I was driving west on a two-lane road, straight as a plumb line, and then…

Finish the sentence and then the scene. If you are on a roll, finish the story. This exercise is akin to games you may have played as a child, when one person starts a story which is then expanded and redirected by each subsequent participant.

You can generate these story starters for yourself by opening any novel to any page, choosing a sentence at random, and writing from it or any part of it.

If this sort of story starter appeals to you, check out The First Line. Every quarter this journal posts the first line of a story.  Every story submitted for that issue must begin with exactly the same line.