Secrets of a Successful First Chapter
First chapters have a few requirements:
They must engage the reader through language, character, place, or action.
They must provide momentum to launch the story.
They ideally create consequences.
First chapters, because of all this, are often hardest to write. Writers have a tendency to use their early drafts to warm up (I do!) but then neglect to notice that their first chapter is actually further into the manuscript.
That’s dangerous, if you want to catch an agent’s attention. Or an editor’s. My editor, after publishing, shared a scary fact: Their editorial team gives a new manuscript just five pages to engage. Five pages, to determine whether to read on or reject now.
In other words, the first chapter. Not even all of it.
Whew.
It’s only a “whew” if you feel you need to write a stellar first chapter right out of the gate. I never do. I draft it as well as I can, then I circle back to revise and revise and revise again.
I’m after all those requirements: language that catches the attention, a character you want to follow, and some compelling action that drives the story forward.
Learn from writing short
I learned how to do this—and the sanity-saving technique of circling back to revise—when I wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My column was sent to 86 newspaper editors across the U.S. each Monday. The editors would scan all the syndicate’s offerings for that week, including mine, then choose which to run.
To keep my job, my column needed to be chosen.
Even though it was only 600 words, I used the three first chapter requirements to create this. The opening paragraph, called the “lede” in journalism, captured the attention with its language, the voice (character coming through), and what was at stake (my topic and why it might be interesting to readers).
Each sentence and paragraph in that opening was a make or break. Agents reading five pages aren’t unlike those 86 editors reading my lede and deciding yes or no.
What kind of opening are you writing?
To get a good opening, I had to know the point of what I was writing. What was I trying to accomplish or provoke in the reader?
Engagement, yes. But on what level?
There’s the head opening—where the writer attracts a reader via a surprising fact or information.
There’s the heart opening—where empathy is created for a human dilemma; for instance, where we engage with the character or voice.
There’s the sensory opening—where a place, an ingredient, a situation (like a walk by a river) pulls the reader in via senses and feeling.
There’s the conflict opening—where an action creates enough tension and momentum that we have to read on.
You might want to try all of them, but sometimes they don’t mix. They just confuse the reader with multiple purposes and it’s harder to enter the piece of writing.
For my weekly column, I chose a different entry point each week, testing out which appealed to which editor. I read their papers, saw their choices, and adjusted my approach to that lede. In journalism, you balance your fascination with the your topic with the pacing needed to keep a reader reading. Not that different in other genres.
During this learning curve, I also became aware of when I was just talking to myself. When my fascination took over and I was no longer inviting the reader into the conversation.
Talking to ourselves
But this is normal! You know this as well as I do: we writers start out by telling ourselves the story. We aren’t always inviting the reader in right away. We have to figure out what we’re really wanting to say. Absolutely fine. Good, in fact. We need the incubation of self-talk to get deeper into our topic and find its uniqueness.
But the warm-up is not something the reader needs. They are ready to launch right in. In early drafts, though, I let myself tell myself what I was going to talk about. Such as, “Today I want to think for a while about why pomegranates are so fascinating to me.” No way that would make it through revision.
So the danger is only this: believing those self-talk sections are worth retaining in the final version. Believing warm up is the real communication.
How long do you warm up?
How long do you warm up? Each writer, I’ve learned, needs a certain time on the page to clear their throat and figure out the writing’s point and purpose.
When writing a weekly column, I warmed up for about 250 words (a page or less). My real lede was buried after that.
My job, as I matured as a writer, was not to change this habit of warming up. I needed it! Especially with challenging topics. Especially when I was feeling less than stellar that writing day. I just trained myself to stay constantly aware of my self-talk. To not be lazy about revising, beguiled into believing this was good enough to be my real opening.
When I moved into fiction, same thing happened. I needed to warm up. And with books, it can extend into chapters, not just opening paragraphs.
Warm-up chapters
Agents and editors I’ve talked with over the years say many writers aren’t aware of their throat-clearing. It’s hard for writers to realize that their drafts may contain a predictable number of warm-up chapters before the real chapter 1 appears.
We have our excuses as writers. We feel the reader needs to be prepared for the shock, excitement, revelation, whatever of our opening.
Actually, they don’t.
It took me a big lesson to realize this. I sent my first novel manuscript to a host of agents and editors throughout 2008. I had spent years on it before then, including an MFA education. So many rejections! It was very hard to keep going.
The best rejections educated me about my warm-up chapters, how they were not necessary to anyone but the writer. One editor was kind enough to send me a rejection letter of many pages, with a suggestion that changed my writing life: “Your story really starts at chapter 5,” she wrote. “Try cutting the first four chapters.”
I didn’t realize how incredibly lucky I was to get such feedback. Instead, I was aghast at this idea. I’d slaved over those first four chapters. I’d also spent a lot of money on them (the MFA education).
I kept sending out the manuscript as it was, and it kept getting rejected. For years. Finally, I shrugged. I’d try her idea. I cut the first four chapters, made chapter 5 into chapter 1, and wove the deleted material into later scenes. It all felt way too edgy, to me. Wouldn’t the reader need a softer entry into the conflict of the story? But I wanted to test this theory, so I gritted my teeth and sent it out.
It sold to a publisher within two months. And was published a year later.
Moveable feast
Opening chapters are moveable feasts. They are often spread in bits and pieces through your early drafts. It becomes a treasure hunt to find them. How fast they come together depends on how experienced a writer you are: how long you’ve been practicing the craft, how much feedback you’ve received, how much editorial help.
Most writers learn these truths about first chapters the hard way, through many rejections. I’ve made note of the following truths, for me.
My reader (agent, editor, etc.) doesn’t need or want the soft entry of backstory, history, extensive setting, characterization. They want something at stake immediately.
It’s fine to warm up with a handful of scenes or chapters that allow me to process my point and purpose. But this is backstage stuff, not for my reader at all (see point 1).
My opening is often buried, sometimes scattered. I may not know it until I write more and figure out the point and purpose.
Over time, I learn my tendency and look for my opening around chapter 4 or 5 of my early drafts.
Having these truths in my back pocket made it easier to write early drafts with full engagement and enough detachment. I now welcome warm up in my early scenes and chapters.
I just don’t pretend they are the real opening.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
Read your opening chapter of a work-in-progress and ask yourself if enough happens on the page to provide momentum for the rest of the book.
If not quite, or not at all, you may be caught in warm up. Scroll ahead one, two, three, even four chapters and ask yourself what happens here. Could it be that, like me, you need to start later?
Share what you discovered.