To write the first chapter of a novel, check it against six jobs: raise a question the reader wants answered, set the voice the book will keep, establish a compelling viewpoint or central character, ground the world just enough to picture it, start the trouble, and end on something that pulls the reader into chapter two. It usually runs about as long as the book's other chapters. Draft a rough one to get going, then rewrite it once the whole draft exists and you know what the ending needs.
Treat the six jobs as a diagnostic list, not a formula: The Great Gatsby saves its title character for the last page of chapter one, and Pride and Prejudice ends its first chapter on a dry verdict rather than a cliffhanger. The first page has its own guide, how to start a story, with ten opening techniques. This page is about the chapter as a whole: what it has to carry, where the trouble lands, how it ends, and how it reads to an agent opening your sample pages.
The six jobs of chapter one
| Job | What it looks like | Common failure |
|---|---|---|
| JobRaise a question | What it looks likeSomething the reader wants answered, by the end of the chapter or of the book | Common failureA pleasant chapter with nothing at stake |
| JobSet the voice | What it looks likeNarration that sounds the way the whole book will sound | Common failureA neutral voice that finds its personality in chapter three |
| JobEstablish the viewpoint | What it looks likeA narrator or central character the reader wants to follow, usually wanting something and acting on it | Common failureA protagonist who only watches or remembers |
| JobGround the world | What it looks likeEnough place, period and rules to picture each scene | Common failureA guided tour, or no world at all |
| JobStart the trouble | What it looks likeThe inciting incident, or a smaller trouble that points toward it | Common failureThree chapters of routine before anything happens |
| JobPull into chapter two | What it looks likeA decision, a discovery, a threat, an open question, or a voice the reader wants more of | Common failureEvery door closed, often with someone going to sleep |
Chapter one also makes a promise about what kind of book this is. A body on page three, with someone who will have to account for it, usually signals a mystery. Two people who irritate each other on sight can signal a romance, when the narration gives their friction the attention a love story would. Keep the promise early, because a reader who thinks they are in one genre and finds another by chapter five may feel misled, however good chapter five is.
To use the table on a draft, mark three things in your chapter one: a sentence that sets the voice, an action that changes the situation, and what the last line invites the reader to find out. If you can't find one of them, that's the job to work on first.
For a second reading, ask the Strokes Assistant what in chapter one invites a reader into chapter two: a question, a voice, a character or a discovery. Compare its answer with the last line you marked.
Where the inciting incident goes
The inciting incident is the event that knocks the protagonist's life off balance and starts the main conflict. Some plotting methods place it early in the first act. Which chapter that means depends on how long your chapters are and how much the opening has to set up: in a 90,000-word novel it might close chapter one or arrive in chapter four. Those are illustrations, not a required percentage. That leaves three workable shapes for chapter one:
| Where it lands | How chapter one feels | Often suits | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it landsPage one | How chapter one feelsTrouble before the reader has settled in | Often suitsThrillers, horror, short novels | ExampleGreat Expectations: a convict rises from the graves a few paragraphs in |
| Where it landsThe end of chapter one | How chapter one feelsOrdinary life, then the break | Often suitsMuch commercial fiction | ExampleJane Eyre: the chapter closes as Jane is carried off to be locked in the red-room |
| Where it landsChapter two or later | How chapter one feelsA smaller trouble carries the chapter | Often suitsLiterary, historical and slow-burn novels | ExamplePride and Prejudice: the news about Netherfield comes in chapter one, the ball and Darcy's snub in chapter three |
If the main trouble comes later, chapter one still needs trouble of its own: an argument, a refusal, a secret, a deadline. A slow first chapter can work if it's tense. A calm one rarely does.
Writing chapter one, step by step
- Write down what chapter one changes
Before you draft, finish this sentence: at the end of chapter one, something is different. She has taken the job, found the letter, lost the house, met him. If nothing is different, the chapter is still set-up, and set-up reads better spread across scenes that do something. The chapter outline template has a line for this outcome and one for the closing hook.
- Open on the latest scene that still shows normal life
The reader needs to see the ordinary world before it breaks, but not for long. Pick a scene in which normal life is already under strain, and start it as late as you can.
- Put the protagonist, or a strong viewpoint, on the page
In most novels the protagonist appears on the first page, wanting something small and specific. If chapter one belongs to someone else, make that a deliberate choice and give that viewpoint tension of its own. The first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) introduces Vernon Dursley before Harry, and is set apart in time from the rest of the book.
- Keep the cast small
Introduce the people this chapter needs and no more. Give each a name that can't be confused with another (not Jon, Joan and Jan), one physical detail and one thing they want from the protagonist. Everyone else can be “the night clerk” until a later chapter needs them.
- Ration the world and the backstory
Keep a list of what the reader must know by the end of the chapter, often only five or six facts, and postpone the rest. Backstory is the hardest thing to cut and the easiest to move: a history that takes a page here can be one line of dialogue in chapter four. A chapter that stops to explain is an info dump, however well written.
- Make the genre promise
Put the thing the reader came for into chapter one, or at least its shadow: a puzzle for a mystery, a threat for a thriller, the love interest for a romance, one impossible thing treated as ordinary for fantasy.
- End on a pull
Close on a decision, a discovery, a threat or an open question, or, as Austen does, on a voice the reader wants more of. A character going to sleep is rarely enough. The guide to chapter length shows the same chapter ended flat and ended on a turn, and chapter structure covers how a chapter is built from its first line to its last.
- Rewrite it when the draft is done
Chapter one is the chapter the ending changes most. Once you know the climax, check that chapter one plants what it needs: the object, the skill, the relationship, the question. Expect to rewrite it more than any other chapter, and don't be surprised if the first version ends up as notes.
First chapters that work
Four classic first chapters, each doing the six jobs in a different order.
“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.
The chapter opens with the older Pip's wry account of his name and his family's graves on the marshes, and a few paragraphs in, the convict seizes him. Voice, place and danger arrive together. By the end Pip has been ordered to bring a file and food by morning (“You get me a file,” then “And you get me wittles”), and he runs home without stopping. The chapter ends with the reader holding the same task Pip holds. In the table's terms, that last action is the sixth job, a pull into chapter two with a deadline on it: will a frightened boy steal for a convict by morning?
The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news.
After the famous first sentence, almost the whole chapter is one conversation. Mrs. Bennet wants the new tenant of Netherfield, “a young man of large fortune from the north of England,” for one of her daughters, and Mr. Bennet teases her by pretending not to care. Premise, family and the narrator's irony all come out of one argument. The chapter ends not on a cliffhanger but on a short, dry verdict on the parents, which works because the voice is what Austen's readers came for.
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
…
Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.
The first sentence is a small refusal: the weather keeps the children indoors. Jane hides with a book, her cousin John Reed finds her and throws it at her, she fights back, and his mother has her taken to the red-room and locked in. A cancelled walk becomes a punishment in a few pages, and the chapter stops with Jane in the air, being carried off.
…and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
Nick spends the chapter on his father's advice, his move to West Egg and a dinner with Daisy and Tom Buchanan across the bay. Gatsby, whose name is on the cover, appears only at the end: a figure on a dark lawn, stretching his arms toward the water. The chapter holds back its main character, and it ends on the image the novel comes back to on its last page.
Chapter one by genre
| Genre | What chapter one usually promises | Often opens with |
|---|---|---|
| GenreMystery | What chapter one usually promisesA puzzle and the person who will solve it | Often opens withThe crime, or the detective at work on something smaller |
| GenreThriller | What chapter one usually promisesA threat with a clock on it | Often opens withDanger on page one, sometimes from the villain's side |
| GenreRomance | What chapter one usually promisesTwo leads, and the reason they shouldn't work | Often opens withThe meeting, or one lead's life just before it |
| GenreFantasy and science fiction | What chapter one usually promisesA world with rules, and someone who will test them | Often opens withOne strange thing treated as ordinary |
| GenreHorror | What chapter one usually promisesSomething wrong that nobody has named yet | Often opens withA small wrongness in an ordinary place |
| GenreLiterary fiction | What chapter one usually promisesA voice and a person worth the time | Often opens withA charged moment in an everyday life |
| GenreHistorical | What chapter one usually promisesA period seen through one life | Often opens withA scene where the era presses on the character |
What agents see first
If you query agents, chapter one is your audition. Agents ask for sample pages with the query, often the first 5, 10, 25 or 50 pages or the first three chapters, and those pages start on page one, not at your favorite chapter. A prologue usually counts as page one, unless an agent's guidelines say to begin at chapter one. Whatever comes first, including the slow scene you meant to fix later, is what gets judged.
What tends to earn a request is what keeps any reader going: a clear person in a clear situation, a voice that sounds sure of itself, and a reason to turn the page. The problems that cost requests show up early too: an opening that could start any book, pages of backstory, a cast too big to follow, a first chapter that promises the wrong genre, and pages that ignore standard manuscript format. Taste plays a part as well, which is one more reason to query in batches. The guide to getting a literary agent covers the rest of the package.
First chapter mistakes
- The warm-up. Pages of routine before the chapter starts doing anything. Keep the routine only where it is already straining.
- The guided tour. The world explained like a brochure: its history, its politics, its weather. Show what the character uses, fears or wants today.
- The early flashback. Leaving the present for the past before the reader cares about the present. Hold flashbacks until the reader asks how things got this way.
- The waiting room. Things happen near the protagonist while she watches and remembers. Give her a choice, even a small one, before the chapter ends.
- The wrong promise. A cozy chapter one for a dark thriller, or a murder for a book that is really a family saga.
- The closed door. A chapter that answers every question it raises and ends with the lights off.
- The endless rewrite. Six months polishing chapter one while chapter two waits. Write forward and fix it in revision.
Frequently asked questions
How long should the first chapter of a novel be?
About as long as your other chapters, which for many novels means 2,000 to 5,000 words. Thrillers often run shorter, literary fiction and epic fantasy longer. A first chapter much longer than the rest can read as set-up, and one much shorter can read like a prologue. Let the scenes decide, then check the result against your genre.
Should the inciting incident be in the first chapter?
It often is, either in the first pages or at the end of the chapter, but it doesn't have to be. Some plotting methods place it early in the first act, which in a long novel can mean chapter two, three or four. If it comes later, give chapter one a smaller trouble of its own so it isn't only set-up.
How many characters should you introduce in the first chapter?
As many as the scenes need, and usually fewer than you think. Readers keep track of new people by what they want and how they differ, so a chapter with a few named characters is easier to follow than one with ten. Refer to others by role, such as the landlord or the night clerk, until a later chapter needs them.
Should the first chapter be from the protagonist's point of view?
Usually, because the first viewpoint tells the reader whose story it is. Some novels open elsewhere: the villain's scene in a thriller, a witness, or a chapter set years earlier. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone introduces Vernon Dursley before Harry. If you do this, bring the protagonist in soon and give the opening viewpoint tension of its own.
