Starting a Piece

Start the story five pages earlier than you have been. Then discard those five pages.

Who knows? It might work.…

Seriously (though, come to think of it, that actually might work…): I'd suggest the same thing I tell students about essay writing: do that part last. By then, you should have some fairly good idea of what you need to have right up front to launch the thing.

 

I'm going to suggest that maybe you think it sounds cliché because the beginning of a story is introductory by nature. Something has to begin the story, and yes, it's going to be relatively infodumpy compared to stuff in the middle. You can't rely on character traits that have been built up over the course of the last several thousand words; you're creating them from scratch. Can't be helped.

I think if you did a blind test, taking a chunk from the beginning and a chunk from the middle, and gave each of them to someone with no context, you'd probably find that people can't accurately guess which is which. If that's the case, then it's a matter of your own (mis-)perception rather than you actually producing "boring, cliché, and/or awkward" prose.

 

You mean that wasn't serious!!
I start all my work this way. If I didn't I would find the very start of my work stilted and struggling to find it's pace. By starting a few pages prior, I come in with my characters actually in the middle of something

 

If you're having problems with the opening, it's probably because nothing is happening at the beginning and even you don't want to read about it. If that's the case, don't bother writing about it. Start the story where the story starts, not before the story starts. Start with the action, fill in the background as required.

I used to have a hard time with beginnings as well. Then, one day, I had a story almost finished but couldn't think of a really good opening. So I set it aside - for about six months. When I opened it, the story was fresh and new, and I realized it didn't need an opening.

 

See, I thought that would work.