Five Common First-Chapter Mistakes

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

Can you judge a book by the first 15 pages? Is it really fair to decide on the worth of an entire book based solely on the first chapter or two?

Well, fair or not, that's usually all readers will give us if we're published, and that's all agents and publishers will allow us if we're querying.

Of course, anyone can polish up the first chapter and make it sparkle. Some writers do indeed spend weeks and weeks revising, rewriting, and honing the first chapter . . . to the neglect of the rest of the story. Obviously it takes a great deal more skill to weave the entire plot to a believable and satisfying conclusion than it does to craft a first chapter.

While 15 pages can’t give the whole picture, it is enough to come to conclusions about the author’s writing skills. After several years of judging contests, I've come to understand how an agent or publisher can make a clear-cut decision about whether to pursue a query based on sample pages. If a writer doesn’t have a grasp of basic fiction-writing techniques, that jumps out from the first line and paragraph. And likewise, if they’ve practiced their skills, that’s evident too.

For published books, if the story hasn't hooked my by the end of the first chapter, I usually set it down and forget to pick it back up—no matter my best intentions. Because let's face it, there are a lot of other things vying for my attention. And I'm not likely to return to a book that can't captivate me in the first chapter.

So what are some of the ways we can alienate readers, agents, and publishers with the beginnings of our books? Here are five common first chapter “mistakes" I've noticed over the years:

1. Not opening with a strong enough hook.

 

The first line. The first paragraph. Even more than that, the first scene. Each one is extremely critical and should be crafted to bait the reader into needing to find out more. I might be able to forgive a mediocre first line, but the first scene must draw me in to the story.

2. Waiting to begin the “real” tension and conflict.

First chapters should contain very little if any static. We should very rarely have the main characters reflecting on life, thinking about their current or past situation, or contemplating doing certain activities. That includes conversations, meetings, or meals between characters simply for the purpose of conveying story information. It would be like writing a phone conversation and asking our reader to “watch” the characters talk to each other. How exciting is that?

Instead, find the first major conflict of the external & internal plot lines and start in the middle of them.

3. Too much setting up of the story.

 

Readers don’t need to know how our characters got to the point they’re at. Throw our characters into the story and for the first chapter pretend the reader already knows as much as we do.

Readers want to piece the story together on their own. We’ll give them a more fulfilling reading experience if we let them take our small hints and finally put the character’s past together in their own time. And if we need to explain anything, we can always slide it in little by little later.

4. Character confusion.

 

We can confuse our readers with too many characters in the first chapter. And we can also confuse them if we don’t put the spotlight on our main characters right away. Readers want to empathize and relate with the main character(s) from the start.

5. Using too many clichés.

 

Every writer should steer away from overused phrases, especially in the first chapter. They jump out and brand an author as amateur. We should always be striving to find unique and fresh ways to express emotions and descriptions, but it’s particularly important for the first chapter.

I’ve also noticed the tendency to use clichéd characters, reactions, and plot lines. My test for deciding if something is clichéd is this: if it sounds even vaguely like something I’ve read somewhere else, then it probably isn’t unique. If it has even a hint of cliché, then I need to dig deeper into my mental recesses and come up with something fresher.

Summary: When writing for the modern reader, the first chapter is critical. We have to captivate them in the opening pages or we might lose them altogether.

Do you think it's fair to judge a book by the first chapter or two? How many pages (or chapters) do you usually give a book before giving up on it? 

(Since I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this month and attempting to complete 50K on a novel, this post is a modified reproduction of a previous article: Potential First Chapter Problems. Happy writing!)