when you're writing the first chapter of your book it can be incredibly difficult to get it just right but I think these strategies help pave the way now don't feel like you have to include all nine of these that's Overkill but you should probably at least include a few because it'll help the readers love your book more let's get started with the first one one include all three levels of conflict station 11 by Emily St John Mandel includes all three levels of conflict in her very first chapter one there is public conflict right this is
a problem that afflect everyone in that entire world because there's a pandemic a man collapses on the stage right in the middle of the King Lear performance and the main character Jen runs to the stage and starts doing CPR on him the second type of conflict is internal conflict Jen has been wondering oh like should I become an EMT or not and rushing to the stage and doing CPR on that man confirmed for him like yes like this is what I want to do with my life I want to help other people and the third
conflict that we see here is conflict with others so we start to see there's fault lines of a relationship Jen has a girlfriend but she bowed out from coming to the performance saying that she wasn't feeling well and which sort of gets this sense like oh there's some tension between the two of them so in your first chapter if you only have one of these types of conflicts or even if you have two of them I think you're still missing an opportunity to have all three levels of conflict two start with a decision so in
the underground rail road by Coulson Whitehead we have this wonderful first line the first time Caesar approached Kora about running North she said no okay I don't think you realize like how much work this line is doing let's unpack it one this first sentence tells us the theme just from the phrase running North we understand that this is going to be a book about slavery two it creates automatic tension because we're wondering oh will they try to escape or will they not try to escape and then you also have the tension of will they be
caught three you have conflict between the two of them one wants to make the run the other one doesn't and also the phrase the first time is really important because it implies that there's going to be a second time when the answer might be different now this single line buys the author a lot of time so they can go into backstory because the entire rest of the first chapter is all backstory about kora's grandmother how her grandmother was enslaved and transported and then at the end of the chapter we return to this Kora Caesar storyline
and this time she says yes I will try to escape slavery with you the advantage of starting your book with a firm decision is that you don't have to have a lot of action in the first chapter but it sets the reader expectations that action is going to be forthcoming three create mood so let's look at Cormac McCarthy's the road which is a fantastic book for mood creation so here's the very first chapter of that book and I just want to focus on how he sets the mood with language that's concerned with Darkness we have
the word dark we have dark again then we have Darkness then we have gray then we have dimming and then we have he looked for light but there wasn't any light the lack of light is such an indicator that this book is going to be a little heavy I'd also like to point out that the very first sentence of the book establishes The primary relationship of the entire novel that between a father and a son just like the first sentence of the Underground Railroad establishes the relationship between Caesar and Kora now in the rest of
the first chapter of the road it goes on to continue the mood mainly in terms of danger so there's a line which explicitly says this was not a safe place there's two mentions of the pistol one time when he takes the pistol out of his belt and one time when he props the pistol on top of his shopping cart and then there's also the mirror that he sets up so he can make sure to look at the road behind him and see whether anybody's sneaking up on him so a first chapter like this teach us
that we don't have to start with a smash bang action sequence no here we have smoldering danger here we have signs of future conflict and hey if you want to write more than just a first chapter I'd recommend checking out my novel course which contains 36 videos walking you through the whole steps of how to write a novel and the whole course is based on my experience as an editor editing hundreds of novels and these are novels which were bought by random house they have sold more than 100,000 copies and they've received star reviews from
kirkus what I'm trying to say is the techniques work take the of course you'll love it four nail the theme so Anne patchett's Bell Kanto is really a book about love specifically it's a book about captors falling in love with the terrorists who capture them so how would you start a book like that well you start with a kiss when the lights went off the accompanist kissed her so I find this is an interesting strategy to start your book with the theme first and then bring up the inciting incident so about middle of the way
through this chapter the plot actually starts you have the terrorists coming through the windows and the door doors and storm the place and take everyone captive and I'd also like to point out what happens at the end of the chapter the end of the chapter is when the police arrive and the end of the chapter isn't the police doing anything it's just they pull up and they can see their emergency lights I think ending with an arrival is a really good idea CU it sets you up for the whole rest of the book five start
with World building and never let me go a book by kazua isig Guru he starts with dividing people into two categories carers and donors Kathy H who is the first person that we meet is a carer and all we know from the first couple of chapters is she's been doing this for 12 years and that she gives to donors who recover quickly so the World building that isig Guru is doing here is that this is a world with clones and these clones are donating their vital organs over time to the originals but I have to
say that there's a very slow roll out of this information it isn't stated right away it's not stated baldly you sort of suss it out as you continue to read the book and so I'd just like to say you shouldn't feel the pressure to do all of your world building right at the very beginning like no like do it peac Mill slowly ease your reader into this world six start quickly in Jose SAR mago's blindness we actually find the opposite technique from ishi guru's never let me go he starts off with a bang so in
a book about the whole world going blind when do you think he might have the very first person go blind you might think at the end of the first chapter you might think about chapter number two but no it is the second paragraph that's right page one second paragraph there's a character who's driving he's stops at a stoplight and then he gets out and tells everyone I've gone blind and the rest of the chapter is just basically unfolding the natural sequence of events that would happen if someone suddenly went blind a Good Samaritan guides him
back to his place and then steals his car he knocks over a vase and cuts himself on the glass and then he sees a doctor who says oh I've never seen a case like this before but in general it is a fantastic idea to try to start your story quickly seven start with a mystery Elena fante's Neapolitan novels are just so good and the first one of the series my brilliant friend starts with a phone call the caller says his mother is gone she's been missing for 2 weeks and he asks whether the mother is
with the person that he's calling nope and then the mystery intensifies because the woman that he called says you know what you shouldn't look for her oh huh and then she tells him never call me again now this is very much a literary novel but from an opening like that you would almost think this was like a hardboiled detective novel or like a thriller or something I won't spoil the book by revealing what happens but I will say the strategy of starting with some sort of mystery on the very first page of your book is
a great way to start a book and now it's time for number eight and number eight is ground the public in the personal so at the beginning of Tom pera's the leftovers we have this worldwide Mass disappearance of 140 million people they just vanish up Into Thin Air no bodies but that first chapter story is told through a single one who was left behind Laura Garvey and so this broad event is filtered through her Consciousness her talking to her kid about religion and why this event wasn't the Rapture how she deals with a world in
which people just up and vanish and then also how she ends up comforting people who had loved ones suddenly disappear on them sidebar it's really a book and a series about how to deal with grief but my larger point is the way into a big story is always through a small portal a single person's experience of that event so don't feel like you have to tackle the enormity of a worldwide event just tell what one person did and our last point is number nine offer someone to root for in Slum Dog Millionaire by via swar
we get to know the main character Rah Mohammad Thomas and by the way in the movie his name was changed to Jamal Malik but I like the first name because it shows that he's an every man right the the first name is Hindu the second name is Muslim the third name is Christian but what I think the author does really well is he gives us lots of reasons from the very beginning to be cheering for this character one we know that he's smart right he just won a game show so we're like oh good job
buddy like amazing two we know that he's very poor and that the rich people resent him for being poor and still being able to answer all these questions three we see that he gets arrested for zero reason whatsoever and that makes us sympathetic towards him lastly he is tortured and they try to make him confess to cheating on the show even though he did not cheat at all so we like ROM right away we are on his side we are invested in the story and we want to see him succeed if you like this video
and you want more information about first chapters my book The Lynch pin writer has a whole chapter specifically on how to start the first chapter of your book so I'd recommend getting that and checking it out
