Hey! It’s Emily!
First chapters are notoriously difficult to write. How do you keep readers interested? How do you make them care about your protagonist? How do you start the story? Luckily, most novels’ first chapters have common features since all first chapters share the same goals of hooking their readers and introducing the story. I have boiled down these features to 7 key elements. We’re also going to take a look at The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins as an example for each of these elements to help explain how each one works and why it is important! Hopefully these seven elements will inspire your story, encourage you to keep writing, and help you get a better idea of the first chapter essentials.
This blog post kicks off our first blog post series on Honeycomb, called Beginnings! Through this series, we’ll walk through some of the main focuses for writers when starting a new novel and writing their first few chapters. Stay tuned for more blog posts following this topic!
1) Introduce the Main Characters
Clearly, one of the most important things a first chapter should accomplish is properly introducing your main characters. Your readers will experience the story through the protagonists, so the first chapter should communicate who the readers should connect to. What is your main character’s age? Gender? Position in society? Are they a student or an officer or an outcast? Also, remember to describe your character’s appearance just enough for the reader to picture them. Nothing is worse than imagining a character in your head as a graceful tall and tan brunette only to later have to rewire your brain to picture a short and stocky character with platinum blonde hair and rounded facial features. Give your readers a starting point. Let them shake the character’s hand and say hello.
The main character should not be perfectly fleshed out at the beginning—it is way too much information to keep track of—but readers should know enough about your character to care about them. This could include the protagonists’ main personality traits, what their daily life looks like, and—perhaps most importantly—their motivation. Readers want to know what drives your characters. What is their goal? What do they want more than anything? This will give your readers a concrete reason to root for your protagonist.
In The Hunger Games, Collins introduces Katniss’s priority before anything else. Within the first two lines, we know that the protagonist’s motivation is her sister: “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress.” Readers can quickly deduce just how important Prim is to Katniss considering that her sister is the first thing on her mind when Katniss wakes up. This also gives readers a reason to root for Katniss. She’s a character who cares about family. That’s noble.
Beyond the first few lines, Collins also finds other subtle ways to introduce us to Katniss. She describes Katniss’s daily routine of waking up early and sneaking into the woods to hunt and provide for her family. We also get a sense of Katniss’s personality within the first few pages. She is resourceful and observant (communicated with her hidden bow in the woods and her quick check of the electric fence) and she has learned to put up a mask of indifference to avoid getting in trouble with the Peacekeepers. We have now shaken her hand: she is a provider and a survivor.
2) Orient Your Readers to the Setting
The next key element is to orient your readers to the setting. Readers must know enough to know what kind of story this is. Are we in a gothic Irish castle in the early 1800s? Or are we on a ship in space with robots whizzing around? Communicating the setting will help your readers get a feel for the tone of the story and help them visualize your character as they travel through their world.
The best information is given through a scene. Just as how Collins introduced Katniss through a scene, with the readers following Katniss throughout her daily routine and watching her mannerisms and interactions, so should the setting be introduced. When writers dump exposition on their readers, the readers have no attachment to this information. They have no reason to care yet, no matter how cool your worldbuilding is. But when you convey the setting through a scene, readers are much more engaged as they watch the metaphorical camera follow the characters through the story’s locations.
In chapter one of The Hunger Games, readers don’t know a lot about the country of Panem, but they know enough. More importantly, though, the readers know about District 12. Collins starts small. She does not overwhelm her readers with all the information about the whole world. Instead, she starts with Katniss’s house. As Katniss wakes up and looks around for her sister, we see that the Everdeens live in a small, one-bedroom house. Katniss and her sister Prim normally share a bed. Katniss takes a piece of goat cheese she hid under “a wooden bowl to protect it from hungry rats and cats alike.” They live in poverty.
Then, Collins expands to the rest of District 12. As Katniss moves throughout the story and the world, we follow her. We first see the Meadow where Katniss hunts with Gale. Then Katniss and Gale walk through the Seam, the poor part of the district. We go to the Hob, District 12’s black market, and learn about this district’s exports: “When they came up with a more efficient system that transported the coal directly from the mines to the trains, the Hob gradually took over the space.” Then we catch a glimpse of the richer side of the district, where Katniss and Gale interact with the mayor’s daughter who has enough money to purchase their freshly-picked strawberries. Not only does this gradual revealing of setting help slowly acquaint readers with the setting without overwhelming them, but it also creates a puzzle. Readers will be engaged, slowly piecing together new information about the world to eventually see the big picture. Don’t be afraid to start with small puzzle pieces.
3) Set Your Story's Tone
Next, a good first chapter should set the story’s tone well. Tone can be a tricky thing to figure out, but—for the first chapter, at least—it often boils down to genre and what story your readers think they are reading. If your story is a light and comedic romantic novel, it would be strange for the first chapter to begin with a violent death or an action-packed fight scene.
Your characters’ reactions and interactions, and your descriptions of the setting, will also help clarify the story’s genre and tone. If your main characters spend the first chapter terrified of some mysterious figure out to get them, that communicates to your readers a story of intrigue and thrill. If you spend long paragraphs describing the picturesque wildflowers or the idyllic brick houses dotting the landscape, that communicates to your readers a story of whimsy and simplicity. Word choice also plays a key role. Don’t rely on an arsenal of words like “cutting,” “jagged,” “shrapnel,” and “onslaught” for a soft and romantic story. These words are sharp and convey an uneasy or daring scene. Use the words that fit the moment.
While describing the lead-up to the reaping, Collins uses words like “grimness,” “buzzards,” “tighter,” “darkens,” and “nauseous.” With just these key words, readers get a sense of dread and gloom. Furthermore, Katniss’s daily routine consists of gray tension. Her house is small and simple and bare. The Meadow, while more pleasant, is the only safe haven in the district, and even there Katniss and Gale’s discussion about running away give readers a sense of fear. Collins also peppers mentions of the reaping throughout the first chapter, delaying its explanation till more than halfway through to make readers apprehensive. Every element works together to give the first chapter of The Hunger Games a somber and tense tone. Perfect for a dystopian novel riddled with injustice and death.
4) Foreshadow the Theme
Themes are the topics or life-lessons of a story. These typically span across the whole novel and only conclude at the end, which makes it difficult to fully communicate a book’s theme in just the first chapter. Thankfully, that’s not what you have to do. However, it is still a good idea to foreshadow and hint at the big idea of your story. If you are writing a novel that focuses on a ragtag found family, you might open your first chapter with the protagonist clearly ostracized from society and seeking a place of belonging. You won’t be able to—and you shouldn’t—impart a full life-lesson in just the first chapter, but you should give your readers a glimpse of what’s in store.
The Hunger Games has a strong theme of division and inequality throughout the novel, and Collins hints at this in the first chapter. Readers can pick up on the disunity when Katniss and Gale visit the mayor’s daughter Madge. Even though both Madge and Gale live in District 12 and are entered into the reaping, Gale resents her for her easier lot in life, how she isn’t at risk of starving and, therefore, doesn’t have to enter her name into the reaping extra times just to purchase food. Despite Gale’s harshness, though, he acknowledges that this extra entering is “just another tool to cause misery” in the district and cause division between the upper and lower classes. Even members in the same district can’t get along.
5) Show the "Ordinary World"
A good first chapter should also showcase the “Ordinary World.” The “Ordinary World” is an element of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey outline, which emphasizes the need for the protagonist’s story to start in the everyday. Often, this involves the main character going about their daily routine or interacting with people as they usually do. This commonplace opening helps readers understand what normal life is like for the main character before things turn upside down. The “Ordinary World” lets readers see either the dissatisfaction of the protagonist’s everyday life and how their life improves once the adventure starts, or the satisfaction of the protagonist’s life and what they desperately miss when happiness is ripped away from them—and sometimes it’s both! Whatever the case, the “Ordinary World” grounds your readers in a routine often familiar for both the reader and the character.
In The Hunger Games, Katniss spends most of the first chapter going about her daily business. She wakes up, leaves home, enters the woods to hunt, meets with her friend Gale, and trades at the black market. All of this is normal for her and the readers start to understand who she is and what District 12 is. We see that life is not great: most people are close to starvation and many live in fear of the Capitol. And the reaping. And this presents another key element of the “Ordinary World.” While Katniss does go about her usual routine, there is also an ominous and oncoming disruption. Collins and Katniss keep mentioning the reaping. Readers don’t know what the reaping is for most of the first chapter, but they can tell a storm is brewing. The brilliance of Collin’s first chapter is that she balances both the mundane, everyday life with a promise of a dramatic change. However, while Katniss is dissatisfied with her life in District 12, the adventure she enters makes things worse instead of better.
6) Ignite Conflict
Even if the main adventure hasn’t begun yet, igniting early conflict helps interest your readers in your world, characters, and story. Hardly ever will readers find motivation to continue reading a story where everything is still sunshine and smiles ten pages in. Readers read to see how the world develops, how a character learns and grows and overcomes conflicts. That’s impossible if there’s no chance for change.
Igniting early conflict does not mean you have to jumpstart your main plot—though that might be a good idea too. But, if your story starts slower, you can still introduce conflict. Maybe your main character is clearly a jerk and treats everyone around him like trash. You promise your readers that this character will face some sort of arc that will transform them into a better person. Maybe the world is plagued with a mysterious disease slowly picking people off one by one. You promise your readers that they will soon get to investigate and learn about this mysterious sickness. There are many ways to ignite early conflict, even before the main story picks up.
In her first chapter, Collins sprinkles in mentions of the reaping throughout the chapter. The dread builds with each mention and she promises her readers that something is about to disrupt the ordinary lives of the people in District 12. Besides the reaping, there are other small instances of conflict scattered throughout the first few pages. While in the woods, Katniss reflects on her father’s death and how that left her mother “blank and unreachable.” Katniss resents her mother for watching “while her children turned to skin and bones.” Here, we see tension in the Everdeen family. They experienced trauma, haven’t recovered, and struggle because of it. Another example of conflict comes when Gale proposes running away, but Katniss rejects his idea because it is risky and they have too many responsibilities in District 12. The conflict between Katniss and her mother and Katniss and Gale have little to do with the reaping and the actual Hunger Games, but they emphasize the daily struggles within District 12 and highlight characters’ personalities and motivations. More importantly, they leave the reader asking questions: Will the Everdeens be okay? If something happens to Katniss, can her mother provide for Prim? Will Gale run away? If he does, will he get caught? How will the reaping change everything?
7) Ready the Inciting Incident
Finally, a good first chapter should ready the inciting incident. “Ready,” not “include,” because not all first chapters include the inciting incident. And not all first chapters need to. However, all first chapters should get the inciting incident ready and hint at what is to come. The inciting incident is the action that causes everything to change, starts off the novel’s story, and forces the protagonist to react. Even just hinting at the inciting incident helps engage and excite your readers.
The inciting incident for The Hunger Games is Prim’s name being called at the reaping. While this does occur in the first chapter, the chapter ends before we get to see how this changes everything or causes Katniss to react. However, readers can infer. What they can’t infer, they question, which motivates readers to continue onto the next chapter. At this point in the book, readers now know that to be reaped is to fight to the death in an arena along with twenty-three other children. Readers will naturally ask: Since Katniss cares about her sister so much, what will she do? Will she and Prim run away with Gale? Can they? Will they get caught? What happens then? The trail of questions seems never ending. But the story has begun and now readers have a reason to continue.
If At First You Don't Succeed...
Try, try again! The first chapter of a novel might be the hardest to write. There are so many elements to include so early on and it is difficult to do this well without infodumping, making your chapter too long, and overwhelming your readers. Trust me, I’ve been there. But, thankfully, there is no pressure to get it right the first time! Because first chapters are the hardest to write, they are also often the most rewritten chapters in any novel. I can guarantee you will not get it right the first time. But that’s okay! Just get something down. As Jodi Picoult says:
"You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
If you need some help with your first chapter, start by considering the seven elements above. Jot down ideas for each element. Maybe outline the information you need and want to include in your first chapter. Then write it out! Let it sit for a few days and then return with fresh eyes. Rewrite it. Then show it to a friend and get their feedback. Then rewrite it again. That’s the process.
And the other editors at Honeycomb and I can help with this process! If you find yourself stuck or needing extra feedback, consider using one of our services. We also offer a free sample edit of up to five pages! Take heart in knowing that we understand the struggle of writing a first chapter and are here and happy to help! Till then, bee brilliant!
Emily
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