Ready to begin writing your novel? Every effective novel begins with a cracking first chapter—the reader’s entrance to your story, characters, and world. If you’ve never written one before, the first chapter can be a little intimidating. It’s like staring at a pristinely blank canvas and preparing to besmirch it with the first drop of paint. But! The first chapter is essential for pulling both you and your reader into the story.
Read on for key tips to make your opening chapters the best they can be.
Why is the opening chapter of a novel so important?
The opening chapter of a novel establishes the reader’s expectations for the rest of the book. It introduces things like voice, tone, genre, and—of course—character.
The person reading this book—whether that’s a literary agent, publisher, film rights agent, bookseller, or final reader—will make a series of judgements based on their experience with this opening chapter. If it doesn’t make them want to read on, they’ll put the book down and move onto something else.
You can think of it a bit like the pilot episode of a TV series. If the pilot isn’t strong enough, the show won’t get picked up by a network. When the show does get made, people will watch the pilot to decide if they want to stick with the rest of the story.
Things your first chapter should accomplish
Before you start the first chapter of a book, be sure to look over this first chapter checklist for everything you should include in your opening pages.
1. Introduce your protagonist
The protagonist is the main point-of-view character of the novel. Through them, the reader will experience your story’s world, conflicts, and core message. So it’s important that the protagonist is someone the reader wants to follow.
The first chapter will focus mostly on introducing this main character and giving the reader some insight into their lives: what kind of person they are, who their friends and family are, what they like to do for fun, what their responsibilities are, and what this character wants from life (more on character wants and needs below). They need to be engaging enough that the reader will want to see where their journey leads.
2. Establish the “ordinary world”
For a sudden change to be effective, the reader first needs to see what everyday looks like for this character—the “status quo.”
In The Hobbit, the ordinary world is the cottagecore comforts of the Shire. In the Harry Potter series, the ordinary world is a meticulously manicured house in a London suburb with a couple of abusive guardians.
With each setting, we get a sense of what the main character has come to expect on a day-to-day basis. This is important, because next you’re going to shatter those expectations.
3. Reveal the inciting incident
The inciting incident is a moment in which the protagonist’s well trod path is nudged off course. This can be dramatic (a meteor hurtling towards the earth), or subtle (an unexpected letter, a new job offer, the arrival of a mysterious new student). For whatever reason, this key event sends the main character’s life in a new direction.
The inciting incident usually happens within the first few pages, and always within the first chapter. This is the point where your story really gets moving.
4. Set the novel’s tone
Another important element of the first chapter is a strong voice. Voice and tone will give your reader a sense of what kind of book they’re reading. It might be lighthearted and humorous, or dark and atmospheric. There might be a rush of swearing and violence, or soft, sepia garden light. The first chapter should feel like a story that knows who it wants to be.
Also think about what style of point of view you want to use to tell your story. The most common choices are first person (“I wandered outside”) and third person (“She wandered outside”). First person is a little more intimate and immediate, while third person is more of a “storyteller voice”.
Experiment with both to see which feels right for your novel.
5. Hook the reader’s attention
Novelist Margaret Atwood famously said the most important rule of writing a novel—really, the only rule that truly matters—is “hold my attention.” Regardless of what genre you’re writing and how you’re approaching the writing process, the main thing your first chapter should accomplish is to hook readers from the very first page.
This means creating compelling characters, an interesting premise and world, and laying the groundwork for what’s to come. We’ll look at some ways to do that next.
How to start a chapter the right way
Now we know what a good first chapter should look like—but how do you do it? Here are some key tips.
Open “in medias res”
“In medias res” is a literary term which means “in the midst of things” or “in the midst of the action.” Hitting the ground running has always been beneficial in literature, but in today’s social media-driven climate, it’s more important than ever to grab the reader’s attention right from Page 1. This means you don’t waste time faffing around with the weather or exposition (more on that below) or “Once upon a time…”.
Instead, open with something happening that engages the characters and the reader.
Find a zingy opening line
Your opening line is the reader’s very first experience with your story. It should be something that makes them sit up and listen.
Examples of stellar opening lines include:
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”— Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell
“The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”— The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”— The Crow Road, by Ian Banks
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”— The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”— The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis
All of these opening lines are unusual, they raise questions, and they give you a sense of the novel’s overall tone. It’s worth spending some time finding the perfect first line for your novel.
Use the iceberg method
You know what they say about icebergs: only 11% of the whole is visible above water. The rest is lurking below the surface.
Ernest Hemingway called this “the Theory of Omission.” It means you hint at what’s really going on, but don’t reveal everything to your reader. Instead of having your main character lament the heartbreaking injustice of his recent breakup, have him briefly wonder what his ex-girlfriend is doing, then force himself to think about something else. Instead of having your main character recount everything that’s wrong with their abusive home life, have them make a point to arrive home after their father is asleep.
Not only does this make your prose more compact, thereby allowing you to do more with a smaller space, it creates an emotional connection with the reader. You’re giving them a sense that there’s more to what’s going on here, but they’ll have to read on to learn the broader context.
Get to know your main character
As mentioned above, the opening chapter is your first (and often, only) chance to get your readers to invest in your main character. Take some time to show the reader who the protagonist is, what’s important to them, what makes them unique and interesting.
This might include things like a job, a hobby or unusual interest, a belief or practice that’s a core part of their identity. You can also show the important relationships in their life: family, friends, lovers, colleagues. All of these elements should make the reader feel like this is someone they’d like to spend more time with.
Reveal your character’s conscious goal
Stories come out of action, and action comes out of want. To move the story forward, your protagonist needs something to work towards. This could be a dream job, a romantic attraction, a way out of limited social constraints, to make their family proud, to meet their favorite celebrity, and so forth. When the novel begins, the main character is actively working towards this goal.
Hint at your character’s unconscious need
Underneath your character’s conscious want is an unconscious need (this is the “iceberg method,” remember?). Usually, the want will be an outward expression of a need the character doesn’t realize they have.
An unconscious need could be something like financial stability, validation, courage, acceptance, belonging, and so forth. It’s the thing the protagonist is desperately hungry for way down in their core, but they’re initially unable or unwilling to look it full on in the face. So it simmers there like a snake, waiting…
By the end of the entire story, the protagonist might not get what they want, but they’ll get what they need.
Foreshadow conflict to come
Although you won’t reveal everything at the very beginning, your first chapter should hint at some of the challenges your protagonist is going to be facing along the way.
Conflict will come from three elements, all of which we’ve already looked at above: want, need, and the inciting incident. The way the protagonist approaches and reacts to all these things will create new problems that they’ll need to navigate throughout the novel. You can start laying the groundwork for these brewing conflicts in the first chapter to build suspense for your reader.
Things to avoid in your first chapter
Now that we know how to write a great opening chapter, let’s look at some common mistakes that new writers often make.
Swaths of exposition
Resist the temptation to explain the epic backstory of your characters and world right up front. While this information is important, it can slow down the narrative a bit too much if it’s all shoveled in at once. Instead, try to drip feed the exposition gradually around the more active parts of the story.
Talking about the weather
There’s often a temptation, when starting a new novel, to open by describing the weather: a halcyon summer mirage, a dark and stormy night, ferocious waves battering the shore at dawn. Why? Because a lot of the time, this is how writers find their way into the story. They start by describing the broad strokes of the scene, and then the detail within the scene, and finally the people who are moving around in the scene. Wide shot to close up.
The problem is that this can be quite a slow way to start, and it doesn’t grab the reader’s attention as effectively as it could. If this approach helps get your creative wheels turning, it’s absolutely fine to use it as a tool; just make sure you cut it off the top during revision.
Traveling
If your story opens with your protagonist going to an exciting new locale, it’s generally best to open right in the exciting new locale, rather than showing all the steps the character takes to get there. You can skip over the train journey or the flight or the immigrant ship leading the characters to a new adventure.
The exception is if your inciting incident happens during travel. For example, if your heroine is headed to a destination wedding and meets a handsome stranger on the plane. Or, if the plane crashes, and that’s your plot. For the most part, however, the real story begins on arrival.
Starting too early
When we’re writing our first draft, it sometimes takes a while to figure out where our novel really begins. We talk about our characters, and the weather (above), and getting from one place to the next (above), and philosophy, and the age-old battle that shaped the characters’ world. These first pages are sometimes called “throat clearing.”
When you go back over your novel in revision, you may have to trim the opening segment. While it was helpful for you as the writer to get a sense of the story, it’s not helpful for a reader with a limited attention span.
The “Yes, but…!”
As the Author, you are God of this story world. You may very well have a plan at which us mere mortals can only guess.
So when one of your beta readers says, “This character’s actions at the start seemed a little inconsistent,” you say, “Yes, but that’s because they’re actually a super secret spy; it’s revealed in Chapter 14.”
Or they when they say, “Your protagonist didn’t seem to have anything driving them in this first chapter. They’re just sort of peacefully contented with their life,” and you reply with, “Yes, but that’s because they’re under a spell that wiped their memories, you’ll see if you read on.”
The problem is that once your book is on the shelves, you can’t run after your readers saying “Yes, but…!” (you might get arrested). If the first few chapters don’t hook your readers right from the start, they’re never going to make it to Chapter 14. There are sneaky ways to make a chapter more cohesive without giving everything away. The goal is to raise questions, not confusion.
Didacticism
Every story carries an important message, and yours might well change the world. But readers don’t like to be force fed idealism; the trick is to finagle your theme into the reader’s mind without them even noticing.
This means avoid overtly political or aggressively social messages right in the first ten pages. You want to get the reader invested in your plot and characters first, and then you can start stealthily molding them into your image.
Examples of effective first chapters from literature
By now, you should have a pretty good idea of how to make your opening chapter shine. Here are a few examples of writers who have done it well.
The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black
On a drowsy Sunday afternoon, a man in a long dark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street. He hadn’t parked a car, nor had he come by taxi. No neighbor had seen him strolling along the sidewalk. He simply appeared, as if stepping between one shadow and the next.
The man walked to the door and lifted his fist to knock.
Inside the house, Jude sat on the living room rug and ate fish sticks, soggy from the microwave and dragged through a sludge of ketchup. Her twin sister, Taryn, napped on the couch, curled around a blanket, thumb in her fruit-punch-stained mouth. And on the other end of the sofa, their older sister, Vivienne, stared at the television screen, her eerie, split-pupiled gaze fixed on the cartoon mouse as it ran from the cartoon cat. She laughed when it seemed as if the mouse was about to get eaten.
This opening scene does something interesting: it juxtaposes the known with the unknown. The first few lines suggest something otherworldly and mysterious, while the following lines suggest comfortable domesticity. Very soon, these conflicting worlds come crashing together and things get bloody fast. The narrative doesn’t waste any time establishing the details of the main story; those are filled in later. Instead, it hits the ground running and shatters the main characters’ lives as they know it.
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
This famous mystery novel opening introduces the author’s distinctive voice, and the stakes. Chandler’s night-flying, chain-smoking PI has cleaned himself up for a major job with the potential to change his life. Except, these things never go as planned, do they? The rest of the chapter brings the protagonist to the client and introduces a rather unusual new character who complicates everything.
A Darker Shade of Magic, by V. E. Schwab
Kell wore a very peculiar coat.
It had neither one side, which would be conventional, nor two, which would be unexpected, but several, which was, of course, impossible.
The first thing he did whenever he stepped out of one London and into another was take off the coat and turn it inside out once or twice (or even three times) until he found the side he needed. Not all of them were fashionable, but they each served a purpose. There were ones that blended in and ones that stood out, and one that served no purpose but of which he was just particularly fond.
So when Kell passed through the palace wall and into the anteroom, he took a moment to steady himself—it took its toll, moving between worlds—and then shrugged out of his red, high- collared coat and turned it inside out from right to left so that it became a simple black jacket.
This story starts with a bit of world building to show us that we’re firmly in fantasy territory. There’s a London, which is familiar, but then there’s another London—at least two, if not more (it turns out to be three). As the longest first chapter on this list, Schwab’s has space for some more dialogue and foreshadows the central conflict to come. It throws a lot at the reader, but it’s well organized to avoid confusion and keep the story moving forward.
Engage your readers from the very first sentence
The first chapter of a novel is prime literary real estate—it’s the first thing literary agents, editors, publishers, reviewers, and of course readers are going to experience when they open your book. If the opening doesn’t do it for them, life is too short; they’ll move onto someone else’s novel. But now, with these tips and tools, you can start writing your opening chapter as strong as it can possibly be.
