How to Write Your Novel's First Chapter

Writing a first chapter is a balancing act of grabbing your reader's attention, setting up your story's conflict, and introducing the world and characters. Today we're talking about how to manage and balance all the different elements of a first chapter, and write one that keeps readers reading!
LEARN MORE:
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-How to Write a Strong First Line: • How to Write a Strong ...
-Writing the Inciting Incident: • Writing the Inciting I...
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - Create a hook
2:06 - Start where it gets interesting
2:25 - Focus on what's interesting
3:49 - Establish voice
4:21 - Build your main character
4:52 - Managing information
6:57 - Subtly introduce themes
8:31 - Create conflict
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[@Adib_.95]

I find your channel so sweet and informative, and I learnt a lot from it, i write in arabic not English and i follow a lot of thr tips you provide, I usually listen to u when I’m going to work in the morning. Thanks a lot, much love ❤️

[@Ricardo-zo1ti]

Same here, but writing in spanish :)

[@yinkam7902]

Literally perfect timing

[@0331NAMELESS]

Same for me.

[@perspectivepeterson9509]

OMG THANK YOU!!!!! THIS UST GAVE ME SO MUCH CONFIDENCE BECAUSE I CAN'T COUNT HOW MANY TIMES I'VE REWRITTEN MY FIRST CHAPTER

[@AlwaysRightAllNight]

I’d say it’s important to show the day to day life of a character in the beginning as it’s a good contrast to what their life will be after the “major incident” which will change their life.

[@perspectivepeterson9509]

ESTABLISH THE PRESENT FIRST!!!! GREAT ADVICE

[@cjpreach]

Great info, Shaelin. Also, it's encuraging to see how many elements I got right in my current novel WIP.

[@____uncompetative]

Congratulations on passing 100,000 subscribers!

[@StopThatSquirrel]

This was super helpful! Thanks for explaining things so clearly :)

[@johnhaggerty4396]

You possess what G.K. Chesterton called uncommon sense. ( Read *The Man Who Was Thursday*. ) Someone said the Beginning should have as much as the End in it as possible, but that is for the second draft surely. There is also the uncertain Middle about which Orhan Pamul writes in his long essay *The Naive and Sentimental Novelist* (2010). I would add only one thing. It comes from Dorothea Brande's *Becoming A Writer* (1934) pps 45-46 of my 1983 Papermac edition. *The unconscious is shy, elusive, and unwieldy, but it is possible to learn to tap it at will, and even to direct it. The conscious mind is meddlesome, opinionated, and arrogant, but it can be made subservient to the inborn talent through training.* Dorothea recommends isolating the conscious and unconscious, and thinking of them as *separate personalities*. As I said before, J.M. Barrie taught Daphne Du Maurier to enter a mild trance state before writing (thinking about a good dream is useful). Margaret Foster, a fine novelist who was married to Hunter Davies the first biographer of the Beatles, wrote a biography of Du Maurier. Decades ago I had lunch at the home of Hunter Davies in Kentish Town, London, and Margaret Foster prepared a delicious lunch for us.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

My mistake. I meant to write Margaret Forster (1938-2016). Her third novel *Georgy Girl* was adapted for the cinema. You can see the opening scene on KZbin.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

Another typo. Orhan Pamuk. There is a gremlin in my keyboard: I think his name is Peter Pan !

[@1TigerJo]

Thank you ! Excellent advice!

[@tomlewis4748]

All great advice. The necessary evil of chapter 1 is there must be a certain amount of exposition in it, and that dies down as the story progresses. (And there are ways to express it without lumping it all in at once.) What a reader mostly needs in chapter 1 is orientation. They expect that, and what we need to give them is what they expect, and what they don't expect. When a reader first opens your book, as you have indicated, they have nothing but questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Who and what are important to be answered quite early on. Where and when can be answered both early on or a little later. How and why are primarily answered in act two and three, although 'why' should at a minimum be hinted at early on, so that the reader can figure out the protagonist's motivation, part of which should be the reader putting two and two together. So who and what have the most importance in chapter 1. It's important to introduce the main protagonist (who) and it's important to give the reader confirmation of what the genre is that your story is mostly supporting (what). There is also something else that I think is very important to do as early as possible in the story, which is to get the reader to bond with the main character. Get them to care, so that they continue to turn pages. 'Starting' with an action sequence, on the surface, sounds like a good idea for something in the action genre, for instance, but an action sequence as a starting point will be an action sequence populated by characters the reader doesn't know yet and doesn't care about yet (I've seen that fail epically, more than once). That will not be nearly as powerful as an action sequence after the reader has bonded with that character. If you briefly introduce the character and get the reader to know just a little bit about them first, then you can use that action sequence as the 'problem' that you hand to the character in order to create empathy for the character, who they have already identified with. That always works if done properly, but introducing the character has the inherent problem of 'not much happening at the moment'. One way I have dealt with this is to start with a short action teaser, maybe 100-150 words, prior to chapter 1. That also establishes elements of the genre (the what) first, and creates curiosity and wonder through suspense, which will continue to permeate the reader's thinking and expectations, as they are then introduced to the main character. Do those two things first, and your action sequence will then knock their socks off.

[@nothingmuch1039e9]

i like to start the first chapter with some guests visiting their house because that helps in showing their personality and their social life

[@shaikkaif230]

Hey , are you writing a book , i started need some sort of help

[@watchmakersp9935]

Thanks a million...so helpful !!!

[@giomig86]

Very helpful 👍🏽

[@Gothic_Cyborg]

Thank you!

[@alisonjacobs8469]

Thanks for that tip to read first chapters.

[@kerri-lynbryant293]

Thanks S.❤

[@SweetUniverse]

Someone said the movie Chinatown does it quite well when John Huston says to Jack Nicholson, "Find the girl." Nicholson starts to talk about other things and Huston interrupts him, "Just ... Find the girl!" And that's the theme right there, almost half way into the movie.

[@johnhaggerty4396]

When Robert Evans was at Paramount he read the screenplay of Chinatown and was baffled. Evans called the screenwriter Bob Towne. 'Why is it called Chinatown when the story only goes to Chinatown in the last scene?' Evans asked, not unreasonably. 'Chinatown is a state of mind,' Towne replied. Evans admitted that he did not get it, but the director Evans chose, Roman Polanski, did get it. The rest is movie history. Chinatown is a masterpiece. Read the recent book on how it was made. Robert Evans wrote and produced a documentary (DVD) about his years running Paramount, *The Kid Stays in the Picture*. Mario Puzo wrote a witty essay on writing the novel and script of The Godfather: he made little money from his first 2 novels. See Puzo's book *The Godfather Papers*. Puzo's last essay is titled: *Diary of an Unsuccessful Writer*.

[@tomlewis4748]

​@@johnhaggerty4396 Towne's reply was exactly right. A creative like Towne knows 'state of mind' instinctively, while an executive like Evans might be baffled by that. Chinatown is far and away my favorite movie. I've seen it a dozen times, four times in the first 3 days of me discovering it. Polanski removed all of Towne's VO narration, as Towne sputtered in disbelief, then put Nicholson in each and every scene, and made the story fully linear (no flashbacks, no side scenes without Nicholson) which was due to him being influenced by Raymond Chandler's novels. IOW, he turned the objective 'camera' 3rd-person POV into a 1st-person POV. It puts the viewer shoulder to shoulder with Jake Gittes, as if we are experiencing what he is experiencing in real time. When Noah Cross says 'Find the girl', that is also characterization. It shows Cross as being convinced he is more powerful than everyone else and that what should happen is what he wants to happen. It subtly defines him as the villain, but only in subtext. Brilliant.

[@generalsankarashezi3326]

Hi Shaelin, I took a plunge into trying to write my book as a novel that will be educational to many South Africans who fought for liberation. I got stuck and I started questioning many methods of self-publishing. I just need some ground rules: Do I have to write a novel or a memoir to tell the story of our shattered dreams. Thanks in appreciation.

[@rizzypizzy]

Can't remember if I've said this, but congrats on the 100k subs! When will we see the Reedsy KZbin Creator Award?

[@johnhaggerty4396]

The Reedsy KZbin Creator Award involves a fierce and bitter struggle between Reedsy and her nemesis, Shaelin Bishop. I think These Twain are fairly evenly matched. Should they resolve their conflict and combine their talents we may have a writer as strange as Ursula K Le Guin + Jorge Luis Borges !

[@thea.elise26]

do you have to introduce the main character in the first chapter?

[@christophercooper851]

why does your hand disappear on the left sporadically in the vid?

[@lakeshagadson357]

that's what I would train my students how to do in class

[@u_t_d_s_h-1_a]

It's not the most difficult part of a novel or story, it isn't easy either; ---at that stage in writing the story, one is hot of the preparation of the story's plot, ---he or she is budding to make it happen the writing flows freely.

[@aliomar2912]

I think it's pretty difficult.

[@mamasaintcyr2793]

You do something with ur hair?

[@charmleneboni]

My autobiography starts from birth to avoid confusing readers. Every page is filled with mystery, horror, and drama. Welcome to my life.

[@detectiveanimator515]

Hey I am literally disappointed why you leave Hollywood you was in interstaler right

[@cafepoem189]

Thank you so much!

[@johnhaggerty4396]

Pondering first chapters I turned again to *Glitter of Mica* (1963) by Jessie Kesson, only to discover she has no numbered chapters. The story's flow is only broken by that three-asterisk icon or dinkus as it is called. *The Dinkus: 6 Uses for Scene Breaks.* Now Novel. *Ode to the Dinkus.* Daisy Alioto. The Paris Review (online) 2018. *I Reject Your Asterisk, and Your Dinkus, Too.* Brandon Taylor. Literary Hub. *Correctly Formatting Your Novel Manuscript.* Randy Ingermanson. Advanced Fiction Writing. Jessie Kesson (Wikipedia) was born in Inverness in 1916, to a mother who turned to prostitution after being disowned by her family. Everyone who met Jessie said she was a laugh a minute in spite of her grim early life: Isobel Murray has written her biography. My 2017 paperback edition of *Glitter of Mica* has an introduction by Jennie Fagan, author of *The Panopticon* and *Luckenbooth*. Jessie Kesson's farming landscape is the bleakest in Scotland, a mythopoeic parish *unadorned by poetry* but alive with droll humour. *Jenni Fagan: I understand crisis. I grew up in a very, very extreme way.* The Guardian online. Claire Armistead. 2021.