How to Start a Story?

I am guessing that mostly everyone on /book/ is a writer so, how should I start writing a story? And what makes any story "addicting"?

Write about EVERYTHING.  Writing is an exercise, so do it on a daily basis.  Sure, you'll come up with a ton of bad prose, but it gets better as you get more practiced.

It also helps to read a lot.  Voraciously.  If it even sounds interesting, pick it up and read, and I don't mean scan, I mean READ.  If you want to become a writer, you must become a reader, and as your mastery of writing progresses, so will your taste in your reading material.  The more you read, the more mental material you have to draw upon as a writer, the more references you can make.

If anyone ever says, "Originality comes from within" or some bullshit that'll allow you to justify not drawing upon the past...FUCK THEM and the horse they came in on.

To be a good writer of fiction, one must have a healthy respect for the past, even those dead, white men who wrote books that are no longer fashionable, like Allan Quartermain or Kim.

If you seek examples of good writing, you have thousands of years to draw upon; standing upon the shoulders of giants has worked for centuries, so do so.  Even if you depart from conventional prose, at least you know WHAT you're departing from, and why.

Big ideas aren't always the best.  One of the best short stories ever written was about an old Cuban in a boat taking on a single fish.  Some of the worst fiction ever written involves the destruction of an entire universe.

The idea, essentially, is that your ability to write determines how well you can channel your imagination and the past as you understand it onto the real world.  Without ability to describe what hasn't happened or cannot be seen, you're going to be a crappy writer, so practice, practice, practice, and read, read, read.

And lastly, this is my personal opinion, but buy a word processor, or better yet, a typewriter.  While computers have done many good things for us, nothing really makes you think about what your going to write like feeling the creaking in your joints as you type out your thoughts...one letter at a time.

That, and I just like reading words on paper.