Where to Begin?
Figuring out where and how to begin your story is perhaps one of the biggest challenges for authors, but also one of the most important. The first chapter should ideally
introduce your characters, setting, time frame, etc.
pull readers into the story
set up the rest of the novel
but it should also keep a bit of mystery about itself so that readers are forced to keep reading to find out what happens next.
In Blood in the Past, a thriller written by one of my good friends Jordanna East, the story begins with the main character and her best friend being mugged. The trigger moment. that sets into motion the entire rest of the novel.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum Christian Nation, presents a speculative dystopian alternate reality look into how America would be different had John McCain won the 2008 election and subsequently died leaving Sarah Palin in charge; begins instead with the main character in the present looking back their life and how everything had actually come to pass. The How did we get here? moment.
Wicked a fantasy which details the life of the Wicked Witch of the West and how she came to be, begins with a conversation between her minister father and her pregnant mother, as the father leaves to preach about the dangers of a new attraction in Munchkinland. Much like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone which in fact begins with Harry being delivered to his aunt and uncle’s and slowly builds up to the idea that he is in fact not what he appears. This particular type of beginning is more of the slow build up to larger events that will take place later in the story.
In my own novel, Man on Manhattan (also a thriller) the story begins with the main character, a journalist who while on his way to work receives a mysterious threatening text message that demands he get his friend to kill the piece she’s writing about a would-be presidential candidate or she will be killed. This is, the spark that ignites the main characters action.
How you begin your novel and where depends entirely upon the story, is the backstory of your main character important enough that it can’t wait, or is there a more interesting action that would push the story forward instead? An important thing to keep in mind would be to look at your first chapter (as objectively as possible) and ask yourself, would I really keep reading, and more importantly, would anyone else keep reading either?
