To give you an idea what's up ahead in the story... well I don't have a clear outline for it, but I do know that I want charlie wizard, the young boy, to grow from being an apprentice blacksmith into a dragon hunter (because dragons will be coming to destroy his village), but he will learn that it is not the dragons who are doing this on their own will, there's a cult of people who train and breed dragons for the purpose of plundering. Throughout his journey, I want him to become such a selfless person, and he will find and raise his own dragon, (Eragon anyone? I know i know) but I want him to become somewhat of a wandering hero, so selfless that he will not reject anyone's good natured request for a favor. That's a lot of explanation! It's not all too clear in my head so I'm here for some help :P Well, here are the first 13 lines of an attempted opening... but like I said, I'd like to post more.

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“Are you daydreaming again?” My father snarled as he hammered a glowing yellow blade on an anvil. “How am I supposed to leave this job up to you if your mind is like a nomad?” His upper lip tightened in frustration.
I looked down at the anvil in front of me. I held a hammer in my right hand, but that was it. I had nothing to work with. “I was just thinking about something I heard in the Town Square earlier.” I was hesitant to share, as my father understood nothing beyond his life as a blacksmith, and his dream for me to carry on his legacy.
“What hearsay are you letting dominate your mind this time?” He snarled again. He held up the blade he was shaping, pinching the glowing iron with a set of tongs. “I get orders

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“Are you daydreaming again?” My father snarled as he hammered a glowing yellow blade on an anvil. “How am I supposed to leave this job up to you if your mind is like a nomad?” His upper lip tightened in frustration.

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Just a nit, but it seems like he would speak between hammer blows. This sounds like he's trying to speak over the ringing hammer strike.

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I looked down at the anvil in front of me. I held a hammer in my right hand, but that was it. I had nothing to work with. “I was just thinking about something I heard in the Town Square earlier.” I was hesitant to share, as my father understood nothing beyond his life as a blacksmith, and his dream for me to carry on his legacy.

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This last sentence didn't work for me. It felt clumsy. I recommend making the first sentence a single sentence. Then remove the second comma. It's extraneous.

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“What hearsay are you letting dominate your mind this time?” He snarled again. He held up the blade he was shaping, pinching the glowing iron with a set of tongs. “I get orders from royalty because I put my heart and mind on my craft at all times.”

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I didn't care for the repeated snarl. The first one let us know his tone at a time when we might have read it differently. It's one of the few cases where something other than said works--however, it doesn't work the second time because it doesn't tell us anything new. My advice: "Said" is invisible. Always use it, unless you have a strong reason not to use it.

"Hesitant to share" sounds like modern "communication psycho-talk." Maybe just "I hesitated to speak."

"What hearsay are you letting dominate your mind this time?" Same kind of thing. Sounds too much like me when I'm preaching, not like a blacksmith. Maybe "What gossip's addled your brain now?"

If you must, I suggest getting into the actual story quicker (and giving them names):

The ring of my father's hammer on the anvil gave emphasis to his beckon. "Ford. Wake up. Where is your head?" He furrowed his brows. "Harrow Nar is a respectable name because I pay attention to every detail. You can't be dozing in the forge, lad!"

I wanted to shout that I wasn't Harrow Nar, I was Ford Nar, and I didn't even know if I wanted to be a damned blacksmith; but, I didn't. "Word around town is that the Scythian army is marching to defend the southern shore form the Evil Robot Monkey invasion. I was thinking--"

"Get yer head out of the clouds, lad," my father said. "What do you know of fighting?"

This is not supposed to be your story, but an example.

My main critique for this is that it feels flat. It's vaguely interesting, but seems ungrounded in character and location. If it's a blacksmith, I'm thinking Middle Ages, maybe, but their dialogue seems like an odd composite, and lacks specificity.

However, since you're just starting out, I'd suggest not worrying about the first 13 for now and finishing the story. You can always come back to it later, and you might find a better place to start.

since it's part of a longer work, i am hesitant to jump into the story too quickly.

my other attempt for an opening is to start it at a local run down tavern where the boy first hears the gossip.

What is this rumor that he hears in the tavern? Is this what causes him to want to be a dragon hunter? If so, that might be a good way to start. Or you could even start at the moment he decides he wants to be a dragon hunter, now he just has to convince his pesky dad who has dreams of his becoming a blacksmith, or he just decides he has to run away and fend for himself.

I reread your synopsis. You say you don't have a clear outline, but it sounds like you have a pretty good handle on what you want to have happen, and what the end result will be (transformation into selfless warrior. I responded to your main plot point with questions that might help trigger ideas or directions, or will at least force you to think about how to clarify your story. With outlines, I find it's always easier to think in specifics whenever possible. So:

Charlie wants to be a dragon hunter. What does he have to do to become one? What steps does he have to overcome? Does anyone try to stop him (dad?). If so, how does he overcome that hurdle?

He learns the dragons are forced to attack people by a cult. How does he learn this? Once he learns this, does he try to stop them? Does he try to change public sentiment about the dragons?

He becomes a wandering hero, so selfless he won't reject anyone's good-natured request for a favor.
So there's a huge gap between the previous plot point and this end character result. Not to say it can't be bridged, but it might help to think about what Charlie is like before, and what would cause him to change into knight errant type. Maybe something about what he has to do to help the dragons? Does he have to sacrifice his standing in society to help the dragons because no one understands but he that the dragons are someone's tool?
It might also help to work backwards. What does it mean to be a "wandering hero" in practical terms? How does he survive? Where does he get food? What does he think about when someone comes to him for aid? Does he think it's his duty? Does he think no one is going to help these poor people so it's up to him? Or is he just so compassionate he can't turn any one down? Or is he easily wheedled and convinced to help others? How does he decided what a "good-natured" request is?

It helps to think about what characters do and want, rather than what they are. "Being" is a static state. Since stories are about motion and change, you need to think that way too, about what happens and about what characters do.

What makes him a wandering dragon-rider hero?

• Is he just generally not liked?
• Why do the dragons destroy his village? (Villages don't have as much as cities to plunder.)
• Is this cult religious?
• Do they have temples sprouting up all over the kingdom?
• Is the self-banishment because he feels anyone that loves him will die? Like his father?
• What is he changing to a selfless warrior from? A greedy, spoiled brat? He doesn't sound like that.
• What makes him change?
• How does he find the cult?
• How does he escape the cult with a baby dragon? (Please tell me he won't steal an egg.)
• How does he learn enough about dragons and their training to even consider he can do it?
  

The idea is that the his village (which I want to build up to me an extremely rich, but detached village from the central kingdom) will be plundered by the dragon tamers, and his "banishment" will be because his parents will be killed in this. The destruction of his known life is what drives him to hunt down and kill the dragons, and during these hunts he will learn that it is the cults that are raising dragons, not the dragons themselves, who are the culprits. I have not thought too hard on the cults, but I want them to be somewhat of just pirates, merciless, greedy, etc., and no, I don't want him to escape the cult stealing an egg :-p
I want him to come across a baby dragon and be captivated by its innocence and by guilt of killing so many and after learning the truth, he decides to befriend/raise it.

About bridging the gap between him hunting dragons and becoming a selfless hero... I'm not exactly sure how to do this - but i want this novella to be the starting point / intro to a series about this man, charlie wizard, so this is like an intro story that will tell my audience why he is the way he is. I was thinking of using the dragon genocide guilt trip to make him this selfless being.

I was thinking of a scene where he witnesses dragons sacrificing themselves for each other, trying to resist this dragon tamer cult, and an epiphany he may have would be something along the lines of (cliche, i know) 'each other is all we have' and that will become the most important thing to him, is to make sure his community is okay, this is why he becomes the selfless hero.

Any ideas?

It sounds like you have a good idea of what you want to do. You need to show us who Charlie is through his eyes: him surviving the attack and hunting the beasts down; deciding they are not beasts, but victims (what he witnesses and what goes through his mind about it). Then--still through his eyes--show us how hard raising the dragon is and what it teaches him.

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Also, I don't want to get into the story too quick because I'm scared of underdeveloping the characters.

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i 'gree with IB here. You can't develop characters until the story starts. Or are do you mean you're afraid you might not include enough background to let your readers understand the characters and their change? Readers need surprisingly little to understand where a character is coming from, and you can give them a surprising lot of detail and nuance while still moving the story forward. But you should try to start the story forward sooner than later, or else readers will get tired of waiting.

As for your ideas, I think you've got the right idea. Keep brainstorming until you come up with something you like. But I think you've got a handle on the idea that there needs to be a trigger for his change.

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My father snarled as he hammered a glowing yellow blade on an anvil. .... He held up the blade he was shaping, pinching the glowing iron with a set of tongs.

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As was pointed out, most blacksmiths don't try to talk over their hammering. One, it's loud. Two, there are better times to talk.

Hmm, okay, a blacksmith hits the metal when it's red because that's when it's most malleable. By the time the metal is yellow, it's time to heat the metal again in the fire. Metal cools down very rapidly, so the fire and anvil are physically close together and the blacksmith focuses on working very quickly while the metal is out of the fire.

It's very unlikely that the whole blade was uniformly heated to the same color, but that does depend partly on the size of the blade and the size of the fire. Typically, a blacksmith heats the amount of metal that he can effectively work before it cools down. Also, since you have only one person working the metal in this scene, the metal blade shouldn't be longer/heavier than what the father can hold with one hand. If the son is the apprentice, he should probably be helping his father by holding the blade on the anvil and transferring it back to the fire or by working the bellows.

A blacksmith would have had the tongs 'pinching' the metal the whole time so that the blade didn't bounce off the anvil as he hit it. He'd also not pinch the METAL tongs onto the GLOWING HOT metal because the two pieces of metal would start to bond together. A blacksmith holds/pinches/tongs the end of the metal where it's practically cold enough to hold with your bare hands unless the metal is extremely short (though the heat does transfer up into the 'cold' metal if you've been working the metal for a long time).

Oh, by the way, I'm a blacksmith and an aspiring bladesmith, so I'm basing these comments on personal experience and what I was taught.

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“Are you daydreaming again?” My father snarled as he hammered a glowing yellow blade on an anvil.

“How am I supposed to leave this job up to you if your mind is like a nomad?” His upper lip tightened in frustration.

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Cinematic (which I don't like). First person implied (which I don't like). You left "wandering" out of the second statement the father makes. It occurs to me that if a man is working at a forge, he wouldn't be spending a whole lot of time talking to a child/youth who is daydreaming. The words would be short. Like "Out!"

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I looked down at the anvil in front of me. I held a hammer in my right hand, but that was it. I had nothing to work with. “I was just thinking about something I heard in the Town Square earlier.”

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Oh man, I'd throw this kid out of a forge, and I'm not even a blacksmith.

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I was hesitant to share, as my father understood nothing beyond his life as a blacksmith, and his dream for me to carry on his legacy.

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Dream? More like a nightmare. Actually, most fathers in a trade like this would send the child to apprentice with someone else, as I understand it.

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“What hearsay are you letting dominate your mind this time?” He snarled again. He held up the blade he was shaping, pinching the glowing iron with a set of tongs. “I get orders

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I'd start this with the father asking him where his piece is (or whatever the father thinks the son is doing - by the way, I don't have a fix for the age of the son, don't know what era I'm in, don't know where this is, don't know the name of the son...).

Then have the son say something like "Minister blickety-crump says..." to which the father can say "Blickety-crump doesn't know bleep about what honest men..."

I also understand your reservations about jumping too quickly into a story. After all, stories are supposed to (traditionally) begin with an 'Exposition' (that is, a point of equilibrium where a status quo is established), and then go on to a 'Disruption'. That said, the exposition is as much an exposition of the character as the world, and what makes a hero(ine) a hero(ine) is his or her yearning for something else, their restlessness, their dissatisfaction for . . . well, whatever. So, whilst you might not start the 'quest' of the hero straight away, you are still introducing a hook or a form of conflict (even if it's inner conflict) at the beginning. Does your protagonist want to be a blacksmith? Why not? What does he want to do? Why? What motivates him? Does he have a love interest? Did he witness his mother brutally murdered as a child?

Even if the world you present is superficially very harmonious at the beginning, it needn't be if we look deeper at it.

Also, it can be very hard to gauge a story's success from 13 lines. So send it along, as I suggested, and we'll take a closer look ;-)

Regards