I finally stopped starting every prompt with 'it was a dark and stormy night'

Last Tuesday I ran a critique swap at the library and every single submission, all 14 of them, opened with weather or a character waking up, so I dug through my old flash fiction folder and found I did the exact same thing 9 times out of 10. Why do we all lean on those crutches when the prompt is about a secret tunnel or a talking pigeon, and has anyone here forced themselves to write a cold open with zero setup for a week?

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williamb2922d ago

When I hit that same wall, I made myself rewrite the first line of ten old stories without any scene setting at all. The trick that stuck was starting mid-action, like a character already arguing or running or holding something strange, and then letting the weather and waking up happen later, if at all. Cold opens forced me to trust the reader to catch up, and the stories got punchier because every word had to pull its weight. Cutting the habit also made my openings more honest, since a talking pigeon does not care about the rain. Give it a week and you will likely find you do not miss the storm at all.