Plunge us into the action of the story. Leave the qualifiers and background description for later.
Getting to the point is timeless advice, more so in our era of flittering attention.
Is the story about planning a new park? Start with the kids playing soccer at the edge of a grocery store parking lot. Open well and you’re halfway there.
Remember what it’s like to sit through someone else’s lunchtime seminar. Remember the pain and suffering of filler content to set the stage for the next half hour.
“Acme Products hired us a year ago to assess the project site for compliance, and to perform all aspects of planning, engineering, and constructability review with an anticipated schedule of 18 months.”
Bleh.
The worst part is that some of you wonder if I plagiarized that sentence from your company’s material.
How do you start a story?
Jump in. Use the opening of your short story to illustrate The Why. That’ll hook us, even if we don’t share your professional expertise or point of view.
The goal is capturing the audience’s interest, not suggesting we’re all experts or on the same page.