La Bene Vita

Kill your darlings: How to begin a story

Whether you're a pantser or plotter, starting a story can be the hardest part of writing fiction.

Just kidding. It's totally editing, am I right??

Okay, so maybe both are stressful and intimidating. You wrack your brain for the perfect opening lines, but they just won't come, because you're a perfectionist! And if and when you finally spit out some words that work, you never, ever want to edit them out because you worked so hard to find them in the first place.

You're trying too hard.

Just start writing, yo. But here's the catch: Write with the knowledge and understanding that you will absolutely be deleting these words later. Write the worst possible opening lines you could ever devise. The words themselves and what they say aren't the point. The words are a vehicle for the writing  itself. They get your brain moving. They're a warm-up. Eventually, the story will start spilling out, and you can go back and find the point where the magic happened - where your brain finally remembered why you liked writing in the first place.