Start in the middle
Just as an exercise, mmkay?
Today, try your hand at the “in media res” style of opening (which means, roughly, “in the middle of things”) for writing a short piece about a personal experience. An example of that could be “After floating on the wooden raft for three days, I began to worry I’d never be found, much less rescued.” It starts, as the device name suggests, in the middle. Of course then the writer generally then backs up and fills in gaps in the reader’s knowledge, but give this a whirl and see where you land.
This method is also a very excellent way to cut out pages and pages and pagessss of unnecessary exposition in your writing, so it can be deployed as a pre-emptive editing exercise, too. Let’s write.
