I agree that everybody has different standards for what's interesting, and that what interests one person will bore another silly. But sometimes a story will open with something that nobody, _including the author_, thinks is particularly interesting, because the author believes that it's necessary to give a lot of backstory and explanation and atmosphere before anything can happen. Part of my argument is that "it's necessary" is pretty much never enough of a reason for a boring opening. The author either needs to make the boring stuff unnecessary, or he needs to find a way to make it interesting. ChickenFreak
Priority one should be to make your opening so it reflects the rest of the story, in terms of style, atmosphere, pace, etc. If that leaves you with an uninteresting opening, then perhaps your whole story is uninteresting and the opening isn't the only thing that needs fixing. Tacking a James Bond action opening onto a story about a middleaged woman's daily life in suburbia is simply misleading. If you feel that the story about the woman is too boring to have an opening that reflects its core, then chuck the story rather than wasting more time on the faulty opening. If your story genuinely excites you and your opening is like a pocket mirror to the story as a whole, then you've done what you could to make it interesting, and this while remaining true to your story and not cheat or mislead readers.
