Raise your hand if you’ve heard this before: start your book in the middle of the action?

I see a whole bunch of hands. Mine’s raised too.

One of the blogs I read (sorry, can’t remember which one) pointed me to this blog post about bad writing advice and how you shouldn’t start your story in the middle of the action, but rather, start with conflict.

Start with conflict. Now that sounds like good advice.

Highlight: So what you should OPEN with is a HOOK, something that isn’t necessarily huge dramatic action involving explosions but that leaves the reader with a question (or questions) that keeps him or her turning the page to find out the answer.

Read the whole post.