Why Does Your First Chapter Suck?
When all else fails, add pixie dust. The first chapter is the door to the rest of the book. The first chapter is a fist of firsts: first sentence, first hook, first introduction to the cast of characters, first goal, first twist, first turn, and first cliffhanger. Newbie writers know this, and try to stuff everything into the first chapter. And it sucks big time. So what went wrong? The newbie scratches her head, and re-reads one or two famous books in her genre and discovers … HEY! What the heck? Mr. Famous Writer didn’t put in any of that stuff about Theme and Setting and Backstory That Makes You Love The Character, and so on. What’s going on? There are four possibilities. 1. Mr. Famous Writer has banked on previous successes but made a hash of it this time, out of laziness. 2. Mr. Famous Writer’s book succeeded despite, not because of, the first chapter. 3. Mr. Famous Writer knows how to break the rules in a way that still works—and in a way that Newbie ...