While the beginning is a good place to start, I need help to find the best place.

I really dislike that advice. It gives the impression that a whole day needs to written about before the story starts. Instead, write one scene that highlights the differences between the story world and the reader's world. And include a hint or foreshadow of the first conflict.

For example, consider the first Toy Story movie. The first scene establishes that toys can move and talk. It establishes the Woody is the favourite toy and the leader of the other toys. And it establishes that the day is Andy's birthday and the other toys are worried about being replaced.

More importantly, it starts when the conflict starts: Andy's birthday. Or to be precise, just before Andy's birthday party where he'll receive more toys.

Finding the best place to start a story is real hard but ask yourself where is the first conflict that is part of the story. Start at it or one scene before it. And remove anything that is not unusual or unique about the world. It may not be the absolute best opening but most of the time, it's good enough.

 

I think any story should as quickly as possible tell the audience what it promises them they will get if they sit through it to the end. You don't have to tell them what will happen, but you should establish what type of story this is, what it is about, what style it has, and what kind of development the audience could expect later, based on their existing experiences with the genre. Setting the mood is all well and fine, but don't obscure these actually relevant information that the audience wants to know.
Because the audience builds expectations during the first parts of the story and it generally ends up very poorly when they get the impression that they were deceived with false promises.

I'm also a fan of brevity and can fully get behind the idea that the start of a narrative should be as late into the story as possible. If you could still tell a coherent story if you only start it at a later scene, then the scenes before that aren't actually relevant.

 

Sadly, too many novices will take it literally.

 

Even then I don't think it's necessary in any way. The opening should explain how the setting works and who is who, but it doesn't have to be by showing how things normally are. Plenty of great openings start directly in a moment of crisis when normality has already gone out of the window.

 

Write the book, then figure out where and how it starts best. That's advice I didn't use myself, and probably should have, LOL.

 

I like this idea, if you are going to experiment with different beginnings.

I suspect that, generally, you are going to want to start with the POV that drives the reader.

This is not necessarily "the character that drives the story," depending on how we define drives and who/what gets driven.

Your antagonist, Javert, may well be the one driving the action, the proactive character at first, relative to plot; but who drives the reader to care about what happens? Chances are good that you'll want the reader to identify with Hopper, feel Hopper's pain and conflict and desires, more than you'll want the reader to identify with Javert's journey. So I think you'd be better off starting with your A-list character.

Essentially, the reader's expectations will be set by who starts the car for him, so to speak. Unless you do some sort of prologue-ish thing before the main story starts and make it feel like an obvious prologue-ish thing--a viable approach, with the antagonistic situation introduced before the A-List character is introduced--then starting by letting the reader get inside the car with the A-list character sets the journey up to be what it is going to be.

I also think there's an effective difference between showing and hiding. Readers will begin to identify with what is shown to them and will feel resistance re: identification to what is hidden. So if you hide the A-list character for a bit at the beginning, readers are more likely to identify with what they are shown -- the B-list character -- and view Hopper as some kind of strange unknown factor. Vice versa, if you start with Hopper and leave Javert a bit in the shadows.

Of course, if you want equal identification/sympathy for Hopper and Javert, things become a lot trickier, heh.

 

I always tell it, start at the moment everything changes. So which character is having everything change? I suspect it is the Javert character, but what do I know? This would go along with, don't start with a day in the life of...but, ya know...every rule has exceptions.

 

So...third individual supplies something that changes the trajectory of Hoppers story?

If hopper does not meet third individual does she just run some more and hop around? But third dude give her something else to try for?

If the story, but for this meeting is He chases, she jumps away, he chases, she jumps away, and repeat, then the meeting is where things change. A quick action sequence and then everything is different. Cant say as I know, but I think I would want to end the first part right after third dude says something that changes her way of looking at it. That makes her the POV to me.