When revising our NaNoWriMo novels, it’s important to polish our first chapter to make it easy for our readers to fall under the spell of our story and enjoy the worlds we create. Yet, what should a great opener include that will make our readers excited to turn the page?
In his book Hooked, Les Edgerton defines the hook as anything that intrigues the reader and makes them want to keep reading. It can be a story question. Will the protagonist overcome the daunting problem that confronts them? It can be the lyrical language of the author, or a moving description of a place. Anything that draws in a reader can serve as a hook. In other words, examine your own writing and lean in to what you do best and start with that. However, a good writer can’t just hook a reader, they also have to reel them in, which means the hook needs to lead into the rest of the story.
Quite often, a good hook includes a strong inciting incident that drops the protagonist immediately into the trouble that becomes the focus of the rest of the novel. What is an inciting incident? It is the event that creates the character’s initial problem and hints at the deeper story-worthy problem. For example, the protagonist finds a loved one shot dead. Their initial problem will be to find the murderer. However, the story-worthy problem, or the problem that sustains the entire novel and develops into the driving force for the protagonist, could be whether they succumb to their desire for revenge.
A good opener also sets the rules of the novel and tells the reader how to read the story. What are the rules of a novel? One is the genre. Is this book going to be a mystery? A space opera? A romance? How do you let your reader know upfront? The most obvious is the first line. Quite often the first line is the toughest to write and many authors polish it last when they know for sure every word that will follow. As Jim Croce might have written, “Leroy Brown was so mean, wherever he was standing, was the bad part of town.”
Like the example above, the first line also establishes the voice and tone of the work allowing the reader to understand immediately whether this work is going to be irreverent and funny, or a serious tear-jerker. This is also known as the implicit promise of the story, or the hint to the reader what to expect. This implicit promise must match the end of the story. Readers won’t forgive a writer a broken promise.
Lastly, it’s important to establish immediately, yet as briefly and succinctly as possible, the 3 Ps or a person in a place with a problem. The character introduction should be shown via the action of the inciting incident with the setting descriptions as precise as possible but still incorporating all the senses in order to make this fictional world feel real to the reader.
Upshot, a great opening chapter should have a strong first line and a hook with an inciting incident that leads into a story-worthy problem. The opener should establish the rules of the story and foreshadow both the complications and ending of the novel. This is not an easy task, but with careful revision, you’ll be able to massage a good opener into a great one!