Why Does Your First Chapter Suck?

When all else fails, add pixie dust.

 
The first chapter is the door to the rest of the book. The first chapter is a fist of firsts: first sentence, first hook, first introduction to the cast of characters, first goal, first twist, first turn, and first cliffhanger.

Newbie writers know this, and try to stuff everything into the first chapter.

And it sucks big time.

So what went wrong?

The newbie scratches her head, and re-reads one or two famous books in her genre and discovers … HEY! What the heck? Mr. Famous Writer didn’t put in any of that stuff about Theme and Setting and Backstory That Makes You Love The Character, and so on. What’s going on?

There are four possibilities.

1. Mr. Famous Writer has banked on previous successes but made a hash of it this time, out of laziness.

2. Mr. Famous Writer’s book succeeded despite, not because of, the first chapter.

3. Mr. Famous Writer knows how to break the rules in a way that still works—and in a way that Newbie Writers would be better off not trying yet.

4. Mr. Famous Writer did in fact follow all (or most) the rules of a good first chapter and simply did it so well that one doesn’t notice.

Newbie Writers always want to believe (1) or (2). Sometimes, they’ll grudgingly grant (3). But almost always, the Correct Answer is (4). The first chapter of the famous book in fact does do exactly what a first chapter should, but so smoothly and subtly – or so blatantly and obviously – that somehow the Newbie Writer can’t believe it.

When I say, “Newbie Writer,” I mean, “Guilty as Charged.” I’ve been there, done that, and I’m trying to learn better. With that in mind, I’m going to be looking at the first chapters of several well-known books in my genre (fantasy), to see what the author did, and why it worked. It’s quite possible, in fact, inevitable, that not everything in the first chapter (or book) worked for every reader. It’s easy, but stupid, to be dismissive when something obviously did capture thousands, even millions of readers.

What works? What makes a first chapter into the kind of door that invites the reader further into the book?

I’d say there are five “Firsts” that must be introduced — and must be awesome — to add up to a great first chapter:

1. The First Sentence
2. The First Hook
3. The First Character
4. The First Exposition
5. The First Twist

How those five things are handled will determine (or, at any rate, should determine) the tone and structure of the rest of the book.

The Goddess of Dance

Today I’m thrilled to join Anna Kashina‘s blog tour for her newest novel, The Goddess of Dance. 

Which is the Trickiest Book in a Trilogy?

Which is the trickiest book in a trilogy to write?

Probably the second book. During the first book, you’re still on that adrenaline rush. The third book (if you’ve planned your ending at least) is the big climax, so it’s just a small matter (ha ha ha ha) of tying of loose strings.

But, oh, that second book. That dread middle!

Elana Johnson has a great post on this:

I think Book Two is the hardest. Let’s just get that out in the open up front. The author has the challenge of living up to Book One, and the characters aren’t new. The world isn’t new. The problems aren’t new. We got to see all of those things in the first book, so Book Two usually suffers from Little Sister Syndrome. In fact, in my exploration of trilogies, I read many (MANY) a second book that I felt was exactly like the first. I felt like I’d read the same book twice.

If your first book has already been published and found some fans, you’re problem is worse. Now you have the added pressure of pleasing your fans as you sit and write. Argh. This can feel like you have a crowd peering over you shoulder as you type, and there’s no faster way to hit writer’s block. Mike Mullin discusses this in an interview with Lissa Price:

LISSA PRICE: Mike, your first book, ASHFALL, had tremendous awards and honors. You were one of NPR’s top 5 YA novels, and Kirkus had you on a Best Teen Book List as well as a starred review. There were many more honors. How did any of this affect you as you wrote the sequel, ASHEN WINTER? 

MIKE MULLIN: It has certainly increased my writerly anxiety. The question is always hovering just out of sight behind my left shoulder: Can I write anything as good as the first book? Answering that question will be up to my readers, of course. I’m not the only one who thinks so either.

A trilogy is the three act structure divided into novels. The second act is like the second line of a joke…the repetition of a pattern that will finally be broken in the third act. There is some repetition, therefore, inherent in the structure. While you don’t want to simply repeat everything that happened in
Book 1, you have to repeat some elements. How can you maintain this balance?

Here’s a quick and dirty list of seven tricks to get through the second book. Not all are necessary, of course (except the first, higher stakes–stakes should rise continually throughout a series).

1. The stakes are higher.
2. The protagonist is more powerful now than in the first book.
3. The protagonist loses a major ally.
4. The protagonist must make an unexpected alliance.
5. The love interest loses out (temporarily) to a rival.
6. A (false) victory for the hero. The reader knows it’s not over, but not the hero.
7. A (false) victory for the villain–a dark night of the soul–in which the villain seemingly prevails.

WiP Wendesday – Excerpt from Blood

They swam away too quickly for her to follow.

Why Do Authors Make Readers Wait?

One of the rules–proved upon the soiled reputations of authors who have dared break it–is that authors should never respond to reviews. This is good advice, and I’ve never strayed.

Until now.

In an Amazon review, one person commented:

The only thing I hate about this series is that since they have all already “been written” according to the author, why am I waiting? I think that is nothing but cruelty.

Ouch.

If there are readers out there who indeed imagine that I have the entire series, perfect and polished, lurking on my hard-drive, and that I have been withholding this product from readers for no reason except to toy with my fans, as some sort of cruel fae might … I feel obligated to demure. The opposite is true. I bring you the books as fast as I can; indeed, given that I rush my editor and typos slip through, perhaps faster than I should.

I am of course to blame for the delay, but this is a fault in my abilities, not in my intentions.

I have a terrible tendency to see a thing as complete once it is complete in my mind. I do have a “finished” draft of the entire story arc…with just a few blank spots…and the end more or less complete…. And so I naively thought it would not take me more than a month or two to trim the sails on each of the twelve volumes and send them sailing into the ocean of readers. And then I foolishly compounded the error by boasting about it, because I thought, well, then I’ll have to keep my word or be most embarrassed.

And here I am, most embarrassed.

Here’s what happened. As I took the draft of the first book, Initiate, I changed a few things from the draft. Not a lot, just improved it in some ways in response to comments by beta readers, and so on. Then in Book 2, Taboo, I had to change a few more things to keep it consistent with Initiate, and then in Book 3, Sacrifice, even more changes were needed to be consistent with the first three books… And Book 4, Root, had even more changes required, and things were getting more complicated, and then I came to Wing, and so many things needed to be changed, and the whole rest of the series drafts, as I had written them ages ago, were now out of date, that I felt as though everything was falling apart.

I had to go back to the outlining stage. It’s counter-intuitive, but fixing a faulty draft is harder than outlining an unwritten book from scratch. If you have a draft, there are many scenes and plot-lines that you struggle to save, even though it might be easier to just toss them away. For instance, I knew for a long time that Umbral would kidnap Dindi, but when exactly did this occur?

When I write, I feel more like a detective than a puppeteer. I don’t want to pull strings and yank my characters around. I want to discover what “really” happened. It’s particularly tricky in Faearth, since everyone sees the world in different colors. When someone knows something is as important as what they know. The past erupts constantly into the present in Visions, but these Visions are always incomplete, and what import they carry is often changed by who sees them, and what else has happened since.

I admit a particular fondness for Wing. Maybe I lingered over it because I enjoyed writing it so much. But also, I simply couldn’t bear it to be less than perfect. I can’t tell you how many times I rewrote scenes, changed the order of things, wrestled with timelines, looking for the perfect “reveal.”

And then there were the weeks when I despaired of making it right, and I fell into a despond, and wrote nothing day after day, and my unopened laptop followed me around the house like a accusation.

The day came when I opened the laptop again. I started writing again. I kept the scenes I loved most, and tossed out the scenes which had been dragging the book down. I re-wrote from scratch what needed re-writing and I finished a “rich outline” of both Book 5 and Book 6. (About 30,000 words for each book). Then I worked as fast as I could, to make up for all those months, to bring you Wing.

But I also promised myself that I would only release Wing once it was as good as I could make it. Even if I missed another deadline, even it took another year, another ten years. The hardest part after that was to be honest with myself, to admit when I had reached the limit of my ability, and the book was done.

Here is the truth about writers: we teeter between the burning drive to finish this work and the freezing despair that this work falls short. There’s a part of me that would still be working on Wing right now, if I could, because it still needs improving in a thousand ways, and yet I know that it’s as good as I can make it. That’s the terrible thing, that a book can be as good as you (talentless wretch) can make it, but not as good as it should be.

There is one consolation. That is the next book. Ooooh, I am having such fun with Blood! It’s 50,000 words complete, but I expect it to be at least twice that wordcount by the end–we shall see. But, oh, what fun. New villains rear up (well, they were always in the background before, but now they are right there, menacing Dindi in person), old friends return (but I won’t say who!), Finnadro and Umbral get better acquainted, there’s the small matter of saving the world, and we finally find out the answer to the question… is Kavio dead?

And I promise you, I will get Blood to you as soon as I can once it s as good as I can make it.

3 Clever Ways To Use Metastory

Metastory is a story about story.