Where do I begin…

 How do you decide where a story starts?

Stories, short or long, generally are not about characters who are happily living their normal lives. Something unusual is going on; something has upset the status quo (whether the status quo was a miserable life as a slave, or a happy life as a king).

Stories therefore generally start in one of four places:  either just before, just at, or just after the point at which the status quo is upset, or else in medias res, smack in the middle of whatever is...