What are your top 3 tips for narrative writing?

emmanuel olaoye ‏@Mandizzleno1: Thanks James. This one is for me. what are your top 3 tips for narrative writing.

ANSWER:

I wrote a post “33 Unusual Tips To Being a Better Writer” and I’m really afraid I won’t be able to compress it down to three but I’ll try.

A) Forget the intro. Everyone obsesses on how to start something. So let’s make it easy. Don’t start it. Just forget all about an intro. Intros are always boring and bad anyway. Which leads to…

B) Start in the middle. Let’s say you are telling the story of how you lost your virginity. Don’t start with how you met the girl (or guy). Start with how bad it was. And how bad you felt afterwards. And how anxious you were that she would never call again. (uhh, maybe I’m projecting too much of my own story here). How you met her is sort of boring.

C) Ok, back to the actual first sentence, now that you’ve given us the middle. Start with a cliffhanger. The very first line. Like in my answer here. I wrote down the three items first (including this line). And now I’m going to go and write that first sentence.