It’s amazing to me how many places stories can spring from and what wild directions they can grow in. Every story begins as a single idea, whether in a scene, an image, a character, a name, a superpower, a concept, a line, a title, a prompt, etc.
Drawing from my own experience, the starting point seems different for just about every work. Where one is inspired by a dream, another unfolds entirely from the title. A short story I wrote for fun began with a prompt (internet matchmaking) and the first line that came to me: “Peter McBunterbeans was always making bets, and almost always losing them.”
How about you? What was the very first part of your work in progress that came to you?
What’s the word?