Beginnings are arguably one of the hardest parts of a story to write because if you mess them up, very few people, if anyone will continue reading. The story must capture a reader’s attention from the very first paragraph. A messy or boring beginning could also get your manuscript rejected by a literary agent or an editor, even if the rest of the story is great. I’m going to break this article up into three parts: the beginning, the middle and the end, because each section of your story requires different techniques. 

This probably sounds a little different than the usual writing advice, but it’s not. You’ll often see this written as “your opening sentence needs to hook the reader,” and you will be given examples of exciting or interesting openings famous authors have written over the years. The problem is, no one ever explains what a hook actually is at the simplest level.

 

This tip signals to a newer writer that every opening sentence has to start with an action scene, a dream sequence, violence, or dialogue. These openings tend to be loaded with uninteresting things because there’s nothing engaging the reader’s curiosity. A writer can’t throw paragraphs of action at a reader that’s not yet invested. Everything is just happening without a purpose. The dream sequence ends up being a pointless waste of time. The dialogue is coming from characters we don’t care about yet.

So instead of saying “write a beginning that hooks the reader,” my advice is to write an opening that gets the reader asking questions they want answers to. So that could be a subtle opening sentence connected to a series of paragraphs that push and pull at the reader, making them ask questions while also answering those questions answers little-by-little.  

I’m going to use the first four paragraphs “The Varcross Key” as an example. 

Dawn set the surrounding mountains aflame, painting the snowy peaks vermilion as my packed SUV emerged from the Eisenhower Tunnel. 

Notice how there’s no action here. There’s no tense moment. No one is standing in a bloody mess. The clocks aren’t all striking thirteen. But, there’s something subtle about this sentence that should spark the reader’s interest. There’s a packed SUV. Is the main character going on vacation, or is he moving? In order to get the answer to that question, we have to keep reading. 

Steady streams of tears cast a rippling haze over my vision, which made weaving between traffic even more reckless. Caution signs for steep grades coupled with flashing amber exits for runaway truck ramps had me giving every semi I passed a much wider berth.

Now we know that the main character is upset about something, and we don’t know what that is yet. So the readers are probably asking “why is this character crying? What is he speeding away from? In this opening paragraph, I’ve not only established a bit of the setting, but I’ve also planted several questions in the reader’s mind. They should now be able to paint a vague picture of where the character is based on the descriptions of the highway and truck traffic while also wondering exactly where this character is and what’s gotten him so shaken up. So, on to paragraph two.

After another mile of descent, I pulled off of the busy Colorado interstate and onto a scenic outlook, cracking the driver’s side window to let in a rush of late-autumn air. 

Now I’m weaving more information into the narrative, taking a break from the character to answer questions about where we are and what time of the year it is. This is a good way to take otherwise boring information and turn it into atmosphere and mood. Instead of just telling the location and weather, I’m allowing the reader to experience it. This is why you’ll often hear “don’t start a story with the weather.” It’s not just because it’s a cliche, but it’s also because you’re not engaging the reader’s senses and curiosity if you’re just starting with ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’ 

At eleven thousand feet, I had expected something fresher than what actually filled the cabin. The stench of burning brakes from the passing convoy made me roll the window back up.

In this sentence, more of the character’s mood shows. Such a beautiful place should be serene and clean, but the main character is experiencing noisy and dirty. We can surmise that he’s probably coming from a place like Denver, which is also noisy and dirty. So we start out with the character expecting something only to find something different. This is very subtle, and the reader may not pick up on it at first, but this is actually foreshadowing a bit of the inciting incident. 

I leaned forward, wiping my face with the collar of my shirt. Sitting alone for hours gave me nothing to do but watch the road and dwell on every decision that led to this moment. In my mind, everything was still the way it was when I left home at eighteen.

In paragraph three, I’m going to start answering those questions presented in the first paragraph. So in these sentences, we get a vague answer as to why this character is upset, but we’re still not given everything. What decisions did he make? Also, in the next sentence, we start to get a sense of the character’s age without specifically stating it. We know he’s older than 18, but we don’t know how much older. Again, all of this is passively engaging the reader’s curiosity, manipulating them in a way to keep going by giving them just enough while also keeping it vague.

As a teenager, I would look in the mirror and imagine with doe-eyed fascination what my life would be like if I could live somewhere far away, but those eyes were often black and blue. 

Now we’re starting to get answers as to who this character is and what may be causing him to be upset. But this only leads to further questions as well. Notice how I never info dump here. I allow the reader to naturally get to know who this person is through the tone of his inner voice as he continues to drip-feed the reader information about his life.

It was like I had blinked and eight years had passed, only to now see the same tired and bruised eyes but on a grown man’s face. 

More answers. We now know how old this character is. He’s 26. I never explicitly state his age; instead, I allow the reader to surmise this through how much time has passed since he first left home. I also elaborate more on the abuse he’s suffered. 

All the sterling dreams I thought would be realized by now were tarnished by falling in love with the wrong person.

And finally, the reader can put the pieces together. He’s in the mountains of Colorado, and he’s moving away. He’s crying and driving recklessly, meaning he has anxiety issues. We know he’s driving away from some place he hates only to find his trip through this part of Colorado was not what he expected (foreshadowing). He’s 26 years old and has suffered abuse for most of his life, most recently at the hands of the person he fell in love with and is now running away from. 

When I wrote these four opening paragraphs, I specifically crafted them to keep the reader engaged while spoon-feeding them bits of information about the setting and the character without it becoming a boring or overwhelming. The point of each paragraph was to establish the overall mood going forward, present a problem the character is running away from, paint a vivid picture of the setting in the reader’s mind, and do all that while keeping the reader asking questions. 

This is what it means to ‘hook’ a reader. None of these paragraphs above were particularly flashy or action-packed because they didn’t need to be. 

Now, keeping this in mind, there’s something to watch out for. This method can backfire if you’re presenting a whole lot of questions and mysteries for the reader without providing any answers or payoff within the first chapter. This will eventually tank your pacing and frustrate the reader if they have gotten through an entire scene just as confused as they were in the first sentence. 

This is pretty common writing advice, but so many new writers don’t heed it. Depending on the lengths of your chapters, the inciting incident could come in chapter one or chapter four, but if over ten thousand words have gone by and the reader still has no idea what the inciting incident is, you have a pacing problem. 

 

Keep in mind, an inciting incident doesn’t have to be the main conflict. It’s the defining moment that sets the plot of the book in motion, changing the character’s path. When you’re writing a story, you need to always write with a purpose in the back of your mind. If your character is waking up in the morning, getting dressed, eating breakfast, going to a coffee shop, all while making small talk with every secondary character in your story, congratulations, you’ve just made a very boring beginning most people likely stopped reading back in paragraph one. 

However, you can take all of those cliched openings and put a twist on them. For example, Susanne Collins starts The Hunger Games by having Katniss waking up. You know, the mortal sin no writer should commit according to every author-tuber out there! But there’s something not quite right with any of it. She’s waking up, but as readers, we’re bombarded with a scene that is making us ask questions. The author keeps drip-feeding us information that sets up the scene, atmosphere and mood while foreshadowing something called ‘the reaping.’ So she took a cliched opening, subverted the reader’s expectations, and then put the inciting incident toward the end of chapter 1. 

In The Varcross Key, the inciting incident happens in chapter one as well when Leo is almost out of gas. He decides to continue to Varcross to refuel before turning north toward Washington, but he ends up veering off the road and into another world entirely. 

So, since the inciting incident is what sets the main plot of the story in motion, you want to have that moment as close to the start as possible. There are a surprising number of writers on reddit (of course) who boast that their inciting incident doesn’t come until 20,000 words in, like their story is the exception to the rule. Could you imagine reading almost a quarter of a novel and still not know what the hell the plot is about because the characters are just meandering about their normal lives? 

If you’re self-publishing, you can obviously do whatever you want. If you know how to craft an interesting prologue, knock yourself out. If you’re querying agents or are unsure of how to make your prologue not read like one giant world-building infodump, then it’s probably better to skip it altogether.

 

I wish I had done this when I wrote The Mark of Amulii, because the prologue wasn’t really needed. Everything in there could have just been a very short chapter one, or it could have been woven into chapter one. 

Whenever I’m beta reading or critiquing another writer’s story, if I see a long prologue, it usually means I’m in for a rough read. I haven’t been wrong yet, and I think this is why a lot of agents will reject a manuscript with one. Does it happen all the time? Of course not. Does it happen often enough that literary agents and traditionally published authors advise new writers against it? Yes.

One thing we’ll learn quickly is that we are not special snowflakes. When we’re new, we’ve accomplished nothing yet. When you put anything out there as an unproven writer, you want to make sure your work has the best chance of succeeding. Sometimes that means giving up things you want to keep. A lot of writers call this ‘killing your darlings.’ 

Am I saying to never write a prologue? Again, no. Despite all the debates and hate that prologues seem to generate (I did not intentionally rhyme this, but I’m keeping it in), I do believe they are there for a specific type of reader. I am not one of those readers. If I see a prologue in a fantasy book, I usually skip it because all of that information usually occurs throughout the story anyways. 

An example of this would be the prologue in The Way of Kings. The prologue is just confusing and clunky, and the events that happened are eventually explained and told in greater detail as the series goes on. I could have completely skipped it and it would not have mattered in the slightest. In fact, I would have rather skipped it. One of my friends who reads fantasy all the time says he enjoys reading the prologues provided they don’t overstay their welcome.

If chapter one of your book reads like a list of ‘begats’ in the book of Genesis, then no one is going to remember who these people are. Back in my critique partner days, one story I read had ten different characters that were introduced in chapter one. It was mostly just names and paragraphs of physical descriptions and job descriptions and backstory. I didn’t even know who the hell the main character was, and by the time I got to chapter 2, I had already forgotten everyone’s names and physical descriptions, and I wasn’t about to go back through and reread who a character was when their names came up again. 

 

If your reader has to keep referencing earlier chapters like a glossary just to keep track of who each of your characters are, then this needs to be fixed. If your book has a lot of main characters like a lot of fantasies do, you’ll want to introduce a couple at a time, establish those characters’ traits and then introduce another two in another scene or chapter. Don’t unload your entire arsenal on the reader in the first few pages. I’m more likely to remember what a character looks like when I read an entire scene between that character and another one while being subtly reminded of physical traits throughout the book. 

No, don’t keep describing every physical detail, but you can restate things like a character’s eye color, hair color, physique or skin color in creative ways throughout the story. If their physical characteristics are important (for example someone being a giant, or missing an eye, or being grotesquely fat), then make sure the reader can imagine those characteristics. How many people knew EXACTLY what Baron Vladimir Harkonnen looked like even before watching the movie? As for everything else, most of your readers will likely end up making up what they think each character looks like based on their inner narrative voice or perhaps their own appearance. 

For example, Victor in The Life of Puppets was this thin, long-haired 21 year-old-man with dark skin. In my mind, because of how child-like his voice was, he was this twinky sour cream-colored 16-year-old boy with short black hair in my head. It wasn’t until his skin color was mentioned again much later in the book that I realized I’d really screwed up my mental image of him, but it was too late. Every time I’d read Victor, my mind automatically switched to that. Hell, Nurse Ratched in my mind looked like Rosie from the Jetsons who had this sliding compartment door where her tentacles and drills would magically appear from.

So, unless your characters have very defining and unique features, it’s often times not worth repeating that often if you don’t want to, but if the character’s appearance is important to you, there’s a much better chance of retention if you introduce each character slowly. 

Similar to introducing too many characters, bogging a reader down with a crapload of backstory at the start is not going to keep them reading. Should a character’s backstory be given? If it’s needed or interesting, then yes. Should it be given in its entirety eight paragraphs into the first chapter? Good lord no. Your beginning should establish a setting, an atmosphere, and a character’s personality as well as what that character wants in the present.

 

The backstory is the flavor you sprinkle throughout the first half of the book, or perhaps the backstory becomes more relevant as the climax is revealed later on. When you meet someone new, do you ask them right away about their childhood or what they were doing last week? Well, if you have any sort of social etiquette at all, no you wouldn’t. So why the hell would you introduce your protagonist to the reader in the same way? The reader should be getting to know who they are at the present time, and once that character actually matters, then we’ll want to know more about their past.

Foreshadowing your inciting incident is another way to keep your reader asking questions all the while keeping them turning the pages because they know something is about to drop. You could have your main character run into a future romantic interest, and you can foreshadow that by having them lock eyes or become really pissed off at one another (foreshadowing an enemies to lovers trope). You could describe a found object as having this strange, intricate design only to later on have that object have some kind of magical ability that changes the main character’s life. 

 

These are just simple, rather cliche examples, but it kind of gives you an idea of what foreshadowing is. It can be something in the reader’s face, or it can be something subtle that unsettles the reader. Foreshadowing events to come is a great way to keep readers hanging off of every word, and it’s a tool you’ll start to use often as you become more experienced in the craft. 

So to wrap this up, if you follow these tips, you’ll start to understand what makes a beginning impactful and what keeps a reader engaged. I’d also like to mention that some genres can break the rules regarding beginnings. For example, a murder mystery usually starts with a murder that the main character needs to solve, so it can get right into the action. A thriller may cast aside the ‘don’t introduce too many characters at once’ rule, and introduce every character because most of them will end up fodder. You can sometimes tell which characters are going to live the longest or die the soonest based on how much attention is given to each character’s description. That’s usually intentional, and since thrillers are shorter and faster paced, you want to get those introductions out of the way as quickly as possible.

This is what I mean by no hard and fast rules. There are rules within your chosen genre, but writing is so complex that sometimes you have to figure out what works best for you and gets you the most engagement. If your beginnings disregard a lot of these tried and true techniques, and you’re wondering why readers are ditching your story after chapter 1, then go over your beginning and see if it’s actually engaging the reader. Have someone else read chapter one and get their feedback. 

Even though the beginning of your story is likely going to be the part you end up rewriting the most, there’s something you need to consider when taking these tips to heart: don’t focus too hard on the advice when you’re writing your first draft. Get what you need to write on paper and worry about hitting all the beats later on. The first draft is always the writer telling themselves the story. It’s not for readers. You have to get that first draft finished before you worry about the other stuff. Everything can be revised and rewritten, but if you’re letting analysis paralysis prevent you from ever finishing chapter one, then there’s no point in following writing advice to begin with. 

Happy writing.