What Makes a Winning First Chapter?

September 6, 2023: Contest, Publishing, Tips
😃   Subscribe for Weekly Posts:

What Makes a Winning First Chapter?

The most important chapter of your novel is the first one. Hands down. It has a mighty purpose: to set the stage for your entire story, and grab your reader from the get-go. Equally mighty is its potential. It could help you land an agent, secure a book deal, and sell more books. It could even win a contest—our First Chapter Contest!
For our current contest, we invite you to submit the first chapter of your novel. You don’t have to have written the entire novel just yet—we’re only looking for the first few thousand words.
As always, the grand prize winner will receive $599 and publication in our anthology. All finalists will also receive $60 and anthology publication.
How do you write a first chapter that is worthy of first place? Borrowing some wisdom from our Publishability Index (PI), here are six qualities that make a first chapter a winning one.

1. It Grabs the Reader and Doesn’t Let Go
You’ve probably heard it before: your opening should act as a hook. It should pique your reader’s interest, and fast! Otherwise you risk losing them completely.
There are many ways to craft an effective hook. For example, you could pose a puzzling question, present an intriguing interaction between key characters or provoke thought with a surprising statement.
While a first chapter should convey basic information so that the reader can understand what’s going on, be wary of “info dumping.” No reader wants to sit through excessive exposition.
2. It Introduces a Compelling Protagonist
quotemark

“Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling.”
― Po Bronson

Publishability Index Img
First impressions are everything, so make sure your reader’s first impression of your protagonist is the right one. Through a combination of action, thought, dialogue and other techniques, we should get to know the type of person they are. What do they want? What are their motivations?
In the words of our Publishability Index, the best characters are “fleshed out” so that they can “come to imagined life.” Spend some time thinking about all the complexities that comprise your character, what makes them them, from their physical description to their fears and flaws.
Not all of this character information will come out in your first chapter—or ever. The reader doesn’t need to know every possible fact about them. Just focus on the ones that are meaningful to their identity and make them unique.
3. It Immerses the Reader in a New World
From the first line, your story should open the door for the reader to step into the world you’ve created. Whether it varies slightly from the world we’re familiar with or takes place on a distant planet, your novel opening should transport us there. As our PI lays out, your world should provide a “sense of a place that people could imagine moving through.”
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your world won’t be fully built in a single chapter either. However, your first chapter is where your setting begins to materialize, where you lay the foundation and establish the defining features of your world.
4. It Tees Up the Conflict of the Story
Without conflict, there would be no story. One vital function of your first chapter is setting up the conflict that is going to play out over the next couple hundred pages. What’s at stake? What is standing in the way of your protagonist attaining what they want? Get the conflict ball rolling!
Whether it’s character vs. character, character vs. world, character vs. themselves or anything else, your reader shouldn’t have to wait long to see how conflict could arise.
5. It Plants Thematic Seeds
missing
quotemark

“You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the theme.”
― Charlotte BrontĂ«

Theme is the message of your story: what you hope the reader will take away. If you’re still only in the beginning stages of writing a novel, you don’t have to have this all figured out. Still, you should have at least some general themes in mind, ones that could be explored over the course of the story. For example, some common themes include loyalty, justice and redemption.
Ideally, the thematic seeds you plant now will grow into full, impactful messages by the end of the book, leaving a “profound impression.” (Yes, there’s our PI talking again!)
6. It Sets the Tone for the Story to Come
Under the language dimension of our Publishability Index, we talk about a “distinctive style evoking a mood or tone.” Simply put, mood and tone make your reader feel a certain way. They also set certain expectations for the rest of the story.
The mood and tone of your story could be whimsical, romantic, suspenseful, gloomy or anywhere in between. Whichever ones you choose, they should fit the story you are telling, and be infused throughout your first chapter.

Before you submit your entry to our First Chapter Contest, check that it has all six of these qualities. Not only will it improve your novel as a whole, but it will improve your chances of winning.
The contest deadline is March 13, 2023. All qualified entrants will receive professional feedback on their story and have the ability to submit a revised version for consideration. The sooner you submit, the more time you will have to revise! Find all the details here.
TO DO SCRATCHPAD PRIVATE JOURNAL TRACKING Update Assessment
CLICK A TAB TO USE WILL.POWER

TO DO LIST:
Add tasks to your sortable list, then revel in checking them off.

SCRATCHPAD:
Cache your gems as they fall in this always accessible place.

PRIVATE JOURNAL:
Reflect on your process — good, bad and ugly — in your dated diary.

TRACKING:
Measure your progress with key writing metrics, automatically,
ADD DO
Show Dones
ADD ENTRY
Metric:
Words
Minutes
ADD
Click anywhere to close