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Here’s a thought. Pick a book that you loved to read, something that caught your attention from the first paragraph. Look at how that author opened the story. Was it action, like @Desiderius Price uses? Was it an epigraph? Was it a flashback? These are all ways to catch the reader’s attention, and make them want to keep reading. There’s nothing wrong with the “It was a dark and stormy night” opening. It worked for Snoopy every time. But what, past that sentence, will hook the reader? (Hint: Snoopy would follow up by saying something like, “The Red Baron’s plane roared through the sky.” Action, and where was the Red baron going? Read on, dear reader!)

And that’s a great start. Why am I in jail? What the hell just happened here? Why won’t anyone answer my questions? Give the reader a little emotional hook into the character and they’ll want to find out, too. Most of my favorite authors are voracious readers. You can’t write if you don’t also read, in my ever-so-humble opinion.

Thats sorta how I started with my story. Just looking at how my favorite authors started. hahah Weirdly enough I got absurdly stuck because I got almost the whole story done but hadn’t thought of how to begin. I eventually was like you know what? Gonna start with a prison tale along the lines of one time I was snatched from bed at an ungodly hour and thrown into jail for no discernible reason.

I described the night first and zeroed in on the tavern, something akin to “it was a dark and stormy night” sort to speak.

If you’re after fun, turn it into a bucket list, challenge yourself to writing stories featuring tags you don’t normally explore.

I’m still not getting any feel whatsoever for the character as a person. The girls can take care of themselves, but the dwarven tavern owner will also defend them. So, are they strong women who stand on their own, or damsels in distress? I like strong characters, male or female, and I like to feel like I have gotten to know them, what motivates them, and why they react the way they do. I want to know what they hope for, and what they’re most afraid of. I’d really like it if one f the things they dislike or fear could NOT be sexual harassment because that’s so overdone as to be ridiculous. Let me put it this way. I played a computer RPG, based on D&D lore. My player character was doing her thing, and collecting a party of fellow adventurers to help her complete her quest to save the world. One character was a male paladin, who was (thanks to some exceedingly lazy writing) the only legitimate love interest for the female player character. He announces his interest by telling her, in bumbling virginal paladin fashion, “I just want to protect you.” I was dumbfounded. He was a decent fighter, but my PC was kicking ass on a much higher level than he was, and had just rescued him several times over when he came out with this. I was LIVID at the writers. These guys got PAID to write what amounted to an adolescent wank-fantasy of the paladin riding to the rescue and the PC immediately falling head over heels for him. NOT this PC. She informed him that she was not interested, and I finished the game without a romance arc. So, please, don’t write another infuriating, over the top, no-your-voice-hasn’t-quite-changed-yet-but-it’s-okay wet dream fantasy where everyone has all the charisma of a biscuit that got dipped in the tea too often. Write REAL people, with heartbeats, with mundane concerns we can understand, with flaws but also with decent intentions. People who can be strong when they need to be, but who know they can’t go it totally alone. People without god-like skills, or extraordinary luck. The plot can be a bit thin as long as you have great characters. That way, when they screw up, which most people do in real life, we readers can shake our heads, and mutter, “Well, that was stupid,” all the while rooting for the character anyway because we really like them. If you can pull that off, you won’t need the sexual harassment fantasies, and the focus on bouncy asses and tits.