Story Beginnings — Part 2 (Where to Begin?)

We've all read them: books that stupify the senses for the first few pages or — ack! — the first few chapters. Like the literary troopers we are, we wade through those mind-dulling pages, meanwhile muttering incantations, It will get better . . . Any minute now something wonderful will happen . . .

If even the pros fall prey to such yawningly slow beginnings, how much more susceptible is the novice writer? Very, as it turns out. Often novice writers begin their stories thinking that they...