How to Write a Great First Chapter

hi this is Ellen Brock editor at key top Inc I'm going to talk to you today about how to write a great first chapter so the first thing that you want to worry about in your first chapter is this set up you want to make sure that it's clear who the characters are not all the characters need to be introduced at this point but obviously the main character needs to be introduced and we need to know the basic details about their life like their age and their gender their occupation and any sort of like goals or motivations that are really significant in their life and most writers are able to do that and that's a fairly obvious part of writing the first chapter the real challenge that I see in first chapters with my clients is that sometimes nothing really happens they have the set up elements in there and it basically reads ads like a laundry list of information about the character and you really don't want to do that because it's not going to pull in an agent or an editor or a reader if what you're starting with is just the basic sort of like Facebook profile information about your character you want there to be some sort of conflict something that's going to be something that that the reader can latch on to and be excited about so there's a couple of ways to do that you can introduce the catalyst which is basically what's gonna set the events of the story into motion so for example the catalyst in Harry Potter is Harry finding out he's a wizard the catalyst in The Hunger Games is Katniss taking her sister's place in the games so sometimes the catalyst happens in the first chapter but it doesn't have to it could happen you may be partway through the 2nd chapter or even as late as the third chapter depending on maybe if you have different points of view you don't want to wait too long to introduce a catalyst but it isn't necessarily introduced in the first chapter if the catalyst is not introduced in the first chapter you still need to have some sort of con flow and the best sort of conflict to have is a conflict that really shale goes through your character is in particular something that really illustrates their motivation what's gonna drive them through the story what they want to accomplish for example if you're writing a romance novel the catalyst is probably going to be meeting the romantic interest and then the main conflict of the book it's going to be maybe I'm misunderstanding between them trying to make their relationship work various conflicts that are getting in the way of their ultimate happy ending of being together and so maybe if that's your ultimate conflict in the first chapter to introduce your character and to set up the book you might want to introduce some sort of motivation of the character like perhaps your character is divorced and has been single for a while and is really now ready to settle down again you can illustrate that in an infinite number of ways but if you put them into some sort of conflict you can illustrate it in a way that's more interesting so maybe they are at a friend's wedding and they're wondering you know why am I not married yet you know I've been you know sort of putzing around not getting any relationships maybe you know I'm ready for a relationship or maybe they're just upset that they don't have a relationship yet or whatever but you can then make the conflict be trying to put on a happy face at the friend's wedding even though they're really not happy and they're kind of bummed out so that conflict isn't going to extend beyond the first chapter it's not a conflict that's gonna cure you throughout the book but it introduced an internal conflict that is gonna carry throughout the book so the reader has something immediately to latch on to and can go oh I see what this book is gonna be about it's gonna be about how this character wants to create a relationship so that's how you can create a sort of conflict in the first chapter if catalyst does not happen in the first chapter the other important thing that you want to establish in the first chapter is your character's voice you want them to come in with a bang and you want them to be very clear so that immediately we know who this character is and that can be expressed in a lot of ways and I'll go into that some time in a different video how to do characterization and develop a voice but you want to make sure that that voice is clear from the get-go because it's the character really that editors and publishers and readers that's what people latch on to it's not so much the plot it's more the voice so you want to make sure that the voice is clear from the very beginning the last thing you want to establish in the first chapter is the tone so if your book is a romance and it's all about relationships you're gonna want to make it clear from the get-go that this book is about relationships if it's a fantasy or a sci-fi and you're not introducing fantasy or sci-fi elements into the first chapter you can still hand at the tone by creating a sense of like whimsy in the descriptions or a sense of mystery or even just having a character dreaming about having an adventure or some sort of implication that something exciting is going to happen like something is in the air like there are lots of ways to do that to set the tone even if you're not introducing the genre elements yet but you want to make sure that that tone is in there so that readers know what to expect because if you open with a chapter that really doesn't set the appropriate tone like the first chapter is really depressing and the rest of the book is uplifting it can be confusing to the reader and it can throw them off because it's not what they were expecting so the best thing that you can do for your book is to make sure that the first chapter adequately represents the tone of the rest of the chapters so that the book of as a whole seems cohesive and from the first chapter readers know what they're getting into so that's the basics of what you need for a great first chapter obviously there are a lot of other elements that go into writing a first chapter but I will get into some of those other in other videos if you have any questions or topic suggestions for me I'll put my email and my website at the end of the video and if you need any editing help don't hesitate to contact me at my company keycap Inc thanks for watching

Channel: Ellen Brock

Views: 125,560

Rating: 4.9550562 out of 5

Keywords: novel, writing, editing, first, chapter, tips, conflict, tone, charac, Book

Id: MWLPEqJ35sc

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2013