10 Things Your Opening Chapter Should Do: A Check-List for Self-Editing

Let’s face it: first chapters are hard.

When you’re writing your first draft, you’re writing for yourself—getting to know your characters and their world. You should let everything spill out on the page free of your inner editor’s censorship.

But when you’re revising, it’s a different story. You’ll need to cut a whole lot of info you’ve put into the opening chapters. Don’t delete anything—save it for later to scatter through the book.

You’re going to end up with an opening chapter that’s way different from the one you started with. And that’s as it should be. In fact your entire original Chapter One may end up being one of those darlings you have to kill.

I usually write the final draft of my first chapter last. That’s because I won’t know exactly what needs to be in there until I’ve got the ending all polished up.

An ideal first chapter should do the following things:

1) Introduce the main character. 

You want to open with a scene involving the protagonist. Yes, I know the standard opening of every cop show on TV involves random strangers discovering a body or getting killed. This is something that works great in drama but not in a novel.

Whoever we meet first in a book is the character we’ll bond with. If that person gets killed on page five, we feel cheated.

We don’t need to know a huge amount about the MC right away, but we need to know enough to care. You can be very sketchy about looks (all Jane Austen told us about Elizabeth Bennett is that she had “fine eyes”.)

We probably need to know gender, age and maybe social status/work/position in society, but most of all, we need to know the emotions the character is feeling in the scene—preferably something the reader can identify with.

Here’s how I open Ghostwriters in the Sky: 

“The subway car was so crowded I couldn’t tell which one of the sweaty men pressing against me was attached to the hand now creeping up my thigh. I should have known better than to wear a dress on a day I had to take the subway, but in the middle of a New York heat wave, I couldn’t face another day in a pants suit.”

I haven’t used any description of the protagonist, but we can tell she’s 1) female 2) a worldly city dweller who takes things in stride 3) not rich enough to take a taxi 4) employed in some way that usually requires wearing a suit 5) way too polite for her own good.

We can also identify with her distress at being groped. She’s in an uncomfortable situation and we hope for her to escape without harm.

2) Make us care enough to go on a journey with that character. 

This is trickier than it sounds. What makes us care? There’s no formula and no one thing will work for every reader in every genre.

Agents and editors are always telling us they want a “sympathetic” protagonist, but that doesn’t necessarily mean somebody you’d like to like to have as a friend.

Scarlett O’Hara is shallow and narcissistic, but readers have found her fascinating for nearly a century. Dexter Morgan is a sociopathic serial killer—not exactly a guy you'd want for a BFF. And who’d actually like to spend time with Lisbeth Salander? Even Jane Austen’s Emma is something of a witch.

You don’t have to present us with a protagonist as flawed as those characters. But they do need to have weaknesses. My sleuth, Camilla Randall, is terminally polite, and always believes things are going to be perfectly fine, although the reader can see sure-fire trouble looming.

Some people like a kick-ass-first, ask-questions-later character, and some prefer a more thoughtful, honorable hero. It will depend on genre and tone.

What readers generally don’t find sympathetic is arrogance, whining, or a victim mentality. A hero needs to be brave in some way, so let us see the potential for that right away.

3) Set tone. 

You don’t want to start out a romantic comedy with a gruesome murder scene, or open a thriller with light, flirtatious banter. You want to immerse your reader in the book’s world from the opening paragraph. Since novelists don’t have music and visuals to set the scene, we need to use words that convey tone.

Long descriptions of weather or setting aren’t in fashion these days, but broad descriptive strokes can offer a lot in terms of setting the mood of your story.

My above opener is light and humorous. The sticky weather echoes Camilla's sticky situation. In another kind of book, this could be a situation of grave danger, or something that would cause the heroine extreme distress. Then describing the humid weather in terms of darkness or heaviness would convey a different mood.

But you don’t have to use weather or description to set tone. Sharp, staccato dialog can convey danger, or a self-deprecating narrative voice can show we’re going to be in for some laughs.

4) Let us know the theme. 

If you’re going to be dealing with a particular theme, you don’t want to hit us over the head with it, but give us some foreshadowing. Great authors can do this in the first sentence.

Look at how William Gibson began Neuromancer, the novel that defined cyberpunk: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” Gibson lets us know from the get-go this is about the dark side of technology.

I start my mystery Sherwood, Ltd with this paragraph:

“Anybody can become an outlaw. For me, all it took was a little financial myopia, an inherited bad taste in spouses, a recession—and there I was, the great-granddaughter of newspaper baron H. P. Randall, edging around in alley-shadows, about to become a common thief.”

You know right away we’re dealing with a theme of poverty, outlaws and thieves—echoing the Robin-Hoody title.

5) Let us know where we are.  

Don’t give us a ton of physical description, but we need to know what planet/historical time period we’re in.

In spite of everything you’ve heard about showing-not-telling, it’s perfectly all right to give the reader some basic information in a straightforward way, as Jeffrey Eugenidies does in Middlesex:

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

In SciFi and Fantasy especially, you need to do some world-building, but limit it to the absolute necessities and fill in the details later. Most new writers tend to tell us way too much about their fantasy world up front. You want to tell us just enough to allow us to picture the scene that’s taking place, but not bog down the action.

6) Introduce the antagonist.

An antagonist is someone/something that keeps the protagonist from his goal.

The concept of an “antagonist” is probably the hardest thing for most new writers to grasp.

You may think that if you're not writing a mystery about a sadistic serial killer, or a spy novel where the hero must thwart the evil genius plotting to take over the world, you don’t need an antagonist.

But there’s a difference between an antagonist and a villain.

An antagonist can be a whole society, an addiction, a judicial system, or anything that might thwart a hero from achieving his goal. But you absolutely need one. (I found that out the hard way. I wrote a novel for 10 years that had no antagonist and I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t end.) The wonderful Kristen Lamb writes some of the best stuff I’ve seen on the subject of the antagonist, which she calls the Big Boss Troublemaker. Here’s one of Kristen's great posts on the BBT.

7) Ignite conflict.

We need conflict not only in the opening scene, but we need to see an over-arching tension that will drive your plot.

In the Hunger Games, the burning question in the opening scene is who will be chosen for the games. But the larger conflict is with the Hunger Games themselves. When the conflict of the opening scene is resolved, we still keep turning pages because of the underlying tension from a bigger story question—how will Katniss survive?

Conflict does not have to mean an actual battle. In fact, starting in the middle of a battle can be awfully confusing for a reader. It’s better to start with something like the heroine preparing for battle by stealing her brother’s armor after her father forbids her to fight.

8)  Give us a goal: tell us what your protagonist wants.

We need to know what he wants right now, which might be for the troll who just killed his companions to stop swiping at him with that pointy sword.

But we also need to know pretty early in the story what your hero really, really wants (apologies to the Spice Girls)—his ultimate goal, like maybe taking a magical jewelry item to Mount Disaster to destroy it forever.

I realize this ultimate goal doesn't always show up in chapter one. But we do need a goal in chapter one that will lead to the ultimate goal.

9) Present an exciting, life-changing inciting incident.

This incident has to cause something to happen that will propel us to the next scene—and the one after that—and through the entire book. Think of it as the explosion that launches the rocket of your story.

This one is easier for some genre writers.  If you’re writing a mystery, you can find a dead body and the story is off and running.

Or in a romance, the lovely Griselda can meet Lord Puddlesbury when his horse accidentally knocks down her grandfather’s vegetable cart and she vows to hate him forever.

But in other genres, it may be tough to get the inciting incident close to the opener. Do work on it, though, because everything else will seem like throat-clearing to the reader. Most readers aren’t going to admire your lovely prose until you’ve got a story going.

10) Introduce the other major characters. 

“Major” is the key here. Don’t let minor characters upstage the hero in the opener. In fact, you’re better off without any minor characters in the opening scene. We’ve got so much stuff to cram in there, we don't have much room for the maid/sentinel/pizza delivery person character who opens so many dramas.

We need to be introduced to Lord Puddlesbury fairly early on—or at least let us hear about him. Ditto Griselda’s bratty sister whose loose morals threaten to disgrace the poor but honorable family of vegetable mongers, and maybe the stalwart plowboy Jack, who has loved Griselda since childhood. But we don’t need to know about his Lordship’s groom or his tailor unless the bratty sister is going to run off with them in a scandalous ménage a trois in chapter ten.

A lot of new writers tend to clutter up the opener with colorful characters who never appear in the story again. This can irritate a reader, who expects people in the opener to re-appear and play an important role.

***

Hold on there, sez you. I can think of half a dozen bestsellers off the top of my head that don’t do these things.

 Yup, I can too. I didn’t say these are hard and fast rules. But they’re something to aim for. If your prose is so mesmerizing the reader doesn’t notice, then more power to you. But for most of us mortals, our readers are happiest when they get as much info as possible in the opener.

If your opener doesn’t do any of this stuff—and most first drafts don’t—try this trick: try cutting off the first two chapters. Does chapter three give you a better beginning? Start there. Then feed us the info from the first two chapters a little at a time later on in the book.

How about you, scriveners? Are there any other things you absolutely want to see in an opener? Do you have hard time cramming all this stuff into chapter one? 

Book Deal of the Week

Sherwood, Ltd is 99c for Kindle this month.

"It's not yer typical whodunnit, nor is the protagonist anything like a cop. Ms. Allen...has crafted a wily tale of murder, deceit, and intrigue that can stand with the best of them. Her characters are all too real and her dialogue took me from laughter to chills to suspicion of everybody in the book"—David H. Keith

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

1) Escargot Books is expanding its catalogue and are now accepting submissions.  Crime fiction (dark thrillers to cozies), women’s fiction, wealth and fitness, children’s, sci-fi and dystopian. All books will be published in digital format. Some books will be chosen for print and/or audio as well. Escargot Books does not offer an advance, but they offer higher royalties than traditional publishers, especially for direct sales from our website, as well as editing, formatting, promotion, and the company of bestselling authors. They have some big name authors and a good track record. Here’s their online submission form.

2) Chick Lit Plus is currently looking for reviewers and contributors to add to the team. If you are interested in joining a popular book and women’s lifestyle blog, and you love Chick Lit, this could be a great opportunity. This is an established site with a big readership. It's a great place to get started as a reviewer. (I personally know two book blog reviewers who have become literary agents. This is a great place to start a career in publishing.)

3) The Lyttoniad contest for the WORST first sentence of a novel. The classic Bulwer-Lytton Contest makes news every year. Each entry must consist of a single sentence but you may submit as many entries as you wish. E-mail entries should be sent to Scott Rice at srice@pacbell.net in the body of the message, Ariel 12 font. One e-mail may contain multiple entries. Entries will be judged by categories, from “general” to detective, western, science fiction, romance, and so on. There will be overall winners as well as category winners. No prizes that I know of, but lots of admiration from your fellow writers.  Deadline is June 30th.

4) FREE book advertising to British readers from EbookBargainsUK 

(I've had fantastic luck with these guys. I used them after my free run of No Place Like Home and my bounce was three times higher in the UK than the US—I'm sure because of the ad.)

DEADLINE EXTENDED! Lots of authors and publishers have had huge successes with their FREE or SALE books by advertising on BookBub, ENT, KND, POI, etc. But none of those target the UK, and their links go to US sites Brits can't use. But now there’s a newsletter for UK readers only. It links to all the big UK retailers like Apple UK, Waterstones and Foyles as well as Amazon UK. They don’t sell books direct or get paid for clickthroughs, so they don't have any restrictions on how many free books they can spotlight like BookBub and the others. So it's THE place to tell Brits about your book when it goes free or on sale in the UK. Since Brits have the highest number of readers per capita of any country in the world, this looks like a great idea to me: Plus: the site will be offering FREE book ads until June 30th, on a first come, first served basis. Remember this is for books you have on sale or free. 

And if you're in the UK, do sign up for their newsletter. It brings links to free and bargain ebooks—at the UK bookstore of your choice—in your inbox every morning. You can subscribe here.

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The Biggest Problem Facing the Beginning Novelist—And 6 Tips for Avoiding It

Creating compelling narrative takes more than great characters, sparkling dialogue and exciting action.  All those elements have to come together in one story. 

One story.

Not a series of episodes. 

As creatures of the television era, a lot of us tend to think in episodes rather than one long story arc. I know I do. My first book, which I worked on for a decade, contains what is probably my very best writing. Every scene is honed to perfection. 

But it's not a novel: it's a series of episodes. I had story, but no plot. The book is unpublishable. No wonder it got over 300 rejections. 

It took a very kind agent to read the whole thing and tell me what was wrong before I put it aside. "It reads like a sit-com" is what she said. Finally, that "aha" moment: I had episodes; not a novel.

I know I'm not the only writer who fights the episode habit. Episodic storytelling is the number one problem I see confronting the new writer. And sometimes seasoned authors run into the problem, too. 

One of my favorite movies about writers is Wonder Boys, based on Michael Chabon's prize-winning novel.  In the film, Michael Douglas plays a writer who can't finish his book.  Everybody assumes he's blocked, but—as we discover when he opens a closet stacked with reams of typed pages—the problem is he can't make the story end. 

I'm willing to bet that Michael Douglas's character's problem was episodic storytelling. 

Look at the trouble TV writers have ending a series. The weak last episodes of Seinfeld and The Sopranos come to mind.  And don't get me started with Lost...

Episodic storytelling happens when one scene doesn't generate the problem of the next scene.  You could shuffle the scenes around and pretty much the same things would happen. 

E.M. Forster illustrated this in one of his famous lectures on novel-writing: "'The king died and then the queen died' is a story. 'The king died, and then queen died of grief' is a plot."

You can just as well say "The queen died and then the king died." But the "dying of grief" makes no sense in reverse order. 

To write a successful novel, you need a plot. Just the one. Each scene needs its own story arc, but we also need one over-arching plot to compel us from scene to scene. 

So how do we do that? 

Here are a few things I've learned that helped me kick the episodic storytelling habit:

1) Start a novel with the ending in mind. I always do this now. After my disaster with the Novel That Would Not End, sometimes I even write the last scene first. It never ends up being the actual last scene, but it helps me enormously to have it sitting there as a goal. 

2) Write lots of short fiction before starting that first novel. If you think of your novel as a short piece stretched out, it can help you keep that plot in mind. If I'd spent that decade writing short fiction instead of polishing up that endless collection of chapters, I'd probably have reached my career goals much faster.  (And I'd have a ton of stories that can be published again and again. Stories have a long shelf life and are now pure gold in the age of the Kindle Single.)

3) Write a logline before you start.  I'm not telling you to outline. I know we should, but I can't bear to outline myself. Stories are so much more interesting to write when you don't know exactly what's going to happen. But you want to have the basic story in your head.  Try plugging your idea into this formula: When______happens  to_____, he/she must_____or face_____.  (More on loglines in my post on Hooks, Loglines and Pitches.) 

4) Make sure your story has an antagonist. Again, just the one. This doesn't necessarily mean a mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash bad-guy. But you need a force working against the hero that's powerful enough to keep the plot going for an entire novel. Your hero can't just slay a new dragon in each chapter. He needs to live in constant danger from the Big Momma Dragon who never lets go and can't be slain by ordinary means. And Big Momma Dragon has to get meaner and more dangerous as her little dragons get vanquished.

5) Create characters who act rather than are acted upon. The protagonist's actions and choices should cause each new event. When you have a hero who causes things to happen by her actions (no matter how stupid) the story is propelled forward. You can do E. M. Forster one better with something like: "The king died, then the queen faked her own death to run off with a hot young dragon-slayer."

6) Consider writing your first novel in a genre with built-in structure. Romances and Mysteries have firm story structures. Romances need a HEA (Happy Ever After ending) with lovers united. Mysteries have to end with the revelation of who dunnit.  This doesn't mean you have to give up your favorite genre. Women's fiction can have a traditional romance story structure. So can historicals, fantasy and sci-fi. The mystery structure can be used in almost any genre from chick lit to scifi, and the unsolved mystery doesn't have to involve murder.

Many thanks to Pip Conner for his email this week that sparked this blogpost. He asked how to deal with that nagging feeling something isn't right with the WIP--even though you've been polishing forever. I told him most first novels have structure  problems. It's always worth a check of your story structure if something doesn't seem "quite right." 

Ask yourself these questions: 

• Could you remove a scene or two and still have the same story outcome? 
• Does the plot build from one inciting incident to an inevitable climax? 
• Do you have both a protagonist and an antagonist? 
• Does the protagonist have a goal that isn't achieved until the end?
• Does your book have three well-defined acts? (Here's a nice graphic on the 3-act structure.)

That scene that doesn't quite work may turn out to be a detour that moves us away from the plot and you may have to eliminate it. (Don't you hate that? Remember to save it for another novel or a short story someday.)

Obviously, it helps if you start the novel with some of the above things in mind, but even if you didn't, you can often fix a structure problem if you step away from the manuscript and re-examine it later with fresh eyeballs. 

Here's what I advised Pip:  

My strongest piece of advice is this: put it in a drawer and walk away. Close the file and don't look at it for two months. Go read a book in your genre. Then read another. Then read some books on story structure.

Robert McKee's STORY--although it specifically addresses screenplays--is the structure Bible. (But I just saw the Kindle edition is $23--yikes--so get it from the library.) Another oldie but goodie is James N. Frey's HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD NOVEL. And Kristen Lamb's blog  has some fantastic advice on structure and the antagonist. Do a search on her blog for "The Big Boss Troublemaker." And if you're a techie sort, GalleyCat has a whole list of programs this week that help you outline your novel.

Then start a new book or story. Do not open that file for the whole two months.

When you get back to that old WIP, I'll bet you'll see a solution.

How about you, scriveners? Do you have recommendations for some good books or blogs on story structure? Have you ever written a Novel That Would Not End? Do you struggle with structure in your novels? 

COMING UP ON THE BLOG! Next Sunday we're going to present "LAURIE McLEAN'S CRYSTAL BALL"-- a visit from the dynamic literary agent Laurie McLean of Larsen-Pomada, talking about what she sees coming up in the publishing world. And on December 16th, we'll have our annual visit from Romance author and uber-blogger Roni Loren talking about how authors can best use Facebook and Twitter.

OTHER NEWS: I'll be interviewed at WRITE IT SIDEWAYS on Monday, November 12. and I have a GOLDEN REVIEW at Indie Authors Anonymous on November 14. Plus I have a guest post about traveling off the beaten path in the UK at the READERS GUIDE TO E-PUBLISHING on Thursday November 15th

And don't forget that SHERWOOD, LTD, a Camilla Randall mystery, is FREE on Kobo and Smashwords. The Smashwords blurbitude didn't come out quite right--so it's credited to Saffina Desforges, who wrote the forward. But it got a nice review the first 24 hours it was up.

Reviewer David Keith said "It's not yer typical whodunnit, nor is the protagonist anything like a cop. Ms. Allen (or Ms. Deforges, as the case may be) has crafted a wily tale of murder, deceit, and intrigue that can stand with the best of them. Her characters are all too real and her dialogue took me from laughter to chills to suspicion of everybody in the book." FREEEEEE!

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