SETTING OUT: The first chapter
Author James McCreet looks at the most important part of the novel (for readers)
The first chapter of a novel is the most difficult to write. You haven’t yet got to know the characters, their voices and their personalities (which develop as they act). You’re still feeling out the narrative perspective.
You’re still testing the tone of the story you want to tell. Most importantly, the first chapter is the one that will – more than any other – decide whether your book will be published, bought or even finished.
The first chapter has to do many things without seeming too overtly to do any of them. It must drop the reader into your fictional world and introduce your characters without dumping information. It must also kick off a storyline that necessarily involves a lot of context or exposition but which it must not try too hard to explain.
Having just plotted the first chapter of my new book, I thought I’d go through some of the things I had to take into account in this, the essential first step of a novel.
Where to begin?
There are many ways into the first page of the first chapter. You can start with dialogue, which drops the reader immediately into the action and asks them to catch up.
You can start with the thoughts of a character or with a descriptive passage. An arresting statement, meanwhile, compels the reader to continue. Consider the opening line of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis: When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous insect.