How to Write Your Novel's First Chapter

everyone i'm shaylyn here with reedzy in today's video we're going to be talking about how to write a compelling first chapter now before we get into the tips i do want to note that the unit of a chapter is honestly different in every single book there isn't really a standard for exactly what a chapter needs to be chapters are a way of subdividing your novel into more readable parts but typically any time you're writing a novel you kind of need to decide how chapters work in your book and what chapters mean there's no set length that chapters can be some books have very long chapters some books have very short chapters some books have inconsistent chapters some books use chapters to signal things like point of view changes or time skips so you kind of need to figure out from the beginning what a chapter means in your book or you want your first chapter to be kind of a good encapsulation of what the unit of a chapter is throughout your story so that you're setting up that rule correctly right now the first thing you want to do when you're writing a first chapter or any kind of novel opening is to create a hook the key to creating a hook is to just zone in on something interesting the easiest place to go wrong in a first chapter is trying to do too much you don't have to do everything but you have to do something and you have to do that thing really really well i'd recommend picking the strongest aspect of your book and starting with that so if your book has a lot of really great compelling action sequences it's just a really action-packed narrative start with an action sequence if you're writing more of a humorous book and the humor is really a selling point start with something funny if it's a really character-driven kind of character study then you want to start with a moment that shows off why your character is someone we want to be following if you're writing a fantasy book set in a really interesting world you might want your first scene to be something that shows off a really interesting unique aspect of your world pick the strongest aspect of your book overall and showcase that in the first scene tip number two is to start where the story gets interesting this is something that a lot of writers struggle with wondering where they should start their story i think the easiest way to know where to start your story is to locate the point where the narrative gets interesting and to kind of build on that you want to show us what's interesting before you show us the status quo a lot of writers have the impulse to include a chapter or even several chapters that set up their character's day-to-day life showing us their daily routine you know showing them going to work and sure there might be some internal conflict but at this point the story has not gone interesting yet in general you can usually show a lot less of your main character's status quo than you think you need to especially if your main character's day-to-day life is fairly standard let's say you're writing a science fiction piece set on another planet and your main character's day-to-day life is nothing like the readers then in that case including a chapter or even several chapters of status quo might be really impactful because to the reader that's fascinating we don't know what life is like on this alien planet and so even though it's mundane to the character it's brand new and fresh and interesting to the reader but if your main character's day-to-day life is them just kind of going about their day in modern contemporary society you probably don't need to include very much of that if any of it at all the important thing about setting up your character's world before the story is setting up their internal conflict and what is missing from their life not setting up their day-to-day routine where they get their coffee in the morning what bus they catch to work you want to use your first chapter to set a voice in an interesting perspective voice is an omnipresent aspect of a piece it's there in every single line so you can use voice to build your character before you've started actually telling us anything concrete about them use word choice and sentence structure really carefully to build a sense of your character's personality and even the world that they live in right and establish their unique perspective on the events a worthwhile protagonist is one who can give us a compelling interesting view of the story a really important aspect of a first chapter is not only that you introduce us to the main character but that you also convince us that there's someone we now want to read about for the next 300 pages convince the reader that this is someone worth reading about and worth following so you want to choose the most important crucial details to share about them right from the start you want the information you share about your narrator in chapter one to be specific but also to be revealing you want the details you choose to teach us something about the character this leads to the next point which is about managing information probably the hardest part of writing a first chapter is managing all the information there's a lot of information that you want to set up and figuring out exactly where to put it and exactly which pieces of information should go in your first chapter can be really difficult a strong opening chapter will balance mystery with information we'll be told information that compels us and makes us want to read further while also maintaining mystery and asking questions so we want to read on to get those answers you want to be clear about information that sets up the general who what where when and how of your book information that's needed to understand the conflict and the stakes is needed to understand what's going on those kinds of things shouldn't be withheld but you can keep a mystery world building details or backstory details that are not immediately relevant when we know clearly this is what's happening and this is who our main character is we want to know what's going to happen to this character as this plot unfolds so sometimes clarity is actually the best way to create mystery i think one of the biggest impulses for new writers is to include a lot of world building or backstory in the first chapter that is not immediately relevant because as the writer you feel it's crucial to understanding your world and characters establish the present before you start to establish the past we want to understand what is currently happening concretely what are the stakes for the main character right now before we know everything that has brought them to this point you can probably take more time revealing information than you think you need you don't need to cram every single piece of relevant information into the first chapter give the information in your story time to breathe you might even find yourself burning your story out if you reveal everything too quickly and you don't have information to carry or flush out later plot points probably the biggest impulse of new writers is to include way too much in a first chapter so try to resist that impulse and just set up what's crucial to the events currently happening in your first chapter you can also start to subtly hint at the themes if you're familiar with the save the cat plot structure there's a beat very very early in this plot structure called theme stated and because save the cat is used primarily in movies if you start to look for the theme stated be you'll see it in a lot of movies the idea of the theme stated beat is that very early in a story before the themes have really begun to be explored there will be a moment where the theme is stated quite outright but because we're so early in the story we don't clock this as being on the nose quite yet we just pass it off as maybe a single line of dialogue or a line of narrative in movies this often takes the shape of a side character telling the main character exactly what they need so let's say the theme of your story is about the power of friendship there may be a moment early in the first chapter where the main character is talking to a friend and the friend says your friends will always be here to help you this just seems like a moment of the friend being supportive you know it's not a line we're gonna think is extremely important but looking back at it later on we can see that that was actually the theme of the story though this is not a necessary part of a first chapter if you're writing work where it's very theme heavy or even if you just want to start setting up the themes now you can start to subtly hint at your themes and sometimes the way you subtly hint at your theme is by stating the theme but the character doesn't know that that's the theme yet they don't know that this is important yet and it's only much later that we can look back and go that was the theme that was being set up back in chapter one and finally you want to create and set up conflict by the end of chapter one it's really really important that there's a sense of conflict this can both be the internal conflict that your main character brings in at the start of the story but we should also have a sense of external conflict by this point now where exactly your inciting incident is is going to depend on how long your chapters are as well as the overall pacing of your novel but for most books the end of chapter one is a really fantastic place to include your inciting incident unless you're writing something with a very long slow opening act maybe it's speculative fiction and you have a lot of characters you're trying to set up or maybe you're writing a super fast paced book where the inciting incident happens at the start of chapter one for most books the end of chapter one is a very ideal spot to put the inciting incident if you haven't included your inciting incident yet at the end of chapter one you should be setting up for it in the near future the inciting incident is basically the event that tips the dominoes of your plot it's the event that jump starts the book this event happening is what sets into motion the rest of the story it's what breaks the character out of status quo including an exciting incident is really important for creating conflict because it's that inciting incident that jumpstarts the external conflict and external plotline of your story so by the end of chapter one you should either have an inciting incident or you should be working up to your inciting incident and you should also have established internal conflict establishing what is missing from your main character's life what they want most of all and how this might be different from what they truly need will set up that internal conflict right from the very beginning and give a lot of drive to your story without that sense of urgency it probably won't be a very strong first chapter my biggest recommendation if you're trying to really nail the first chapter of your book is to look through books on your bookshelf that are in your genre and just read the first chapters and take note of what they do read a ton of first chapters in your genre and see what the running trends are and also what makes the best ones really shine when you just read the first chapters in isolation compared to other first chapters what qualities make them really effective whereas which books just have weaker first chapters and why is it doing that analysis uh specific to your genre will be super super beneficial so thank you so much for watching remember to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss any new videos from us we've got new writing editing and publishing tips every tuesday and friday until next time bye

Channel: Reedsy

Views: 18,841

Keywords: how to write a book, authortube, writing tips, writing advice, writing tip, self publishing, self publishing tips, how to self publish a book, writing

Id: 8Phzm85dOaA

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022