The first chapter of your novel is critical as it can determine whether readers will continue reading your story.
If you’re unsure of how to write the first chapter of a novel, the following 6 tips will help you.
1. Relax into writing it
Oftentimes, the most difficult step in writing a novel is writing the first chapter. This is even more pronounced if you’re a plotter instead of a “pantser”, i.e. if you tend to plot out everything ahead of time before writing the story (plotter) instead of just sitting down and writing it by “the seat of the pants” (pantser).
Normally, writing by “the seat of the pants” means just sitting down and writing the story in your mind with minimal plotting or planning ahead. This means that by the time you’ve exhausted the initial rush of starting the story, the first chapter is already done.
Plotting, on the other hand, can lead to overthinking the story and where you should start. So, the first step is to just write it – and even if the end result doesn’t match the plotting you’ve prepared prior to writing the first chapter, relax and do not worry.
In the editing process, after you’ve finished the whole novel, you can go back to the first chapter, analyze it with fresh eyes and determine what works in it or not. You might even rewrite the whole first chapter just to match the story better – and that is also okay and a normal part of the process.
The more novels you will write, the better your first chapters will become, so eventually, you will be able to nail the first chapter on the first try (by nailing it, we mean not having to rewrite it from scratch).
Below is an article you might find useful:
5 Benefits of Writing by the Seat of Your Pants
2. Write an impactful first line
The first line of your novel needs to be impactful – grab the reader’s attention in some way to entice them to keep reading. For the first line, you can go for witty, you can go for scary, you can even foretell something that is yet to come, or you can present a mystery or the state of the protagonist’s mind.
For example:
“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, Sylvia Plath.
In “The Bell Jar” the first line conveys the protagonist’s state of mind quite clearly.
Another example, this one witty and humorous:
“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, Douglas Adams.
As you can see, the first line of your novel does not necessarily have to be just one sentence; you can write two or even three, as long as they are impactful and convey something important (for the protagonist, the story, the theme and tone of the novel).
3. Convey who the protagonist is
The first chapter needs to begin with the protagonist (or, if you have multiple protagonists), at least one of them needs to be the narrator or the point of view character of the first chapter. Moreover, in the first chapter, you need to ensure the protagonist is presented well in terms of who they are as a person.
Oftentimes, the most common advice is to start in the middle of the action – and that is good advice, but that action can be related to the protagonist’s normal world rather than the plot. For example, let’s say that the protagonist is a private investigator. In the first chapter, the protagonist should be doing some private investigating, i.e. let’s say that we first meet the protagonist while they are on a stakeout and following the person they are investigating.
This particular investigation does not need to be related to the main plot, it’s just to show who the protagonist is and how they operate, i.e. how they go about their daily life of being a private investigator.
If you have multiple point of view characters (who are not protagonists), and if the first chapter is from their point of view, then you have a prologue rather than a first chapter.
Take a read of the following articles:
5 Reasons Why Your Protagonist Needs to Have Imperfections
5 Tips for Writing from Multiple Points of View
4. Present the world where the story happens
Ideally, the first chapter of your story will show the world where the story happens – if it happens in a fantasy world, you need to give the readers a good glimpse of the world, and what the protagonist’s position is in it (peasant, merchant, royalty). This will also enable you to show how the protagonist feels about their position in the world – i.e. are they satisfied with their position and want to do their best to keep it? Or are they not satisfied with it and want to improve their situation?
Moreover, if you have a fantasy or a paranormal setting, then you need to have something magic-related or something paranormal happen in the first chapter. This needs to be done in a way that will enable the readers to understand the magic system, how it works, and what the protagonist and other characters can do (i.e. what kind of magical powers they have).
The same applies even if the protagonist have no magical powers of their own – in that case, another character should do some magic to show the world has magic, and to show that the protagonist does not have any. If the protagonist is unaware that they can do some magic, then something needs to happen to convey that the protagonist did something special, but are unaware of it.
The following article might be of interest to you:
How to Develop Backgrounds in Your Fantasy Stories
5. Show the inciting incident
In “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, the first line immediately conveys that the protagonist has been turned into a giant insect. This is the inciting incident for the story and it is conveyed in the first line.
The first line doesn’t necessarily have to convey the main plot of the story, or more specifically, the inciting incident for the story. The first chapter, however, should lead to the inciting incident.
Whether the inciting incident will happen in the beginning, middle, or end of the chapter – it should happen in the first chapter. This will let the readers know what the novel will revolve around (i.e. which issue the protagonist will need to solve).
6. End on a cliffhanger
The first chapter needs to gain the reader’s attention to continue reading the story, and the best way to do that is to end the chapter on a cliffhanger. This cliffhanger needs to be a “wham moment” i.e. a moment that shocks both the protagonist and the readers. Most often, this is the inciting incident itself. Having the inciting incident be the cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter has other benefits.
First, it allows you to build the world throughout the chapter, present the protagonist’s normal circumstances (as previously mentioned, who they are and what they do), and then end it on the moment where everything changes.
For example, perhaps the protagonist was going about their normal life throughout the chapter. In the meantime, they were receiving calls from their best friend, but because of other distractions, like work or taking care of other tasks and errands (which can be used to present the world and the setting), they failed to answer the phone. They received a message asking them to come over.
When the protagonist finally goes to their friend’s house, they find them dead. This moment would be that “wham moment” (because of its emotional impact), and the inciting incident of the novel (provided the novel revolves around the protagonist finding out how their friend died and if somebody murdered them). This will entice the readers to keep reading and find out together with the protagonist.
If you want to know how to write cliffhangers, take a read of the following article:
How to Write Magnificent Cliffhangers for Chapter Endings in Your Books