Contest season is coming around the bend, and whether you're planning to submit to Pitch Wars, Pitch Slam, Nightmare on Query Street, or another contest, there are some common requirements for every submission package. Over the next few weeks, Operation Awesome will be giving and rehashing tips, advice, and 'lessons learned' about each of these required pieces of the submission package.
Take a look at last week's post on QUERY LETTERS. Now, let's turn our attention to THE FIRST CHAPTER.
Top First Chapter Tips from the Operation Awesome Crew
KARA: I know I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating: If the inciting incident doesn't happen in your first chapter, then your book is starting in the wrong place. The inciting incident is the thing that happens, without which, there would be no book. It's the thing that changes the status quo for your main character and sets them on the course of events that form your novel. Give your first chapter to your CPs and ask them if they can identify what the inciting incident is. If they can't, you've got work to do.
MELINDA: Drop me into a scene. I get too many submissions where the first chapter is all inside protagonist's head, telling the reader how they met their best friend, about their relationship with their parents, about why their preferred type of cheese is Gouda. Something needs to happen in your first chapter and that something needs to be important to the overall story.
J: I should have a question in my mind driving me to read onward. Also, I should be able to figure out what genre your book is by now. (Something dramatic happened, something paranormal appeared, my heart jolted from a scary scene, I laughed, I lusted, there was a crime, I encountered something from days gone by, etc.) Finally, I shouldn't have too many characters to juggle in my mind yet. One to four is ideal. Five to seven is gray area. Over seven characters in Chapter One is a red flag.
LEANDRA: For me, I like to see something unusual in the first chapter. If it's the character getting out of bed, thinking about their day, eating breakfast--for me, nothing will have me closing a book faster. Give me something besides the norm.
JAIME: To me, the most important factors in deciding whether to read a book are the concept and the voice. Now, if I'm thinking about buying a book, I already know the concept (from the back cover, Amazon description, etc.). So the first chapter's job is to hook me with the main character's voice. I will follow a great main character almost anywhere, but I won't necessarily keep up with a great concept if I don't care about the main character. In other words, your first chapter needs to establish your main character's voice, first and foremost.
Operation Awesome's Library of Posts About The First Chapter
Weaving a Colorful Tapestry of Page-Turning Story
What First Impression is Your Character Giving?
Activate Your Story
Showing posts with label first chapter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first chapter. Show all posts
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Friday, September 11, 2015
Weaving a Colorful Tapestry of Page-Turning Story
Last week, I was struggling with a first chapter. O first chapters, how I loathe you when you're squishy and in progress, which seems like every revision of every book I've written, while I continue to poke and prod and slash and burn and cry and lament. I could write an entire post about why I dislike first chapters or even an entire post that's a running list of hundreds of links to "How To Write Good First Chapters" articles I've read, but that would end up being fourteen pages long, and no one wants that. However, if you want some solid advice about how and why you need a good beginning, I recommend Ann Remini's series.
While struggling with this particular first chapter, I recalled a writing technique I decided to apply. I tweeted about it and was surprised by the interest it generated, so I figured I'd expand.
I did not create this. I read an article describing this far enough back that it's lost in the annals of history. It's also unlikely that whomever wrote that article invented it. It probably goes back to pre-highlighter days, when people would have had to, I don't know, tint animal blood and rub it across cave drawings. But it's a snazzy little method that takes a lot of work but is extra-informative and can be applied to any section where you're struggling with pacing or back story--or even the whole book.
Here it is, in tweet form:
Here's a look at my (old) first three pages:
My CP had noted I'd included too much back story. "But," I groused, "the reader needs to know this!" No, she doesn't, and I very well knew that, which is why I decided to visually see what she was telling me. There it was, all blue and chunky across my pages.
In my next step, I noted whose back story it was. I was surprised to find--as my CP had commented--I'd repeated information both within the same blue section and later on. I didn't feel I was doing that, but when I isolated it and stared at each "Ebena back story" or "Kwasi back story" section, I discovered she was (of course) right. This was a secondary effect I didn't realize would happen, and one that helped me tighten things up even more.
Here's a look at my Chapter 2, which is, in my humble opinion, a good mixture of action, setting, exposition, dialogue, and back story. (This book is the second in a series, so I didn't have a lot of world-building that I needed to tell the reader yet because it's been established in the first novel. But even if it hasn't, you want to use world-building sparingly by showing it at work, especially in earlier chapters.)
The purpose of this exercise is to see if you've got big sections of page with only one color. Are fifteen paragraphs solid pink? In today's market, in most genres, no one wants to read your scene-setting for that long. Is 75% of your book orange? You have a problem with filtering your action through talking heads.
Yellow action is the most important--move the story forward--but don't forget the other colors, too. You don't serve a slab of beef for three meals in a row; you add spices and complement it with baked potato and steamed vegetables.
Here's the thing: you can categorize and highlight however you want. I'm all about teaching a man to fish and giving you tools for your writer toolbox and all that. I'm not about dictating how you should be writing. Make it work for you.
"Exposition," to me, is the here-and-now explanation about how the character feels about something or someone, whereas "back story" is something that happened in the past. "Setting," I discovered, became both the world and character descriptions. You can play around with these and sub-categorize them if you like, but I didn't want to get too granular for this exercise.
When it came to dialogue tags, "he said" usually revealed a juicy tidbit of plot, so I highlighted it yellow for action. If you find your dialogue isn't moving the plot forward, you might want to assign a different color for those spots you know you have trouble.
If you're not sure how to fix your work, get a second copy of your favorite book and mark it all up with highlighter using this method. Watch how Super Awesome Bestselling Author weaves the gorgeous colors together to create a tapestry of page-turning story. You'll find, as you get deeper into the book, he gets away with big chunks of back story or dialogue--but he varies it. Rarely does he insert fourteen chapters of back story (and I can think of a book by a best-selling author I one-starred when she did this because come on with the plot already).
So, my dear readers, what do you think? Can you think of a sticky piece of writing you're struggling with that you can apply this to? I'd love to hear follow-up stories of what you discovered after you did this.
While struggling with this particular first chapter, I recalled a writing technique I decided to apply. I tweeted about it and was surprised by the interest it generated, so I figured I'd expand.
I did not create this. I read an article describing this far enough back that it's lost in the annals of history. It's also unlikely that whomever wrote that article invented it. It probably goes back to pre-highlighter days, when people would have had to, I don't know, tint animal blood and rub it across cave drawings. But it's a snazzy little method that takes a lot of work but is extra-informative and can be applied to any section where you're struggling with pacing or back story--or even the whole book.
Here it is, in tweet form:
Too much blue (back story), not enough yellow (action). Problem: identified. #amrevising pic.twitter.com/REo9pDf8wU
— S. L. Saboviec (@Saboviec) September 4, 2015
Yellow = Action
Orange = Dialogue
Blue = Back story
Pink = Setting
Green = Exposition/explanation
Purple = World-building
#amrevising
— S. L. Saboviec (@Saboviec) September 4, 2015
Here's a look at my (old) first three pages:
My CP had noted I'd included too much back story. "But," I groused, "the reader needs to know this!" No, she doesn't, and I very well knew that, which is why I decided to visually see what she was telling me. There it was, all blue and chunky across my pages.
In my next step, I noted whose back story it was. I was surprised to find--as my CP had commented--I'd repeated information both within the same blue section and later on. I didn't feel I was doing that, but when I isolated it and stared at each "Ebena back story" or "Kwasi back story" section, I discovered she was (of course) right. This was a secondary effect I didn't realize would happen, and one that helped me tighten things up even more.
Here's a look at my Chapter 2, which is, in my humble opinion, a good mixture of action, setting, exposition, dialogue, and back story. (This book is the second in a series, so I didn't have a lot of world-building that I needed to tell the reader yet because it's been established in the first novel. But even if it hasn't, you want to use world-building sparingly by showing it at work, especially in earlier chapters.)
The purpose of this exercise is to see if you've got big sections of page with only one color. Are fifteen paragraphs solid pink? In today's market, in most genres, no one wants to read your scene-setting for that long. Is 75% of your book orange? You have a problem with filtering your action through talking heads.
Yellow action is the most important--move the story forward--but don't forget the other colors, too. You don't serve a slab of beef for three meals in a row; you add spices and complement it with baked potato and steamed vegetables.
Here's the thing: you can categorize and highlight however you want. I'm all about teaching a man to fish and giving you tools for your writer toolbox and all that. I'm not about dictating how you should be writing. Make it work for you.
"Exposition," to me, is the here-and-now explanation about how the character feels about something or someone, whereas "back story" is something that happened in the past. "Setting," I discovered, became both the world and character descriptions. You can play around with these and sub-categorize them if you like, but I didn't want to get too granular for this exercise.
When it came to dialogue tags, "he said" usually revealed a juicy tidbit of plot, so I highlighted it yellow for action. If you find your dialogue isn't moving the plot forward, you might want to assign a different color for those spots you know you have trouble.
If you're not sure how to fix your work, get a second copy of your favorite book and mark it all up with highlighter using this method. Watch how Super Awesome Bestselling Author weaves the gorgeous colors together to create a tapestry of page-turning story. You'll find, as you get deeper into the book, he gets away with big chunks of back story or dialogue--but he varies it. Rarely does he insert fourteen chapters of back story (and I can think of a book by a best-selling author I one-starred when she did this because come on with the plot already).
So, my dear readers, what do you think? Can you think of a sticky piece of writing you're struggling with that you can apply this to? I'd love to hear follow-up stories of what you discovered after you did this.
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