How To Self-Edit the First Chapter of Your Book (Part Two)
Welcome back! In my last post, I covered the first two strategies I recommend to authors who want to self-edit the first chapter of their book.
Why self-edit? Because you want to make your work as ready for your readers as you possibly can make it. Whether you’re sending work to a beta reader, a critique partner, a pro editor, or a paying consumer, the right time to self-edit that book is before, not after, your work is in someone else’s hands.
If you missed the last post, you can catch up on the heavy load the opening line carries and the best place to introduce your main character here:
Does your opening line intrigue the reader?
Have you introduced one of the protagonists within the first few lines/first paragraph?
Have you given us a deep stake or clear emotional anchor on the first page?
Have you established a clear theme in the opening chapter?
Do you conclude the chapter with a clear story beat and exit hook?
Now let’s tackle strategy #3.
Have you given us a deep stake or clear emotional anchor on the first page?
Before I explain how to look for this in your first chapter, here are simple definitions for deep stakes and emotional anchors.
deep stake: the reason why the timing, the action, and the characters in your story matters right NOW
A deep stake creates a sense of urgent foreboding or immediate risk. A deep stake will work hand in hand with a gorgeous first line to make the reader quickly understand and feel what’s going on in your story and why that reader should care.
Think about it this way. YOU love your characters and your book. I assume you feel that love or you wouldn’t have spent the time and energy to write anything at all. As legions of writers will attest to, scrolling social media, cleaning, or coming up with literally anything else to do is easier than writing. If you care about this story, one way to convey why you care is to craft a first chapter that allows the reader to care as well.
I believe the job is a lot simpler than you think. Book readers WANT to get lost in your story. Simply by picking up your work, looking at the free preview on Amazon, or scanning the first page, they are giving you an opportunity. Seal the deal by showing the reader as quickly as you can why they should care about your book.
Take a look at the deep stakes set up by the prologue of Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao:
The Hunduns were coming. A whole herd of them, rumbling across the wilds, storring up a dark storm of dust through the night.
Now with just two sentences, I feel the terror, I see the landscape, and I am intrigued. What is this herd and what kind of defense is possible against them? This opening sets deep stakes for the reader. What’s at risk? I can’t know all the specifics yet, but I already can see a world where there are dangerous herds that rumble through the night. By the third and fourth sentences of the prologue, I’m completely immersed in this terrifying and dangerous moment.
Their rotund, faceless bodies, made of spirit metal, glinted under the silver half-moon and sky full of glittering stars.
A lesser pilot would have had to fight off nerves to go into battle, but Yang Guang wasn’t fazed.
The second paragraph describes the metallic claws of the war machine that the pilot is driving into this storm of Hundun. The stakes are clear: victory against the Hundun or a miserable death. War machines, pilots, spirit metal… I don’t even know who my main characters are or why I should care about them, but the stakes of this world, what the threats are, what’s happening right now are so clear that I have to drop everything so I can see this moment play out.
Let’s say, though, you’re not writing a futuristic reimagining of Chinese history and mythology. What if you’re writing a thriller or a romance novel? Maybe an emotional anchor is a better strategy to ensure you’re grabbing the reader in a compelling (but consensual!) chokehold.
emotional anchor: a clear scene or moment of emotion that sets up the character’s journey so the reader knows what to expect from the ride
Placing an emotional anchor in your book means more than having an character experience emotions. Emily McIntire’s dark romance Hooked opens with these two lines:
It feels different than I thought it would.
Killing him.
I don’t know about you but when I read those lines, I need to know how the character feels and why the experience of murdering someone feels different than expected! But more than simply the shock value of that opening line, the prologue sets up the character of Hook so we know what kind of man he is and what to expect from his journey. In just a few short pages, Hook reveals:
that he’s the monster this victim helped create
that he’d hoped his victim would beg, even just a little
the bloodshed brings him a high
that despite all this, the murder felt anticlimactic
that he’s the hardest man in the universe to please
that he is messy, that his innocence was stolen
that he has no regrets
that he feels rage at the wrong things (smashing a gold pocket watch with as much violence as he murdered the victim)
and that the man he killed is his own uncle
For a dark romance novel, this opening brings the darkness, the brokenness, the viciousness immediately to life. Whether you love Hook or hate him, are fascinated or disgusted by him, you know what to expect because the author has created an emotional anchor that drags you into the depths. I am fully prepared for this book to be dark. I know this character will do bad things. And that begs the question: Am I in or am I out?
A lackluster first chapter may move characters through scenes, explore backstory, even develop an inciting incident, but if you want to hook your reader (pun intended here) have you given your reader a Hook moment? Do they know what they’re getting and have to commit to the ride or get off? Use strong stakes and emotional anchors as quickly in that first chapter as you can.
After assessing your stakes and emotions, there is a structural aspect of the first chapter that you won’t want to overlook.
Have you established a clear theme in the opening chapter?
We don’t have to look much farther than the prologue of Hooked to see themes already presenting themselves. If you’ve studied the niche or sub-genre you’re writing in, you likely already know the tropes your readers are expecting. But the subtle sibling of tropes are themes.
While tropes are on-page devices that convey in a very self-aware manner certain story devices (unreliable narrator, enemies to lovers, fish out of water, etc.) themes are the messages you want your reader to pick up on as they read your work.
Themes are often tied to characters’ arcs. For example, if you’re writing an enemies to lovers story, there is always a reason why the characters are enemies. Using that trope as a device, you may explore how the characters became enemies in the first place. In so doing, you’ll likely touch on the topics of identity, redemption, insecurity, vulnerability. Themes take these broad topics and send specific messages about these issues to your readers.
In Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time, the protagonist is on a journey through time to stop a murder before it happens. The book blurb reveals this, so this is not a spoiler. What the book itself conveys very subtly and in some places very clearly is that this is not just the story of trying to right one wrong—the murder of a man by Jen’s son. This is a journey that Jen has to take through her life to explore how she’s failed in her roles as a mother and wife. What she has done, not done, and could have done better as she pursued a legal career and family.
The opening chapter shows Jen trying to talk herself through the worry of her son not being home on time while she’s making a half-hearted attempt to carve a pumpkin for Halloween because everyone else in the neighborhood has.
The disconnection Jen feels from what she’s doing and her motivations continue as she travels back and unravels the mystery of who her son murdered and why. Without smacking the reader in the face with a message, this thriller tackles issues and sends messages through beautifully nuanced themes brought to life in scenes like the first one. Take a look at this screen grab of the Amazon Look Inside preview. This is the third paragraph of the first chapter.
Theme is hard at work and I know (because I loved this book!) that the themes are delivered through consistent moments where Jen faces exactly what she does right here: She thinks she’s screwing everything up, but she still finds beauty in the jagged edges of her life.
Can you spot-check your first chapter and see if you’ve laid the groundwork of your work’s critical themes? If you can’t find the themes easily, I can guarantee your reader won’t either.
Last but definitely not least,
Do you conclude the chapter with a clear story beat and exit hook?
This test might be a little easier AND a little harder at the same time. First, let’s tackle the story beat.
story beat: events or actions that are critical to the development of the plot which propel. the narrative in a certain direction
Story beats are not just things that happen in your writing. A scene in which characters meet at a coffee shop to talk about committing a murder is not necessarily a story beat. The beat is the action one of those characters takes to make sure that someone else other than the intended victim is actually killed.
In a romance, beats can move the romantic plot toward the Happy Ever After or away from it. Or maybe those beats allow the character to pursue a goal or show the character refusing the call/resisting the goal.
A Love Song For Ricki Wilde ends chapter one with a gorgeous, clear story beat. Our main character Ricki has a dream but no way to pursue it. She’s trapped in a family that doesn’t understand her and has chosen a path that departs from the family legacy. She wants to open a floral shop and does not want to stay in the mortuary business. Once she voices her plans to her family, she’s fired and cut off. In the last few moments of her employment at Wilde Funeral Home, Ricki meets Ms. Della, a woman who has lost the love of her life and needs to plan for his final rest.
As Ms. Della and Ricki talk, the chapter ends with a significant beat, a moment when everything changes for Ricki and for the direction of the book: Ms. Della offers up a location in Brooklyn where Ricki can open her shop.
If you have not read the book, don’t rely on my oversimplification of the opening chapter. Read it for yourself. It’s a magical, lyrical, and brilliant book that brings the Harlem Renaissance to life while exploring family histories, legacies, and love. What’s important to learn from chapter one is how a correctly placed story beat will function like a road sign: take this path and the story moves in a completely new direction. The offer leads to acceptance and by chapter two, Ricki is experiencing her first fall in New York.
If you have a strong story beat in chapter one, you’re going to reveal the path ahead to your reader. How do you make them unable to resist not just walking but running down that road? A brilliant exit hook.
Just like a winning opening line makes a reader want to keep reading the first pages of your book or chapter, an exit hook entices the reader to turn the page and keep going. So many authors forget that when a chapter ends, the reader has a natural pause or break in the action.
We don’t want to make it too easy for the reader to set our book down during that pause. In fact, I want to feel the need to come back to that book as soon as possible. A strong exit hook will leave me thinking, wondering, and waiting for the moment when I can aside work, life, and chores and abandon all responsibility so I can get back into your story.
Since we already know that Jen’s son commits murder in Wrong Place Wrong Time, the challenge is huge. We know the chapter one exit hook has to get us to turn the page and keep reading. I mean, we know Todd killed a man right in front of his parents. There are only so many things that happen at this point, right? What can a mother say that we haven’t already heard or thought of before?
This exit hook is so unexpected, I don’t know what to think, and therefore am left curious, interested, and desperate to know what Jen will do next:
Whoa. So this mother who literally has a dead man’s blood on her hands is staring at her son, Todd, and telling us… I know so much about so many people. I don’t know anything about this person who I gave birth to, raised, and now have watched kill someone on the street in front of our family home.
I already know from the early parts of chapter one that Jen has an interesting marriage and family life, but now? I want to know if this is the origin story of a serial killer, of a mother who will turn her son in, of a family that manages this secret forever…
I have no idea what is going to happen and the hook is original and unexpected. I need to know how this story develops, so the exit hook did its job. I turned that page and read every chapter until I reached the end. And wow, was it worth the journey!
If you’re working through drafts of a novel, I hope these tips for self-editing the first chapter give you clear strategies for self-revision. Are any of these tips new to you? Did the examples entice you to read the books? Let me know what you’ve tried and how it worked!