Where to start

A question I am asked consistently as a judge of novel-length fiction is whether the conflict is strong enough to carry a story of that length. Another is whether the story starts in the right place.
So how do you know where to start your story? How do you know if the scene is needed?

You can write a great scene with lots of conflict and emotion; so beautiful it makes you want to cry. But if it does not have any relevance on the current plot, it has no business being in your book.

Let me give you an example. A story opens with a woman in a stagecoach accidentally shooting the sheriff (she just grazes him) because she thinks he is a highway robber. There is lots of action. There is lots of internalization and conflict. It is a good scene.

At the end of the scene, the woman arrives in the little western town to discover that the aunt she idolizes, the aunt she hadn't seen since she was a kid and is now coming to live with, has become a prostitute.

So was the first scene necessary? Was there a hook that makes you want to read on to see how the conflict is resolved?

The stagecoach scene, while action-filled, really has nothing to do with the real conflict of the story. There may have been conflict during the scene, but it was temporary and had no relevance to the real problem at hand. It was resolved by the end of that scene and never appears again. We are introduced to the real conflict later, the conflict that will carry the story until it's completion.

So in that case, the story started in the wrong place. The stagecoach scene should be cut.

You may say that it is really hard to cut your words, your babies, the ones you sweat over and are attached to. Especially if it is a scene you really like. I know. I've been there. I'm there all the time. I usually end up cutting about 40% of my rough drafts. But it's necessary to sacrifice words, passages, or even whole scenes for the sake of the story.

Writing is hard. Anyone who says different isn't a writer.