running away from me like that. I’d only wanted to ask him a simple question; had he been the contact for the embassy? What was my next step? As the crowd gathered in their salacious revulsion, I decided to cross the street. I can’t stand rubberneckers. Ghastly. Anyway, there were no longer any answers for me here.

@aprilsimnel : Hilarious. I’d read it.

I start with a sentence declaring a situation in an environment encompassing no more than fifteen feet in diameter, and no more than 7 words long That’s about how many words or symbols the memory can hold simultaneously in buffer, so the first sentence is the absolute dealbreaker. The first paragraph should focus on the situation at hand, keeping it small. Then one adds information that pans the reader’s attention out wider and wider.

It was a dark and stormy night…