I mean, for the love of Elbesem, with all the things he says not to start a story with, what is left?

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DO NOT START A STORY WITH DESCRIPTIONI don't care if you're describing a person, place, thing, era, or whatever. I want to read about conflict, not helper words.

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So...how do you create conflict without being able to describe, at all....ANYTHING? This is just laughable to me.

Well, the guy said he was in a bad mood when he wrote this, and it shows. Most of it is, to me, "badly" written in such broad strokes and total absolutes as to be nearly useless.

Edit: TaoArtGuy, don't take what I just said to me I don't appreciate your thought in posting this. And some of what is said can be useful, but I disagree with much of it and disagree entirely in the absolute way its presented. It's presented as, and sounds like, a tired frustrated person ranting and that, to me, limits its usefulness.

I hear that whole "well they are master storytellers so they can get away with it" thing a lot but...thing is...I see a lot of stuff, in pro or semi pro magazines, but written by little-known people, that breaks various "rules" both as far as openings and otherwise.

I'm not a big fan of "don'ts" myself, but look at the advice in context: here is a judge from a short story writing contest saying "these things don't work." As with all writing advice, file it away. Each time you see it repeated add a little more weight to the possibility that it is true. I've seen similar things to what he writes pretty often.

If a voice is in second person direct or implied imperative, it's bound to be a decorum lapse.

About all I got from the blog is someone's annoyed who's bent on chastising writers as the bane of the blogger's existence. Trust or respect are compromised. The message gets lost in the method.

His last point is the one I agree with the most:

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Are there exceptions to these rules? Of course. There are always exceptions. But I didn't see any in the 2000+ stories I had to endure.

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But he doesn't explain why.

For me, these 'rules' tend to be a tool with which I can measure my own work and answer the question: "Is this the opening sentence this story needs?".

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But he doesn't explain why.

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But as extrinsic says, when you speak in that tone and manner, it often robs you of respect and acknowledgement. You basically cast doubt on yourself by way of your breach of decorum and because you yourself are not being respectful.

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I find it hard to imagine starting a story with "Moronville, Ohio was a town of 8371 people originally founded in 1872 by Quakers." I mean, what ending is going to resonate with that?

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Well, if the ending of the story involves the destruction of the town and the death of all its people, then you actually get a certain poignancy from that bare opening.

Everything else is just a guideline.

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So...how do you create conflict without being able to describe, at all....ANYTHING? This is just laughable to me.

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I did a writing exercise a very long time ago in which I was told that I had to write a (very) short story without using a single adjective.

At first, it was frustrating, but as I got into it, I started to get more familiar with just how much power there is in the rest of the language.

I think the article is a definite rant, but you have to admit it has a lot of good points. Starting a story off with something so completely cliche as the weather or waking up, for example, is a bad call unless it's done right. He isn't saying "never do it" -- he's saying that until you're good enough to do it, there are better alternatives.

I look at this list and think that it might be a great list of possible writing challenges in which Hatrackers are challenged to start a story (13-line challenge) and make it work.

So there'd be, what, 14 different writing challenges? (Though I have to say that I can see that the grammar one and the exclamation points one could be particularly challenging.)

If we're not dying to press for 12 in 12 months I might find myself available to run one or more of these, perhaps bi-monthly. As well as there being an active challenge running in the forum at the moment, personal writing and other commitments abound, so I wouldn't want to go jumping in with both feet today, per se.

The wind howled unexpectedly, grabbing her cloak and pulling her backwards. She clung to the stone face with all her strength. I must not allow myself be killed this way, she thought desperately. Too many lives are at stake.

I have driven through Pennsylvania on several occasions, and those Quakers must have been a rowdy bunch back in the day. The town names read like single-line summaries of a trashy romance novel. However, I don't believe I've ever driven through Moronville (of course, my wife would probably argue that I live there).

The author of the post declares "I write thrillers." You think that might account for his advice to always start with action?

One of the more interesting comments to that post read "these things are symptoms of bad writing, not causes. A good writer can - and would - break any of them if it served the story."

It doesn't mean you can't do anything on the list and end up with a good story. But when he says 2000+ stories were all vapid and dull, and Wow! They shared the following points... it may be a good way to diagnose problems in other stories. However, there is nothing wrong with the examples he gave in their own right.

It strikes me as things beginning writers may tend to do alot, and since beginning writers may tend to write less well than not-beginning writers, the list and bad writing have become linked.

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It doesn't mean you can't do anything on the list and end up with a good story. But when he says 2000+ stories were all vapid and dull, and Wow!

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Vapid and dull in his extremely jaded and at that moment burned out frustrated opinion.

Still doesn't count for much, to me. He succeeded in expressing his particular opinions, pet peeves and how tired he is basically of doing the job he's currently doing, but if he intended any of it as meaningful or useful advice, in my opinion he failed on various levels and for various reasons.

But once again, he and I are coming from entirely different points of view. I see creativity as sacred and strongly desire to encourage people to write (or paint or sculpt or play music or whatever) whereas his deal is based on 1) how burned out he is and 2) notions of some sort of objective standard of "quality" that I don't believe exists outside of each individuals mind.

Some of what is unpublishable now may become publishable according to changing trends and tastes.

But any slush reader will tell you that there is a LOT of material out there that was never publishable before, is not publishable now, and will never be publishable in the future.

I've fallen into another cliche with my recent stories, I've realized. (It doesn't involve the opening, it involves the nature of the lead character.) I'm stuck with it with this story, but I'll look for somethine else with my next one.

As soon as I realize I'm doing it, I go looking for something else to do. I don't look to do the same thing, over and over again.

And the fantasy writer's exam:
http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

I only answered yes once on my novel, though a few well, kinda but not really.

Perhaps he never read Dean Koontz’ Lightning. Sure, the advice is true, but if you start with weather well, such as in Lightning, it is a fine opening paragraph.
DO NOT START A STORY WITH CHARACTER DESCRIPTION
Concerning this rule, here is the opening of Odd Thomas.

“MY NAME IS ODD THOMAS, THOUGH IN THIS AGE WHEN fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.
I am not a celebrity. I am not the child of a celebrity. I have never been married to, never been abused by, and never provided a kidney for transplantation into any celebrity. Furthermore, I have no desire to be a celebrity.”

DO NOT START A STORY WITH PREMONITION

Check out the opening paragraph of Dean Koontz’ Dragon Tears. Can you tell I like Koontz?

DO NOT USE HELPER WORDS
Force yourself to pare away every adverb, and half your adjectives. Also kill any speaker attribution other than "said" and "asked."

This sounds like the advice of a beginner. Sure, for the most part, use “said” and “asked,” but please don’t limit yourself to just those tags. No best-selling author does, so why should you?

DO NOT USE EXCLAMATION POINTS!
Especially a bunch of them!!!!!!!

Don’t use a bunch of them, ever, that is true, but you should use them sometimes. Do not follow this advice and never use exclamations points. Try reading stories published in quality magazines, and you will find a few exclamation points, as you should.

DO NOT USE THE SAME FARUQING WORD TWICE IN THE SAME FARUQING PARAGRAPH
Get the faruquing point?

This is really bad advice. Just read about parallelism and study the masters, then you will see just how wrong this advice is.

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Click here for free writing lessons, via video.

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Concerning this rule, here is the opening of Odd Thomas.

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I don't think that's the kind of description he's talking about

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Probably I'm a guy who's looking to put a new spin on something old, rather than go to the effort of coming up with something new.

To a certain extent, about, oh, fifteen-some years ago, I got locked into a kind of story that boiled down to, "Who am I?" I wound up with main characters that (1) others believe were this one particular person, but (2) the main character himself or herself either (a) knew for sure that or (b) did not believe he / she was that particular person.

Why this worked for me, I don't know---probably I was boiling my own life down to "Who am I?" and the idea fit in neatly with that. Two novels, some of my Internet Fan Fiction, and nearly everything since, falls into that.

The later cliche I was talking about above, involved a number of characters who, how can I put this? they had the memories of and often the outward form of a person, but were not that person at all---but they're not villains at all, they're somebody who just got caught in a bad situation, they're intended to be sympathetic. I'm explaining this badly---the details of how it happens vary from story to story---but I think it covers the basics. It kinda segues from my "Who am I?" period as these characters have no idea (or an incorrect idea) of who they are.

But the way Odd Thomas starts is so gripping. He continues on just talking like that for pages before the story finally begins, and I love every bit of it, especially the part about the cat peeing on his shoe.

There are so many interesting discriptions you could start with.

He was an oridinary man, but for his eyes, or rather the fact that he had none. He had two empty sockets. Despite this, most people that knew John, would swear that he could see them. John didn't even use a walking cane. Yup, he was an enigma, alright.

It's probably worth noting that the context in both cases was novels as opposed to short stories where's there's more incentive to get on with things in a hurry.

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You are a bad writer but an amazing alchemist since you seem to have figured out how to turn poo into paragraphs.

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If I ever got a line like that back in a real crit... well, I'd be a little bit crushed, but a little bit laughing my ass off. I do hope that of the many, many places that will reject me without giving much in the way of feedback, at least a few will do it with style.

Also, I hope that on the same day another agent/publishing house accepts my work, because that way I'll be able laugh right away. Otherwise I'll only be able to think it's funny after drowning my pain in beer.