The First Chapter – hook your reader and setting the tone for the story

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    In a world of instant gratification via the internet, text, the phones we carry in our pockets and more, sticking with a story depends more and more on the “Hook.” Starting with a cover that attracts attention followed by a title that triggers interest and a jacket blurb that makes a potential reader click the buy button or carry the print book to the register.

    But next comes that incredibly important first chapter. With millions of books out there and the ease of downloading, even dedicated readers will be tempted to set the book aside if they wade through that first chapter and don’t feel compelled to keep reading. Once upon a time, if I spent money on a book I would doggedly read on just because I’d paid for it. But today even the outlay of cash won’t keep me reading if it’s a slog and I’m bored, or worse, turned off by a character I just can’t like, and a plot I can’t get a feel for. I don’t think I’m alone in this, either. I try to take new authors out of the library just so I don’t feel like I’m tossing good money down the drain if I can’t get into book and end up sliding it into the return chute unfinished.

    So, the question is: How do we compel our readers to fall into our stories and keep on reading when that first chapter ends?

    First is the hook – a question that burns to be answered, like an unexpected ten dollar bill in a six-year-old's pocket at the candy store burns to be spent. The best place for that question is in the very first paragraph, but then there’s still that whole first chapter to keep the intensity going.

    My best practice for that first chapter is first to create a character that the reader can really like and cheer for. Or a villain so heinous the reader just has to stay to make sure they get the justice they deserve.

    But creating that compelling character is just a piece of the puzzle. You can create mister or miss awesome, the gent or lassie everyone would love, but then what? Again, this is today’s world where there are so many distractions, never mind hundreds of other books to lure a reader away. Pick up a copy of Gone with the Wind or East of Eden or any of the literary classics and you find a far more leisurely opening to a book. But when they were written if folks could afford a book at all, it was usually just the one with months in between and not that many new books each year to choose from. In today’s world, not many readers would spend an entire chapter on a veranda with Scarlett and the boys chatting of this and that, or a whole first chapter describing the scene.

    So now you have to put your characters into a situation that grabs the reader’s interest and carries them onward to see how that situation is going to unfold. One might also include a burning emotional component. In the case of that despicable villain, you can give him a motive that drives him to his intended misdeeds but leave an equally compelling opposing feeling in the reader. For Miss or Mister wonderful, you might tear away their perfect world and leave them floundering. And if the reader really likes them, they are going to be carried onward praying for that happy ever after, or at least a sense of resolution that the character has done the best they could and feels some sort of satisfaction with the results.

    The other thing this first chapter needs to do is put the reader into the world they are expecting. If your reader is fan of romance, then the events need to encourage them to feel like this is going to be a romance and not an eerie psychological thriller. Likewise, if your reader is expecting action and suspense, then they need to feel that suspense even if nothing big has yet happened. A fan of history isn’t going to feel happy with a scene that feels like today’s world, unless, of course, it’s a time travel, but even then, that pitch into the past or the future or at least a hint of it needs to happen in that first chapter if that’s why they picked this book up in the first place. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander (written long before the series on TV) does not dump Claire immediately into the past, but instead rambles through a reunion with her husband following the end of WWII. BUT – and this is a big but . . . The very first sentence in that first chapter is: “It wasn’t a likely place for disappearances, at least not at first glance.” Then later in that first chapter her husband tells Claire he saw a rough looking man in full highland rig standing in the wind and rain staring up at the window where Claire could be seen brushing her hair. This plants the question in the reader’s mind: “Who is the rough looking guy in an old fashioned kilt?” and “Why was he looking up at Claire?” It’s a subtle hint, but it’s there to tease the mind.

    So that’s what our first chapters need to do. Set the tone of the story, create compelling characters, and then plant a bomb in the scene that compels the reader to keep on going.

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    Click here to read the first chapter in the first book of my new series. What do you think? Does it do all of the above?

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Now it’s time to check out what my fellow Blog Hoppers have to say about opening chapters.

Connie Vines 

Bob Rich  

Diane Bator 

Sally Odgers 

Helena Fairfax 

Anne Stenhouse