Novelist's Desk Forum Chapter 1

For those of us hoping to get people to buy our books or get folks to review our work on a site like this, Chapter 1 may be the most important part of the story. A prospective reader or reviewer uses Chapter 1 as the test to see if they are willing to spend their time on the rest of the story.

Many new writers want to get lots of information across to set up the environment and characters for the story. Hawthorne does this famously in his work. Arguably, he can get away with it since he can count on English teachers to force readers through to get to the story. We don't have that luxury. Our first chapter has to have something compelling in it. In fact it has to start with something compelling to get the reader to keep turning the pages or flipping the scroll control.

Let's have a discussion about what you have done, have seen done, think should never be done, to get a story off to a good start.

 

    I've always felt as if mystery is a fantastic way to capture the readers attention. The easiest way to make your work mysterious is pose a question or a situation and withhold all information pertinent to understanding that which you have posed. I've done this very thing with my book Crimson dust, I pose questions and withhold information until aways into the book. One thing to remember about a mysterious begining is you have to dispell the enigma of the story at some point or the reader will become iritated with you prolonging the answers.

    Another great way to capture the attention of the reader is to create an intriguing situation right off the bat using dialouge or descriptive writing. In another book I've written but never finished I used an odd situation as the opening paragraph. In this paragraph I described two men sitting at a table in a square room conversing when suddenly two alien like creatures entered and sat amongst the men at the table, with each individual staring at eachother. I know what your thinking, "aliens!?", thats not the point I'm trying to make. These men waited in this room to speak with thise "aliens", this is an odd situation. The reader wonders why these men so candidly awaited a confrontation with entities a normal man would want to avoid.

    These are my tricks and they've worked magnificently well for me.

    My opinions.

I agree about using mystery to create interest. In your story questions about why the number of insane people is going up, why does the staff think the MC has been there before, etc. keep you turning the page to get the answers. There are two things to watch for with this technique - You already mentioned the first one, like Chekov's loaded gun, if you set it up, you have to use it.

The second thing to be careful about is the cheap mystery - Emily looked in the mirror and saw something that turned her guts to jelly. But first, let me wander off into a silly flashback or a description of the room. - What did Emily see? After I read the detour, I don't care anymore. I also feel cheated since it would have been simple to tell me what she saw, but you didn't 'cause you are mean.

 

I really like the intriguing situation approach - When Gregor Samson awoke he had been transformed into an insect. What I like with that one is that Kafke fearlessly flirts with a situation that might come across as just silly. Of course, he masterfully takes this from being silly to a serious tale of the helplessness we all feel sometimes.

 

 

I like to begin, if I may use a high-falutin' literary term, in media res.

Sorry.  I just finished the part of Elizabeth Lyon's "Manuscript Makeover" book that talks about beginnings, and that's her term for throwing the reader into the middle of a scene without first explaining what's going on.

They say that one of the best ways to get people hooked and turning the pages is to continually raise questions in their mind that they must then keep reading in order to answer.  Starting in the middle of things does that nicely.  Of course, the scene has to make SOME kind of sense even without explanation, or the reader will just say "this is weird and random" and they'll put it down.

I think the trick is that your first few sentences have to enable the reader to recognize the scene as an example of some archetype they understand (a fight or conflict, a character leaving home or changing life circumstances, a wedding, et cetera) without them knowing necessarily why the scene is unfolding in the way that you're showing it.  That, then, becomes the question.  Why are these characters fighting?  Why does this character have to leave home and where's he going?  Why are the wedding guests laughing?

A reader comes into any book essentially ungrounded.  I like to make that work for me, rather than treating it as a barrier that I must overcome by immediately grounding them.

I don't have many hard and fast rules when I write, but this one addresses an issue that just bugs me -

<rant>

Don't use vague nouns in the first paragraph.

Recently I have read, "The metal object," "The guy," "The city," and many others. I think some writers are trying to build mystery by not naming the specific thing involved. "The metal object," was a knife. It the author would have said, "The knife" the tension in the scene would have been higher. I still have the mystery of what the knife is going to do, so you don't loose anything.

"The guy," had a name, "The city," was Paris. What would it hurt to say that?

</rant>

 

A-MEN brother!  That $#!+ drives me batty.

    I always like to have my first chapter contain something very problematic at the end of it. In my opinion I have seen this a few times in screen plays and read it a few times in a few good novels and it always draws me into the next chapter. Once the large problem happens the second chapter ends up starting slow again before answering all the questions I have built up after finishing the first chapter.
    One type of literature that I felt is almost notorious for this are comic books. This is because the writer has to draw the reader to buy the next issue so he writes as super man finished killing the alien he relized it looked just like him.
   

Welcome to the group, Shamus.

The cliff hanger idea is a common tool. I have heard some experts go so far as to say that there should be some kind of cliff hanger on every page. That may be going too far. As a reader I would think that would be exhausting.

John Gardner says the plot should have a series of escalating climaxs to pull the reader along. Screen writers say there should be an external problem in act one, then two  internal problems in Act two.

I think there should be open questions at the end of chapter 1, as you suggest. I just caution writers to make the question real, not contrivied.