My kid, who is technically an adult studying theatre and literature at University, was chatting over the weekend about story design.
“I don’t ever know when to start a story.” She said. “Like, do you write from the beginning or jump into the action, or—”
Look, I’m no expert but I can tell you that such things are a combination a lot of other things: two of the big ones being personal style and confidence in the reader.
I write my stories in a way that I usually think of as drive by storytelling.
The reader doesn’t go to the story, listen to the whole tale, then drive away when it’s finished.
Rather, they drive by: the story is happening and they hear a piece of it as they “drive by” and then keep going while the story keeps happening in the rearview mirror.
To clarify, I do focus on writing the important nuggets of the tale being told and not random, meaningless chunks.
But by working in this model I tend to write in a way that focuses my personal style on having confidence that the reader will understand enough of what happened before they got there and enough of what will continue to go on after they pass by.