“It was a dark and stormy night …” Unless you are Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in which case you get a pass because you did it first. And in the process inspired a contest for the worst opening lines of an imaginary novel.
“Contrary to the Berlin School of historiography of Central Europe …” OK, it was non-fiction, but I could understand why the book is a “classic” that no one reads.
“Everything changed the day my girlfriend left.” Yawn. You had better add a twist that encourages further reading.
What you want is something that will intrigue the reader, set genre cues that you will expand in the rest of the opening, and that lures the reader into trying more. Unless you are mimicking someone, or writing in German, you don’t want a trail of clauses traipsing down the page as your reader desperately searches for the verb. And yes, one of my books started that way, because I’d just finished reading a German academic history book, and my grammar mind hat auf Deutsch noch gearbeitet [was still working in German]. A beta reader who knew how I think flagged it.
“I was just standing there, minding my own business, when some dude…” Those of us who know the joke* are already giggling, or rolling our eyes. You’d better make the rest of the line good, or have readers know that you are doing a police procedural or similar story.
Now, I’m treading on somewhat thin ice with my next novel, which opens with, “My dear, I can explain.” However, it is later in a series, and readers know that whatever it is will probably be messy, awkward, awkwardly messy, and involve things that polite ladies in the main character’s society try to ignore. In this case, her husband and his Scout partner cleaning wild game on her back porch … in a suburb of the largest human city on the planet. She carefully pretends it is not happening and says, “Yes, dear,” then goes inside.
*Sumdood is a criminal notorious for attacking innocent people who are just standing on street corners, minding their own business.
Mad Genius Club 
7 responses to “How Not to Start a Story”
Guilty. I admit it, I did the dork und strummy knight thing. Once. But the readers liked it! It was just a short story.
My beginnings suck, though. “Everyone’s dead, and soon I will be too.” Yawn. “A lonely little ship, a midget among sleeping giants.” Snooze. “We’re going to have to eat the horses.” That one was just okay. “Johnno was good at fighting, fair at sailing, and an utterly piss-poor gambler.” Been done before, better.
Most of them, the readers just get into the groove around chapter 3. I’ve tried starting in media res, and it works better most times. But A good solid hook? Now that’s a thing. Need to work on it more.
What works for a short story, or humor, is different from novels. So you can get away with things, if readers are clear on the genre.
Hooks are hard. Great hooks are remembered by everyone, because they stand out so well. Then there’s the rest of us…
“The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel”
Classic one that literally has to be explained to people…
Because now dead channels don’t even show up, or if they do, they’re a plain blue screen. It’s hard to find static these days.
Time to share my favorite Edward Bulwer-Lytton contest entry of all time “His life was like a man without index fingers: pointless.”
“Everything changed the day my girlfriend left.”
It could work. Just needs a second clause to buff it up.
“Everything changed the day my girlfriend left for the moons of Saturn.”
or perhaps
“Everything changed the day my girlfriend left me her pet wyvern with firm instructions never to feed it anything other than certified organic arugula.”
There are worse openings that “It was a dark and stormy night” but it lacks specificity. Thunder? Torrential downpours? Winds?