Last week, Patty Jansen blogged about something she saw in slush: boring beginnings. I only read slush for a short time, and that’s what I saw as well. The truly bad stories were rare, but most of what I read was just not that engaging.
Go read her post for examples of what makes beginnings boring. One type–stories that start with something interesting, and then have a second scene which backtracks to explain the first–is a bad habit of mine. Nearly all of my first drafts start with something interesting, and then a big infodump of backstory, and then a note where I tell myself to delete all that.
I think I have to write out the infodump to reassure my brain that I know what the situation is. The key is to delete it in revision.