Are You The Master Of Your Story?

Part 08: How To Start With Your First Chapter?

Hello readers,

Okay, we're off with a good beginning. Your book's appearance looks great, summary and description in hand and your prologue is perfect.

Let's get into the main course; Writing the first chapter of your whole book!

There are a lot of styles of writing the first chapter according to whatever you feel like it, the genre you're going to start writing in and the story you have in mind. But we'll go slow and in detail, however we are listing some of the categories. So this is, according to me, how you should write the first chapter in every genre possible.

• Romance
In romance, usually any type of writing can work; of course not the script type. For an example; you can start off with either the author's point of view or the protagonist. (That's the classic ways anyway, if you found any types, please tell me!)
Also, for romance, you can write it the cliche way by starting off with something bad that happened to the protagonist. Or, preferable and I think it's the best method, you can just start off by introducing your character indirectly.

No, not the "....I hate school and I hate Mondays.
Hi, I'm Jessica, and I'm your average 18 years old high schooler...."

This: "....I might hate Mondays and school but at least I have my best friends to cheer me up.
"Jessica!" My best friend shouted through the hallway as she hugged me, a smile of longing plastered on her face...."

Introducing the character the indirect way will help the reader learn more about the character the story is about while being held to not know everything about them, making them excited to follow the story up until they found another clue.

(I mean, maybe that character is relatable to the reader?)

• Comedy
Here we are, in the most favorite genre of books, series and films. Though, this genre can be divided into thousands of types, they all have almost the same structure when it comes to books and episodes or films; if the script or the writing is full of life, count it as comedy.

For comedy, it is simple; if you're going for a script, dramatic animations are a must! (For an example:
Stew: nah, I'm probably the most careful person between all of you! *still looking behind him towards his two friends and he kept walking away from them*
Ann: Uh.... Stew? Don't you think you need to-
Stew: *slips off and falls flat face on the floor* ugh!
Ann: *cringes*
John: *face palms* That Guy never learns his lesson.)

But if you are going with a normal narrative kind of writing, just go with introducing your characters slowly, but since it's the first chapter, start off with small but still hilarious jokes; since you are giving readers what they want, but at the same time you are trying to keep your best jokes to the last, so the reader keeps coming for more.

Although, the taste in comedy is not the same for everyone, like some people enjoy dark humor and dirty jokes, while others can't handle that and enjoy puns or sarcastic comebacks. So choose wisely your type of jokes so you won't offend so many people.

• Horror & Thriller
Here we are! In the genres that are popular too but I could never get scared of when they are in a book for some reason.... (maybe because I don't get shocked or frightened easily except when you jump on me, and in books they can't do that?)

But in books, and even in films and movies, it is best if your book's first chapter started off in the calm state. You don't want to frighten the souls out of your readers when they don't even understand what's going on. And you don't want to ruin the thrill of the book by stating everything up.

• Random
Oh yeah, this is a genre (in Wattpad anyway....). Although, this genre isn't comedy: don't mix both!
Comedy is a genre for a funny story, but Random is a genre for a weird but too creative story. It's like you can't put your story under the sci-fic category but you can't put it under humor too, so Random was born.

Usually, Random uses scripts, because Random books can have some comedy scenes in it. But that doesn't mean you can't write your story in the narrative way. But, just to be clear, if you aren't going with the script type, you story have to be very weird to be written! (For an example, I've been trying to write a book for fun that has a lot of characters crossover-ed... Is that even a word? And even the story is weird enough.)

So, for your first chapter, try to confuse people but at the same time introduce the characters and events indirectly? Yeah, I think that would work better.

Anyway, most of the genres, for the first chapter, need to either introduce the important events or the characters and special events.

Also, not all authors do this but, you can try adding an important picture (maybe how the character looks like or where the event happened, sometimes even the outfit or pets the character found or own?), a video of a song you chose for the reader to listen to while reading or just a small quote that will work with your chapter.

I hope this helped you. If you still have more questions for me to answer, feel free to send them to me!

{The Black Rose}