Walt Shiel

I__ always hated cocktail parties. And this one was worse than most. Overdressed pseudo__eople smiled plastic smiles, told one__pmanship stories with phony self__eprecation, then half__istened with painted__n sincerity to the one__pmanship rebuttals. Mannequins. Robots. Androids. Pseudo__eople laboring in the vineyards of pseudo__ntellectualism to gather the bitter grapes of self__ggrandizement.

Begin your writing, fiction or article, where the action begins. This action can be internal (e.g., an important insight or personal decision) or external (e.g., a murder or calamity). Begin too early, you lose your reader. Begin too late, you lose your story.