EDIT: lack of comments makes me think this needed to be trimmed in order to be read... it is now down to under a 5 minute read, and the not so apparent question has been put into a poll (simply check a box, no deep thought required)
The war to end all wars had been going for almost 2 years now, and she had been pouring tea since last fall in a big Anglo-American hospital just outside Paris, when one day on her way to her ward, she heard one of the doctors, Pedronicus, say to a monkey faced gentleman dressed in Thai clothes, "But I believe that the pretty Robinette writes. If you really want an American contributor, why not ask her?" The next moment the gentleman had been introduced as Jiminski and, beaming anxiously at her through his spectacles, was urging her to contribute a rattling war story to "ConquerClub-at-Arms," a new publication thought up by Captain wacicha designed to bring joy to the wounded and disabled in British and American Indian hospitals.
"A good rousing story, Robinette; a dash of emotion of course, but nothing to depress or discourage. You know what I mean, don't you? A tragedy with a happy ending -- that's the idea. We will be publishing our first issue this summer, so you'll have to work fast. Wicked, the Queen of Mod-Land, has promised us an Alpha-monkey poem from AndyDufresne, with a picture of herself giving Lack, the baby Crown Turtle, his morning bath. You've been at the front, haven't you? As far as Kamchatka? That's capital! Give us a good stirring trench story, perhaps a hero scene involving Major steve monkey or Brigadier steve066 to close with... Yes -- that's the very thing; and I'll try to get Major FiresidePoet to do us the wounded coming back to Twill's open arms. But I leave it to you to know just what hits the army ranks best."
It was lucky that Robinette's leave was due about that time, for, despite being devoted to her patients, the tea she poured for them would have suffered from the mental distractions of her new task.
And was it any wonder that she took it so seriously? Afterall, it was Jiminski, under the direction of the Spanking Monkey's, and to the dismay owenshooter and the Bullet-Proof Bandits, that had asked her to write a war story for the first issue of "ConquerClub at-Arms," to which Conquerors, Field Marshalls and Generals were to contribute poetry and photographs and patriotic sentiment into Ad nauseam! The table of contents she was to figure as "Robinette, author of a Book to Annoy Doubles Players."
She was dizzy with triumph, and went off to begin her work in a quiet corner of Aussie, where she was able to recruit a young and cheerful governess, one who could not only took care of the domestic needs, but more importantly had promised to defend at all costs the sacred times for her writing -- for happy2seeyou had learned that the morning hours of great authors were "sacred" indeed.
She shut herself up in her room, laid out 4 different colored pens, gathered all the paper into one place, and burned all of the pink paper in the fireplace. Now she could began to think.
The process was less exhilarating than she had expected. She knew so much about ConquerClub war that she hardly knew where to begin; with ideas and experiences bouncing in and out of her head, and yet yielding nothing but empty paper.
And it got worse as the more she thought of the matter, the less she seemed to understand how a war story -- or any story at all, for that matter -- was written. Why did stories ever begin, and why did they ever leave off? Interestingly life doesn't do that, no... life just goes on and on...
Knowing there was a deadline to meet, this unforeseen problem began to trouble her tremendously, and so the next morning she slipped out for a walk on the beach to try to discover her needed inspiration. She knew that "Inspirations" could be fussy, fleeting, and elusive when you needed them the most, and she felt as if she was dragging along with juvenito in an unbearable no-cards game.
She wandered along the cliff's edge until she came to an empty bench, where she sat down and gazed at the sea. And that is when she noticed it, at the other end of the bench, a wind battered magazine -- the spring issue of "Dice Wars" of "Fact and Fiction." Robinette pounced upon it.
Before opening it she recalled the words of the infamous ZawBanjito who had always said one must guard one's originality, avoid plagiarizing, and so forth; he had been particularly strong on that theme. But her story had to be written, and she didn't know how to begin it; so she decided it wouldn't hurt anybody to just glance at a few of the beginnings.
The first tale in the magazine was signed by one of the most prolific names in the CC history. AAFitz's opening sentence ran: "My point is, if I can gain 700 points in 3 days..." and Robinette turned the page impatiently. She may not have known much about story-writing, but she did know that that kind of a beginning was played out. She turned to the next.
"'My God!' roared the dice thrower humley, tightening his grasp on the dice, while the white, sneering face under the red lamp..." No, Definitely NOT; all that talk of dice and randomness, that too was getting old... she turned the page quickly without even looking to see the length of DiM's counter arguments.
"They sat there and stared at it in silence. Neither spoke; but Clapper's heart ticked like a watch..." That was much better; but best of all she liked the next spread: "RL Orange leaned across the flowers. Roger Dodger had always known that this was coming..." Robinette could imagine tying a story on to that. But she had promised to write a WAR story, not a love story; and in a war story if you have flowers they must be at the end, and never at the beginning.
At any rate, there was one clear conclusion to be drawn from this review of opening paragraphs; and that was that you must begin your story in the middle, and take for granted that your reader already knew what you were talking about.
