Richard Ketchum taught me creative writing. One thing I remember was his suggestions for starting any work: Include as many of the following as early as you can naturally do it:

• time of day
• weather and season
• geographic location
• distances

to which I added:

• point of view.

Ketchum said we could learn to write in any form we chose. I mostly chose poetry.

and

I’d like to share with you the opening lines of a song by Harry Chapin:

it was raining hard in Frisco
I needed one more fare to make my night
a lady up ahead waved to flag me down
she got in at the light

Note that you don’t even need the title (Taxi) to know exactly what’s going on here.