A good intro for a story?

After having researched a ton on the 3 act, 5 act, and, 7 act structure, as well as on the 12 stages of hero journey, I find myself not liking the intro of my story now and having trouble coming up with a good, interesting intro that grabs you attention while properly introducing the characters. I'm trying to make something new, something original! I guess I'm having trouble because I won't settle for something that's been done before, I'm having such a hard time thinking right now.

The intro to my story starts out with an action sequence, but after researching the act structures, I've come to the conclusion that it might not be good at all.

What kind of intros have the best stories you ever read have? What aspect of it stood out to you or kept you attention until the story began. I should probably be trying to figure this out on my own instead of asking, right? :P

edited 1st Aug '12 3:06:01 PM by Fulgrate

It depends on the type and genre of story, but ideally you want something that will both grab the readers attention int the first chapter, if not the first paragraph.

In Media Res is a tried and True method to get things flowing. In other cases, start at the end, flashback and then work back to how you got there. The film sunset blvd. starts with the main character floating face-down in a swimming pool, narrating "That's me. I'm dead" then flashes back to explain how he ended up dead, floating in the pool.

Again, it depends a lot on the type of story, POV and tone to figure out what will work. If you want to give a brief description of your plot, characters, genre, tone, etc, it would help people suggest ideas.

Put a question in the readers mind so they'll want to read on to find the answer. It doesn't have to be an action sequence but something that draws the reader deeper in.

This can often be down with a memorable first line. My two favorites(off the top of my head) are from Stephen King's "The Gunslinger", which starts:

"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed."

One Hundred years of Solitude begins:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

In both cases, you want to know Why. Why is the Colonel being executed? Why is the memory of ice so important to him at that moment? Who is the man in black and why is he being chased?

edited 1st Aug '12 10:39:48 PM by hpl

Can I assume that this is a written medium like a novel?

I think the main thing to me for an intro is more of how it sets the tone of the story in terms of what I should expect in the rest of the novel. By this, I mean what sort of genre is this going to be, will be more mysterious or more up-front about what is going on and how "epic" I should expect the plot to be (of course hiding how expansive the plot is fine unless you think that the reader might lose interest if he was expecting a "big" plot).

Here's some basic stuff I've picked up about writing introductions.

Be careful of starting with someone waking up. There's a slight tendency to start off with a clean mental slate just like the reader will, but it might not be best suited for you and what you're writing.

This is more of a broader recommendation, but it applies to introductions too: try not to write it like it's a movie. A movie intro is probably going to start with establishing shots of the locale, but you don't have to describe the place first in your introduction. (To use an example from this thread, The Dark Tower as a movie would probably start off with wide angle shots of the desert before showing the Man in Black and the Gunslinger following him.

Unless you're making some serious stylistic choices, there should probably be something going on, and something that's important to the story somehow. You shouldn't have much in your story that isn't important to your story, but doubly so in your introduction. It's okay to start off with a small vignette if it's going to be showing you something important; Sabriel starts off with a scene with Sabriel and a girl's pet rabbit that she brings back from the dead, and establishes some of the basic ideas of necromancy in the book. (Looking back at it, it's not an amazing intro, but it works well enough.)