How does your novel start?

I write out of order if I need to, getting scenes I know down and then fill in around. Sometimes the first scene is clear, but it usually ends up being completely reworked at least six times as I learn more about my characters. So I don't stress it until the end. It can always be redone.

As for length, it all depends. Some authors have 50 page chapters. Some have 5. The type of book, your writing style, the pace--all of these things are going to be factors in how long it should be. All I can say is that it should be about as long as the other scenes are. Don't have a 4 page opening scene when everything else is closer to 20.

My advice would be to just skip it if it's tripping you up. Or jot notes about what you think you want and move on.

A scene needs to be as long as it needs to be in order to accomplish what it needs to do. You can have short, long, and medium-length scenes. In fact, it's probably best not to have all your scenes (or chapters) the same length, any more than you want all your paragraphs or sentences to be the same length.

You mention that your first page doesn't flow into the actual story. Well, that might be a clue for you right there. The actual story should begin on page one, not later on. And you may not know exactly where the story begins until you've written more of it, or all of it.

My first sentence from my WIP: 'I woke up this morning at 2:34 am, eastern standard time, because the babies next door were crying.'

My tip about openings: Don't start with your MC waking up.

My wip begins w/ my mc leaving home. I describe him going through his morning before he leaves. I describe why he's leaving and reveal that he's sneaking away. I have him encounter his younger brother and reveal a little more about each of them and the family in general. Then he's off and I pick up w/ him a month or so later, living the life of a mountain man.

typed up, that's about a page and a half.

I rarely write the first page first. Usually I start with a scene that ends up being somewhere in the first third of the story, and then work forward and backward from that point.

Having said that, my novels start with a class lecture, contemplation of murder, a tour of a freak show, and stopping at a diner for waffles.

It either starts on a train with a spooky happening, or it starts with a rental-car drive (soon after, if it were real life) that leads to the MC's accident. The accident sets the whole ball rolling. I still can't decide yet between the two choices. I'm also not through writing it, so I don't stress about it.

The train choice is a bit of foreshadowing and setting setting (ha!) and interesting in its own right. I'll probably choose based on pacing, and whether foreshadowing is of enough benefit that early on in this work. It may give readers a chance to start being interested in the character or the book's voice before her life changes. I need to think about not throwing too much at readers at once in a big splat.

In either case the character is going somewhere after having just arrived in a new country. The big point is that she gets into a car accident. Spooky, irreverent, and intentionally random dark humor plot ensues...

one thing to remember

In my first novel I concentrated on a great ending, a rising pace, lots of plot twists, suspense and mystery. I learned one very important thing.

If you have 50 great chapters and open with a so so one, not one agent will read your work.

If you start with 3 great chapters, then coast, people will stick with you for a while. Give 'em 49 great chapters and a sucky ending, they'll tell you what's wrong and ask for a rewrite.

I feel like you have to write your first chapter like the life of your novel depends on it.

I do a lot of reading. It seems like even relatively recently you could get away with a quirky little opening chapter that sets the mood and all, no real action, just some mystery. But for an author starting out today, the first chapter has to sell your work. Not to the reader, but to the agent. With no agent, you have no readers.

It should set the tone, the pace, the stakes/action/problem and introduce, or at least lead into, the main character. It should show off your writing w/o being overwritten.

The answer to your question depends on the genre I think. If it's a thriller you need a thrill, a hero, some action, and a lead in to the plot that implies what your novel is going to be about. Computer crimes, terrorists, serial killers. Typically you have a little action scene that sets the mood. If it's a book about terrorist bombers you have your good guy foiling a terrorist bombing. Now everyone's oriented, and it's off to the races. For more complex novels it can be a bit of a puzzle getting it off the ground.

It doesn't matter if your chapter is short or long. You just have to introduce your story and get everything moving.

The beginning of the first draft is always whatever will get me writing the rest of the novel.

Whether or not that stays the beginning of the novel is determined by whether or not what the rest of the novel says it needs in the beginning.

Generally, it stays, even if it gets tweaked in the second pass, but that's because I've got lots of experience in writing this stuff.

Until you really know your story, I don't think you can tell where the novel needs to start. Thus, I start with whatever will get me writing and keep going.

My favorite opening of all the openings I've written features the MC fixing a wooden sign that has been knocked askew. Once she's cursed the hammer a few times (she's really not the fix-it type, obviously), she's joined by a 12yo girl with a huge rifle on her back. They don't talk much, but they say just enough to leave you very curious what exactly knocked over the sign, why children in this town carry guns they're barely big enough to control, and whether the named-but-undescribed monsters will come back again tonight. It's a short scene, maybe 900-1,000 words, but what makes it the best I've ever done is that it's exactly the right length.

But I've written some more "action-y" openings I like too. It depends on how the book is paced. The book whose opening I cited above uses a slower, tension-building pace (borrowed from the horror genre).

It certainly takes more skill to captivate readers with character, world-building, and tension-building than with action. Though, action without sufficient attachment to the character experiencing the threat is also boring . . . did I mention openings are the hardest thing of all to write and I usually do them later in the project? Lol

I've taken to the 'opening in the middle of the action' kind of thing, but in the way the reader can see what kind of person the MC is.

Example: in one, I started with a shooting gallery and how the MC was completely used to guns, even though he was obviously young (YA). It also showed his reaction to praise (pretty much nothing) and to an annoying person (provoking a fight).
My WIP at the moment starts with the MC trying to stop a bully without realising said bully is, in fact, a demon. When she finds out, she fights it anyway (but obviously loses to an extent - it'd be too easy otherwise).

Write whatever you want at the start for now, then later go back and see if it's the right place. It may be that you have to cut away half, one, or two or more chapters to find the right starting place (with my YA one, I cut off the first half of the first chapter and it made it so, so much better).

I do the first page as fast as I can and don't worry about it I think it's best to go back and change it when you've finished, so your voice is flowing and you feel comfortable with the style.

In the first chapter of Book 1, he meets two people who are going to be very important in his life, and sets out on his long journey with a mistake. Par for the course, really.

Length of the first scene is apparently 385 words.

I used to try and write in as much order as I could. That was until my recently completed work which was, figuratively speaking, all over the place.

Whether by some subconscious ailment or a quirky twist of fate, my opening chapter was written last.

A philosophy I always adopted throughout the work was to have have big, brash action sequences as a matter of course. So it was only fitting that I started with one.

What would be interesting to note would be if anybody here is working on a sequel to work and have opened with the final scene of the last project. A la the opening of the Rocky movies. (As skin crawlingly cheesey as it sounds)

I try to start with action, something to immediately grab the readers attention. I'll also being up things that make my WIP seem 'unique', like the magic system/hardness of technology. If I don't do action scenes, I know I'll just drag on and on the first few chapters.

I quite like openings, it’s not until I reach the middle part that things fall apart! I have a kind of formula, although it obviously won’t work for everyone. But if it helps...

1. I start with the character already on some kind of ‘journey’ (inner or outer) at the start of a book. I don’t like reading about normal people who have to be forced into action by some big event, I like people that do things. This journey my characters are on is the reason for why they behave as they do throughout the book, but it isn’t necessarily the main conflict. For example, one book started with a guy risking death to spy on someone who has information about his dead father, another has a girl trying to be the first female to enroll at an all-male university. I think it’s important that the story has already started before the book begins and that the character is doing something important right at the start (but not in the middle of a fight/vampire attack/running for life – that’s too dramatic for me).

2. Within the first chapter, introduce an event that changes everything for the character. How soon this happens depends on the story. If the opening pre-event scene is interesting enough, it might wait half a chapter but rarely longer than that. So in the book I mentioned above where the character is trying to find out info about his dead father, the event that changes everything is the man he is following being murdered before he can talk to him. The university story big event was the character saving the life of the scientist she idolises when he is attacked by one of his own creations. This changes the direction of the character’s journey and starts the story’s main arc.

3. Keep the first chapter short (1,000 words) with no real backstory and limit world-building to a few hints that are intruiging to the reader (e.g. hints that the world is an apocayptic wasteland without saying this directly or explaining why). I elaborate in the second chapter so that the reader isn’t left hanging for more than a few pages. If the setting isn’t as important as it is in my books, I would aim for some interesting quirk about the character that makes them worth reading about. Like owning world’s biggest collection of pornographic garden gnomes or having an irrational phobia of fingernails. Something interesting that sets the tone for the book and makes it different.

And that’s it. Works for me. At least until I write the first draft and have to completely redo the first chapter!

I always write in order. It amazes me that some people have talent enough to write their stories in pieces and just patch them together. I am not one of those people, so....
The opening scene of my WIP has my main character standing out in a storm, sitting in wait, if you will, for his prey. It's meant to introduce his overall indifference, his physical endurance (as against the storm), and his powers.

HoneyBadger said:

My first sentence from my WIP: 'I woke up this morning at 2:34 am, eastern standard time, because the babies next door were crying.'

My tip about openings: Don't start with your MC waking up.

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Actually, that sounds like a good waking-up opening. I want to know why the babies are crying, and I suspect the reason is not a happy one.

Of course, if it turns out that the babies are just incidental noise and nothing to do with the story, then you have problem.

So I am curious as to how others do it, I thought it might be helpful for those noobies (like me) who struggle with the beginning of the story. Also the length of the first scene would be helpful.

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Roshan, first-born son of the Hawk chieftain, had never killed a man.

That's the first sentence in my novel. In the opening scene, he discovers that the birthday feast his father planned for him was not (as he had assumed) intended to force him to fight a duel and make his first kill (by which means he would officially become a man in the eyes of his people), but to force him in another direction: marriage.

Roshan has other ideas and by the end of the first scene is on his way to commit an act whose ultimate consequence earns him a death sentence, among other things.


The first scene is 1619 words. The second scene is 1046. The third scene is 4218. Those three scenes comprise the first chapter, at the end of which three plot arcs have been launched.

Poorly.

I didn't write my opening of my current novel until I was almost finished with the first draft. I knew roughly how it needed to happen, but I wasn't ready for it yet, so I left it to percolate. And I wrote about twenty versions of it before I found something that worked. I'm really happy with it now.

I started with a dream (insert embarrassed face here). BUT the book is about dreams, so it's not some metaphor or whatever that leaves the reader frustrated that it wasn't real. I think part of the reason I was avoiding it so long was that I'd read a million things saying not to start with dreams, when in fact I really did need to. And I've gotten great feedback on it so far.

Anyway, I guess my advice is to take your time with it, and if you need to and can get the rest of the book going first, then great! But it depends on your personal process. Good luck!

BethS said:

Actually, that sounds like a good waking-up opening. I want to know why the babies are crying, and I suspect the reason is not a happy one.

Of course, if it turns out that the babies are just incidental noise and nothing to do with the story, then you have problem.

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Wait, you mean ALL the words should contribute to the story?

Thanks!

amschilling said:

I write out of order if I need to, getting scenes I know down and then fill in around.

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I like this answer. Maybe skip around a bit and as you do the opening will become clear to you?

Sometimes the opening doesn't make itself clear until the book is finished. After all, only then can you be entirely sure where everything was going.

(if then)

I have two books on Amazon: Mavis Abbott and Return of the White Raven. I started "Mavis Abbott," "in media res," or in the middle of the action, but I started Return of the White Raven a bit slower because of the period (Neanderthal) in which the book is set, and eased into the action. Both books have "look in" features, at Amazon Books. You might take a look. Maybe it will give you an idea.