I’ve tried writing some stories myself and while once I manage to get them going writing down the rest isn’t a problem, I always struggle with the very beginning, deciding if I should start with some backstory, exposition about the characters or jump straight to action. Any suggestions on how to improve on that?

Well, the first piece of advice is that if the beginning is boring you, it’s going to bore the reader. Still, don’t forget that you can always go back and revise the beginning to include information you might have skipped over. My advice, is to start with the action, the core you want to write, and then you can always revise it with a longer beginning after you’ve gotten it down to begin with.