Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

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25 Ways To Fight Your Story’s Mushy Middle

For me, the middle is the hardest part of writing. It’s easy to get the stallions moving in the beginning — a stun gun up their asses gets them stampeding right quick. I don’t have much of a problem with endings, either; you get to a certain point and the horses are worked up into a mighty lather and run wildly and ineluctably toward the cliff’s edge. But the middle, man, the motherfucking middle. It’s like being lost in a fog, wandering the wasteland tracts. And I can’t be the only person with this problem: I’ve read far too many books that seem to lose all steam in the middle. Narrative boots stuck in sucking mud.

Seems like it’s time for another “list of 25” to the rescue, then.

Hiyaa! Giddyup, you sumbitches! BZZT.

1. The Solomonic Split Of The Second Act

Fuck the three-act structure right in its crusty corn-cave. See, right there’s your problem — first act is small, third act is small, and the second act is the size of those two combined. Go for a four-act structure, instead. Take the second act and chop it clean in half. Whack. Each act is its own entity — though it connects to the rest and still has its own rise and fall. Allow each its own shape, its own distinct feel. And don’t forget that when one act moves to another it is a time of transformation and escalation.

2. Fake A Climax

Hey, when you fake an orgasm, you gotta commit. You can’t just do a few eye-rolls and go “oooh, ahh, mmm, yes,” and then sit up and flip on CSPAN. You’ve got to sell it. Make ’em think it’s the real deal. Scream so loud the dog starts howling. Break a lamp with a flailing limb. Release the fluids. And that’s what you gotta do in the middle of your story. The “false climax” is a powerful trick — you make it seem like things are coming to a head, that the pot is boiling over, that the fluid-release cannot be contained. You want the audience to be all like, “Whoa, this feels like the end but I’ve still got 200 pages left in the book. SHIT JUST GOT REAL.” (Of course, do make sure the actual climax is even bigger, yes?)

3. Fewer Curves, More Angles

The shape of a story — especially the shape of a story’s middle — is a lot of soft rises and doughy plateaus and zoftig falls. Each hill giving way to a bigger knoll. But sometimes, a story needs fewer hills and more mountains. Angles instead of curves. Fangs instead of molars. Think of inserting a few jagged peaks and dangerous ditches — take the story and the characters on a harder journey. Let things change swiftly, accelerate the plot, go left, feint right, don’t let the audience feel complacent and comfortable. Rough ground can be a good thing in the middle of a story. Some stories need more turbulence.

4. Opening Presents On Christmas Eve

When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was the most interminable time because, y’know, Christmas morning is everything. All else is chaff and dust and ash in your greedy little mouth. If setting fire to the tree would make Santa come earlier, shit, you’d do it. So, what do some parents do? They let a child open one gift on Christmas Eve. Adopt this strategy as a storyteller. All this time you’re introducing mysteries and conflicts and character arcs that you promise will be resolved by the conclusion of the story. Take one, conclude it early. Give the audience some payoff. (I’d argue if Lost gave viewers a few early Christmas presents the show wouldn’t have dragged its itchy doggy ass across the carpet for the middle seasons.)

5. Introduce A Character

Sometimes, a story needs a bit of new blood in the form of a new character — someone interesting. Not, y’know, “Dave the Constipated Cab Driver,” or “Paula the Saggy-Boobed Waitress,” but rather characters with an arc, characters who will have an impact on the story. You don’t need to replace your protagonist (and probably shouldn’t), but a new strong supporting character may grant the story new energy.

6. Introduce A Character. . . To The Grim Reaper, Moo Hoo Ha Ha!

Sometimes, a story just needs blood. Kill a character. Off the poor bastard. Axe, bullet, disease, chasm, death-by-irritable-wombat, whatever. Blood makes the grass grow. Bread and circuses, motherfucker.

7. Relationship Status: “It’s Complicated”

The middle can feel like a vernal pool that fails to dry up, turning it into naught but a mosquito breeding ground (aka “skeeter fuck party”). That’s because there’s no movement of the water; stagnation sets in. One way to “move the water” (note: not a reference to urinating) is to change the relationship between characters. Get them together. Break them apart. Lies! Betrayals! Exposed secrets! New hate! Old love! Unexpected butt-play! Drama and conflict born of that relationship shift can fuel the rest of the story.

8. Karate Kicks And Car Chases Chop Vroom Boom

Find approximate middle of book. Plant there a kick-ass action sequence. One that is perfectly married to plot, story, and characters. An action scene with ninjas and centaurs and ninja centaurs and Ducati motorcycles and fucking velociraptors and velociraptors fucking and a gladiator named DOCTOR MEAT. Okay, maybe not so much with all of that. Point is, throw in some action in the middle. If not action, anything that creates tension, putting the character’s mission (or life or love or soul or sanity) in doubt.

9. Action! Cut! No, Wait! Cut The Action!

Sometimes, action doesn’t need to be added — it needs to get cut. Quite paradoxically, action can be very boring. Sometimes it’s meaningless — an exercise for the sake of having it. Sometimes it fails to connect to the larger plot. Or have ties to the characters (or feature them at all). Or have any consequence in any way. Action in this mode will drag the story like a colostomy bag filled with buckshot. Cut it. Kill it. Move on.

10. Map Quest

You’re in the middle of the story. You’re wandering around in circles like you’re drunk and got a bad limp. It’s weedy. Swampy. You’re lost. You have to pee. You need a map. You need trail markers and a compass and a magic GPS robot who follows after and is all like BEEP BOOP TAKE A RIGHT AT THE STUMP AND BEWARE LUSTY MOOSE. It’s time for an outline. It’s time for a plan. Pull away from the daily writing. Sit down and start drawing your map — scene by scene, chapter by chapter, however you have to do it. Find your next steps. Discover your narrative landmarks. That’ll get you out of the woods and back onto the road.

11. The Art Is In The Arrangement

Fuck the map. What you need is a time machine. Crash your Delorean into a big blue police box and start hopping around in time — whoever said your story’s narrative needed to be a straight line from Point A to Point Z? Sometimes the middle gets mushy because the arrangement is too conventional. Hopping around in the timeline of the story creates tension and allows you reveal some things early and hold back on other things that might normally be revealed. Rejiggering your story’s time-space continuum can keep it feeling fresh. Like the cooling vinegar winds of a Summer’s Eve. Or something.

12. Escalation, Escalation, Escalation

A karate dude can’t just break one board. He puts two boards down and breaks those. Then three. Then ten. Then he’s karateing bricks and toilets and drop-kicking yaks in half. Point is, he doesn’t just stand there and break one board, then one board, then one board. He ups the difficulty. The effort escalates. You must escalate the conflict in your story throughout the middle. Things become harder and harder. False victories give way to the audience feeling like all is lost. This isn’t just physical. Emotional conflict ratchets tighter. Social turmoil boils over. As you move throughout the middle, ask yourself: “How can I tighten the nipple clamps on this motherfucker?” Add a little tension each time. One board after the other.

13. Tighten Your Own Nipple Clamps

Sometimes writers don’t put enough pressure on themselves — and so, the mushy middle is less about a problem in the story and more a problem with the writer. Tighten your own metaphorical nipple clamps (though mine are not metaphorical and, in fact, are painted like tiny tigers, raaaar). Plan to write more each day. Bring your deadline up by weeks or even months. Sometimes increased pressure on the writer leads to stronger productivity and improved output — take the slack out of your rope.

14. Or: Maybe Switch Back To the Smaller Buttplug

Coal under pressure can make a diamond. But most of the time it makes a pile of coal dust. Could be you’re under too much pressure. Stress and anxiety can do funny things to a writer’s brain. You start to feel like you’re an old person lost in a shopping mall — “I know I came here for a reason but I don’t remember why. Where are the bathrooms? Janice? Janice? Is that you? Oh. You’re just a potted plant. I’ll pee in you.” Cut yourself some slack. Walk away from the story for a day or three. Give yourself the time to think the story through. Then come back to the writing or editing table reinvigorated with the crystal meth of new ideas.

15. Bludgeon Your Doubt With A Nine Iron

Doubt is one of nature’s most insidious creatures — it creeps in through tight spaces, equal parts bedbug and rat, tick and termite, mold and jock-itch. Doubt has an erosive, corrosive effect on the work, too, whether you’re writing a first draft or editing the one hundredth — you lose confidence in your abilities, you miss the distinctions between good and bad, and as a result the middle of your work grows muddled, fumbly, and numb. You can’t purge doubt, exactly — but you can damn sure ignore it. Shoulder past it like it’s just some guy in a crowded hallway. Doubt is an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one.

16. Go Weird Or Go Home

When all else fails, take a hard left turn and drive into the ocean. If you really feel like your story is stale and sluggish, you may be able to give it a jolt by throwing in some kind of epic twist — and not the kind of twist that happens at the end of the film, either (“OMG BRUCE WILLIS WAS A SHARK THE WHOLE TIME”), but the kind where the story transforms in the middle. This can backfire, sure, but a glorious backfire is better than the slow gas-leak emitted by a sleeping beagle.

17. Variety Is The Spice Of Life (Or, If You Prefer, Variety Is The Multi-Purpose Sandworm Excrement Harvested By Fremen)

Scan your mushy middle and ask yourself: “Is it too one-note?” Are you focusing too much on one thing? One character? One conflict, theme, setting, something, anything? Mix it up. Make sure that all aspects of character and conflict are covered — physical, emotional, social, intellectual. A long car ride through a desert is boring because it’s all desert. We wanna see some mountains, a coastline, a village of albinos, a tiger eating a bicyclist, something, anything. Complexity can breed new interest.

18. Rewrite The Beginning (Wait, What?)

I’m sorry, did I just say, “Rewrite the beginning” in a list where we’re talking about the middle? Oh, I did. I’m crazy like that. Crazy like a fox. Crazy like a fox wearing diapers and smoking cigarettes. The middle of any structure relies on a strong foundation and if the foundation is wobbly, the middle will be weak. They say in screenwriting sometimes that third act problems are often first act problems, but the reality is, a lot of problems are first act problems. You need to go back to the beginning. Rebuild the foundation. Make it strong like bull. Bull who wears body armor and shoots a bazooka.

19. Eschatology

I once wondered if “eschatology” was the study of poop, or maybe future poop. Or Sandworm excrement. It’s not — it’s the study of The End (capital letters necessary). Religious scholars look for symbols and signs leading to the end of history as we know it, and while that’s a terrible way to live your life, it’s a most excellent way to build the middle of your story. The middle needs to build toward an ending. If you find the middle is flabby and without purpose or purchase, start building specifically toward the story’s conclusion. Move characters and plot points into place. Start dropping hints. Start hitting harder on the theme. Symbols, signs, motifs. Building to the end can give tension to the middle.

20. Threading The Throughline

Several threads must run through your work to tie the whole thing together. Sometimes the middle of your story needs those threads to tie a corset together in order to pull its blubbery manatee gut tighter. This is your throughline — any and all elements that run from beginning to end. Your middle may be missing one. Want to read more about the throughline? Look no further.

21. Your Robot Brain Needs New Logic Accelerators

I don’t know what it is about Hollywood blockbuster films these days, but half of them don’t make a lick of fucking sense and appear to follow the logic of a scatterbrained four-year-old after he just ate a bowl of Red Bull and Fruity Pebbles. The middle of your story will go all wibbly-wobbly if shit don’t make sense. The audience might break an ankle in a noticeable plot hole. Writers tend to write toward the goal of this has to happen without ever thinking, does it make sense if this happens?

22. Kill The Noise, Crank The Signal

Some stories become way too complicated. A thorn-tangle of plot, a gooey mess of conflicting ideas, an unruly pubic thatch of character motivations — simplify. Prune that ugly ungroomed tree into Bonsai.

23. Run Out Of Rope

You ran out of story and now you’re stretching it thinner and thinner until the whole thing is practically transparent. Here the middle isn’t flabby so much as it is the hollow ghost of a proper second act. You need more meat in the story’s belly. More plot. More motivation. More fat instead of less.

24. Shrinky Dinks

Cut. Get out your scissors, scalpel, hatchet, Sawzall, jaws-of-life, nail clippers, guillotine, and your orbital laser, and chop shit out of your untamed middle. It’s gotten too long. Too big. Too bulky. Bloated like me after I eat too much cheese (“OH GOD BRIE OH NMMMPHMM GOUDA JEEZ DID YOU GUYS SEE GGRRMPPH WENSLEYDALE CHEDDAR GORGOZOMMMPHGRBLE i don’t feel so good”). Cut. Chop. Kill. Sometimes the act of tightening the middle is really the purest act of that tightening: cut a fuckity-bucket of words. Start with 10%, and cut incrementally until the story has sexy abs.

25. Find The Boring Parts, Put Them In A Bag, Set Them On Fire

I continue to hammer on this point for writers, but hey, sometimes a good point demands reiteration. Your middle is perhaps mushy because you have committed the most grievous sin of them all: you wrote a bunch of boring shit. Now, there’s a danger in labeling things that are interesting but not exciting as boring — “Wait, why isn’t every scene a dude with two Uzis riding a jet-ski through time?” — but there’s an equal or worse danger in writing 30,000 words that are the creative equivalent of dry Melba toast. Survey readers. Follow the whispers gurgling up from your gut. Find the boring parts. Then hang them in the town square.


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Drunk Reviews: Best Thing Ever, Or Most Bestest Thing Ever Ever Ever?


That, there, is LeAnna the Literary Lush — aka TRIPLE L — of Books, Booze, and Reviews. She’s a wonderful human, by which I mean she’s a wonderful human online — in person you’ll find her a dangerous inebriated psychotic who cavorts with hobos and practices a region-specific breed of necromancy so that she can raise a cabal of dead Los Angeles hipsters who serve her by, y’know, mixing her drinks.

In other words, she’s my kinda peoples.

Anyway, here she’s (drunkenly) reviewing Blackbirds, a book by some dipshit with an ego-blog.

She has written a non-drunk review here, but I can’t fathom why you’d prefer a booze-free review.

You can procure Blackbirds from Mysterious Galaxy –> at this link.

Triple-L drunkenly reviews I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga here.

And here she reviews (also drunkenly) City of the Lost by Stephen Blackmoore.

You can follow her at the Twittertubes — @skellykitten.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Eight Random Words

Last week’s challenge: One Random Sentence (winner will be picked later this afternoon).

On a bit of a random kick, so let’s go with that, again.

This time, I give you eight random words:

Saw

Milkshake

Bath

Flowerpot

Wheelchair

Bully

Zoo

Heretic

And you must choose four of these and incorporate them into a piece of flash fiction no more than 1000 words long, posted at your blog or online space by Friday, June 8th, at noon.

Post links here so we can all read.

Get to writing.

New Interview And New News

So, it’s like this: recently, thanks to Gwenda Bond and Jeff Vandermeer, I was afforded the opportunity to interview one of my writing idols — horror and storytelling legend, Robert McCammon. There was, of course, no hesitation on my part; the guy tells amazing stories. I lay the blame of my decision to become a writer at his feet, in fact, thanks to books like Swan Song and Boy’s Life. He’s got a new book out — The Providence Rider — and we talked about that and his career and what he’s got coming up in the future.

You’ll find the interview over at Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog.

Also: checkout my review of The Providence Rider, while you’re at it.

Udder Noose

First up: I will be signing Blackbirds at the Doylestown Bookshop from 7-9pm.

If you are somewhere in the Northeast, YOU MUST COME. Or I will be suicidal with disappointment.

Also, I don’t think I linked to it at the blog yet, so…

Hey, did you see I got a kick-ass review of Blackbirds over at io9?

From that review: “In terms of style, Wendig reminds me most of Stephen King. There’s a way of using somewhat fevered, rugose prose to describe both the beauty and horror of the mundane, then switching to a plainer mode when describing the outer limits stuff, that brings to mind King’s 80s and 90s work.”

Also, a very lovely review of Blackbirds at The Guardian.

From that review: “Building a fast-paced story through clever interweaving of viewpoints and flashback, Blackbirds follows what Miriam does when she knows that fate can never be denied. It’s vivid and violent, with some pyrotechnic turns of phrase, if occasionally rough round the edges. If you’re looking for a sassy, hard-boiled thriller with a paranormal slant, Wendig has established himself as the go-to man.”

Also, the Guardian apparently thinks that I am part of the forefront of “New Pulp.”

From that article: “Then there’s Chuck Wendig. Some would be satisfied just to be the author of Dinocalypse Now – but not Wendig. The American author has built on his growing cult following with the crowd-funded and self-published Atlanta Burns novellas, and the outstanding urban fantasy novel Blackbirds from UK publisher Angry Robot. Wendig’s books, which blend noir and urban fantasy tropes with the gritty reality of contemporary America in a unique trailer-trash gothic style, are proof positive that pulp need not lack depth, emotion or originality. He’s also a prolific blogger; an essential criteria for today’s ambitious pulp fictioneer, when your readership are only ever a tweet away.”

Finally, literary bad-ass Seanan McGuire gives the book a very kind review.

From that review: “Miriam is like that. Her life is one long game of Penis. She swears, she’s inappropriately lewd (which is different from appropriately lewd, although she does that, too), she goes for the shock value, because she wants to keep people away. I think this book contained more instances of the word “fuck” than the unrated cut of Clerks. But here’s the kicker: Chuck Wendig isn’t playing Penis with you. He manages to write a protagonist who’s all about the shock, but the book never feels like the author is trying to shock you. He’s just telling you what happened. It’s a travelogue of tragedy, and it’s beautiful and terrible, and it couldn’t have happened any other way.”

And that’s all she wrote, folks.

Self-Publishing And The Burden Of Proof

“Whoever said that life is fair? Where is that written?”

— Grandpa, The Princess Bride

Last week I wrote a probably-too-cranky post about the bad apples bobbing around the self-publishing bucket, and that post got a little attention as it pinballed around Ye Olde Webnet, and as such, it received a number of interesting responses here and there and everywhere.

I thought it best to continue this discussion and, this time, tackle it with a little less, erm, invective on my part. Because I think we’re scratching at some very important topics here for DIY publishers.

The first and most troubling response is one I’ll get out of the way now: some folks seemed to believe I was giving all self-publishers the middle finger. Unless you’re looking to cherry-pick a bouquet of out-of-context quotes, you won’t find much evidence in that post of me smearing self-publishers. I’ve read many excellent books that exist only because the authors went that direction. I think self-publishing is part of what makes this time the best time ever to be a writer and a storyteller. I am, in fact, a self-publisher myself (though I favor a diverse “hybrid” approach). And in fact knowing self-publishers and being one myself is what makes me rail against the most poisoning voices. They may do themselves a service by getting attention, but they surely don’t do any other self-publishers a favor — and that leads to the second response.

The other response has been, “Well, this is all inside baseball and it doesn’t affect readers and so who cares what the crazies say or do.” And I don’t agree with that sentiment one bit. Let’s talk about why.

Traditional publishing is, for better or for worse, the current status quo. A book goes through the onerous task of reaching an audience — agent to editor to publication to bookshelves — and that’s the way it’s been for decades. Self-publishing has always existed, sure, but over the last many years it has been a fringe act. This is no longer true, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that this current wave of self-publishing possibility is very new. It is not the status quo.

Which means the current “system” is geared toward traditional. What do I mean by that? I mean: Reviews. Interviews. Awards. Rights. They all lean toward traditional and in many cases exclude indie efforts entirely. Now, the easy, knee-jerk response is, “Fuck them! They don’t want me? I don’t want them.” Except, you do want them. Some self-publishers do very well but plenty more find themselves struggling — and, in many cases, struggling with a beautiful, brilliant novel. Those struggling would likely find themselves reaching a broader, deeper audience with — repeat after me — reviews, interviews, awards, and rights. With those you would in fact reach more readers. (And remember, it’s readers we’re talking about here.)

Next comes the question: “Why are self-publishers excluded?”

Well, the simplest answer is, again, the “indie” community does not represent the status quo, and those outside the status quo are the ones with the regrettable and unfortunate (and, yes, unfair) burden of proving their mettle. The champion in the arena gets to strut around like the cock of the walk. The underdog has to prove he can cleave the champion’s skull in twain.

But, the more realistic — and more troubling — answer is that self-publishing has a number of standard-bearers who are not, frankly, all that healthy for the overall community (such as it is). And so we return to the “fevered egos” post in question, which calls out bad apples who do bad-apple-things (can’t write, use sales numbers as a bludgeon, publish a shit-ton of crappy books, act like jerkoffs, and so on and so forth).

They act like that, they hurt me, they hurt you, they hurt self-publishers. Because they get attention — the wrong kind of attention. In self-publishing, there most certainly is such a thing as bad publicity. A meltdown on a popular book review blog has… what effect, exactly? Do you think it:

a) Endears the book review blog to self-published authors?

or

b) Makes them more standoffish to self-published authors?

I’m going to go with “b.”

Again your response may be, “Blah blah blah, screw them.”

No, not screw them. They do this of their own free will. They don’t get paid. They’re out there spending time and effort (and sometimes money) to put their love of books on the line. They should have to put up with this… why, exactly? (I can speak to this a little myself. I get a lot of email from self-published authors and while many are very nice, I receive a not insignificant number who are pushy and assumptive and often at the same time offering content that is far below the bare minimum level of quality offered by traditional publishing. I have not gotten one such email from a traditional author.)

Blogs like these can help you reach readers.

Ah! Yes. Readers. Remember them?

See, I don’t think readers are unaware of all this. We can hope it’s all inside baseball as much as we like, but when an indie author melts down on a book review blog, you need to understand that’s a blog for readers, not for publishing insiders. It’s not a blog for agents to snicker at one another about the rube who just covered himself in medical waste and tinfoil while ranting about the “conspiracy against his literary genius.” Readers read those blogs. I know they do. You know how many readers found Blackbirds that way?

Plenty. And I’m thankful for that fact.

Do we think readers aren’t on social media?

Twitter? Facebook? Your blog? My blog?

Are we willing to bet that readers aren’t savvy? Are we willing to dismiss them as a crowd of blissfully-ignorant yokels? Are we comfortable suggesting that readers never have blogs of their own? Or Twitter accounts? Or Facebook pages? If even 10% of readers are this savvy, are we willing to lose them?

Whether we’re talking meltdowns on blogs or ugly books with bad editing, readers know. Readers see. Readers are a lot fucking smarter than you realize. They may not be privy to every little bump of turbulence that authors and publishers experience so keenly, but that doesn’t mean they’re a bunch of hee-haw ignoramuses, either. And so we return to what I believe is the truth at hand: the burden of proof lies in the hands of self-publishers. And every poison pill and bad apple who has a public shit-fit or puts his worst foot forward might as well be urinating in the public drinking water.

They give all self-publishers a bad name.

They increase the burden; they do not lessen it.

That burden of proof is on the indies. That’s what it takes to disrupt the status quo.

Is that particularly fair? No.

But, as Grandpa notes above, whoever said life was fair?

* * *

Now, to finish up here: a call to action. What to do, then, about all this? The easy answer would be to ignore it — ignore the crazy people and they’ll go away. (One only hopes that everybody else will ignore it, too.) Or, maybe you go the other way. Maybe you talk about it. Just lending your voice to the conversation can help it go further — that doesn’t mean shouting it down, necessarily, or being quite as, erm, vociferous as I am here, but I feel this is a worthy conversation to have.

Beyond that? Just don’t be that guy. Don’t be the crazy person. Write well. Be cool. Put yourself out there. Work for the good of indie authors and not against it. Lead by example! “Independent” authors and publishers may be separate from one another, but that doesn’t mean they don’t affect one another.

The more good apples we have, the harder it is to see the bad ones.

25 Things To Know About Writing The First Chapter Of Your Novel

1. Every Book A Hook (And The First Chapter’s The Bait)

A reader walks into a bookstore. Spies an interesting book. What does she do? Picks it up. Flips to the first chapter before anything else. At least, that’s what I do. (Then I smell the book and rub it on my bare stomach in a circular motion and make mmmmmm noises.) Or, if I can find the first chapter online somewhere — Amazon, the author’s or publisher’s site, your Mom’s Myspace page — I’ll read it there. One way or another, I want to see that first chapter. Because that’s where you grab me by the balls or where you push me out the door. The first chapter is where you use me or lose me.

2. Fashionably Late To The Party

Bring the reader to the story as late you possibly can — we’re talking just before the flight leaves, just before the doors to the club are about to close, just before the shit’s gonna go down. Tension. Escalation. Right to the edge of understanding — no time to think, no time to worry, no time to ponder whether she wants to ride this ride or get off and go get a smoothie because too late, you’re mentally buckled in, motherfucker. The first chapter is the beginning of the book but it’s not the beginning of the whole story. (This is why origin stories are often the weakest iterations of the superhero tale.)

3. The Power Of A Kick-Ass Karate Chop Opening Line Kiyaaa!

A great first line is the collateral that grants the author a line of intellectual credit from the reader. The reader unconsciously commits: “That line was so damn good, I’m in for the next 50 pages.” I could probably do a whole “list of 25” on writing a strong opening line, but for now, I’ll say this: a good opening line is assertive. It’s lean and mean and cares nothing for fatty junk language or clumpy ten-gallon words. A good opening line is a promise, or a question, or an unproven idea. It says something interesting. It shows a shattered status quo. A good opening line is stone in our shoe that we cannot shake. Writing a killer first line to a novel is an art form in which there are a few masters and a great many apprentices.

4. The Gateway Drug To The Second Chapter

I’ve been to multiple Christopher Moore book talks, and each time he reveals something interesting about storytelling (and, occasionally, whale penises). At one such book talk — and this is me paraphrasing — he said something very interesting and a thing I’ve found true in my own reading experience: the more the reader reads, the more you can get them to read. Sounds obvious, maybe. But it goes like this: if you get them to read the first page, they’ll read to the second. If they can read to the first chapter, they’ll at least finish the second. If they read to page 10, they’ll go to 20, if they read to 40, they’ll stay to page 80, and so on and so forth. You’re hoping you can get them to the next breadcrumb, and as the novel’s story you space out the breadcrumbs — but early on, those first breadcrumbs (in the form of the first chapter) are in many ways the most important. Did I mention Christopher Moore knows a lot about whale penises?

5. Your Protagonist Has One Job: To Make Me Give A Fuck

If I get to the end of the first chapter and I don’t get a feel for your main character — if she and I are not connected via some gooey invisible psychic tether — I’m out. I don’t need to like her. I don’t need to know everything about her. But I damn sure need to care about her. Make me care! Crank up the volume knob on the give-a-fuck factor. Let me know who she is. Make me afraid for her. Speak to me of her quest. Whisper to me why her story matters. Give me that and I’ll follow her through the cankered bowels of Hell.

6. Give Her The Talking Stick

I want the character to talk. Give me dialogue. Dialogue is sugar. Dialogue is sweet. Dialogue is easy like Sunday morning. And dialogue is the fastest way to me getting to know the character. Look at it this way: when you meet a new person do you want to sit, watching them like Jane Goodall spying on a pair of rutting chimps from behind a duck blind? Or do you want to go up and have a conversation?

7. Conflict Is The Key That Unlocks A Reader’s Heart

Yeast thrives on sugar. Monkeys eat bananas. I guzzle gin-and-tonics. And conflict is what feeds the reader. Begin the book with conflict. Big, small, physical, emotional, whatever. Conflict disrupts the status quo. Conflict is drama. Conflict, above all else, is interesting. Your first chapter is not a straight horizontal line. It’s a jagged driveway leading up a dark mountainside — and the shadows are full of danger.

8. Steak’s On The Table

The reader will only keep reading if you provide them with an 8 oz porterhouse steak and — *checks notes* — oh. Ohhh. Right! Stakes. Stakes. Sorry. Let’s try this again: the conflict you introduce? It has to matter. We need to know the stakes — as in, what’s at play, here? What are the costs? What can be gained, what can be lost? Love? Money? One’s soul? Will someone die? Can someone be saved? Is there pie? The first chapter doesn’t demand that you spell out the stakes of the entire book in big blinky letters, but we do need a hint, a whiff of the meaty goodness that makes the conflict matter. And if all that fails, maybe try that “give the reader a steak” idea. Or pie. Did someone say I can have pie? I’ll have Key Lime, thanks.

9. Wuzza Wooza?

In the first chapter it’s essential to establish the where and the when of the story, just so the reader isn’t flailing around through time like a wine-sodden Doctor Who. But this also doesn’t mean hitting the reader over the head with it. You don’t need to spell it out if it’s fairly obvious, and you also don’t need to build paragraph wall after paragraph wall giving endless details to support the when and the where.

10. Mood Lighting

First impressions matter. Impressions are in many ways indelible — you can erase that thing you just wrote in pencil or tear up the page with the inky scribbles, but the soft wood of the table beneath still holds the impressions of what was written, and so it is that the first chapter is where the reader gets his first and perhaps strongest taste of mood. Make a concerted effort to ask, “What is the mood I want the reader to feel throughout this book? What first taste hits their emotional palate?” (Two words: PSYCHIC UMAMI. That is also the codeword that will get you into my super-secret super-sexy food-and-porn clubhouse.) That doesn’t mean you need to wring a sponge over their head and drown them in mood — you create mood with a few brushstrokes of strong color, not a hammer dipped in a bucket of clown paint.

11. Theme As Thesis

An academic paper needs a thesis — an assertion that the paper will then attempt to prove (“DONUTS ARE SUPERIOR TO MUFFINS. BEHOLD MY CONFECTIONERY DATA”). A story is very much like that. Every story is an argument. And the theme is the crystallization of that argument. Sometimes it’s plainly stated other times it lurks as subtext for the reader to suss out, but just the same, the theme of your story — the argument the tale is making — is critical. And just as the thesis of a paper goes right up front, so too must your theme be present in the first chapter.

12. The Mini-Arc Is Not Where All The Mini-Animals Go

Every story has a dramatic arc, right? The rise and fall of the tale. An inciting incident leads to rising tension which escalates and grows new conflict and the story pivots and then it reaches the narrative ejaculation and soon after demands a nap and a cookie. The first chapter is perhaps best when thought of as a microcosm of the macrocosm — the chapter should have its own rise and fall, its own conflict (which may become the larger conflict of the narrative). That’s not to say the first chapter concludes anything, but rather that you shouldn’t think of it solely as a ramp up but rather as a thing with a more complicated shape.

13. In Which I Contradict Popular Advice About Opening With Action

Opening with an action scene or sequence is tricky, and yet, that’s the advice you’ll get — “Open with action!” The problem with action is, action only works as a narrative driver when we have context for that action. Specifically, context for the characters involved in said action. Too many authors begin with, “Holy crap! Someone’s driving fast! And bullets! And there’s a robot-dragon chasing them! LAVA ERUPTION. And nano-bees! Aren’t you tense yet? Aren’t your genitals crawling up inside your body waiting for the resolution of this super-exciting exxxtreme action scene?” Not so much, no. Because I have no reason yet to care. Without depth of character and without context, an action scene is ultimately shallow and that’s how they often feel when leading off the first chapter. Now, if you can get us in there and make us care before throwing us into balls-to-the-wall action, fuck yeah.

14. Better To Lead With Mystery

You ever turn the television on and find a show you’ve never seen before but you catch like, 30 seconds of it and suddenly you’re hunkering down and watching the thing like you’re a long-time viewer? It’s the question that hooks you. “Wait, is Gary the secret father of Juniper’s baby? What does the symbol of the winged armadillo mean? WHO SHOT BOBO’S PONY?” (By the way, Who Shot Bobo’s Pony? is the phrase that destroys the universe. Do not say it aloud.) It’s mystery that grabs you. It’s the big swoop of the question mark that hooks you around the throat and forces you to sit. While action needs context, mystery doesn’t — in fact, one of mystery’s strengths is that it demands the reader wait for context.

15. Eschew Exposition, Bypass Backstory

The first chapter is not the place to tell us everything. Don’t be like a child overturning his bucket of toys — then it’s just a colorful clamor, an overindulgence of information. Exposition kills drama. Backstory is boring. Give us a reason to care about that stuff before you start droning on and on about it.

16. A Fine Balance Between Confusion, Mystery, And Illumination

It’s a tightrope walk, that first chapter. You want the reader drawn in by mystery but not eaten by the grue of confusion, and so you illuminate a little bit as you go — a flashlight beam on the wall or along the ground, just enough to keep them walking forward and not impaling themselves on a stalagmite.

17. Flung Off The Cliff

TV shows generally follow a multi-act structure, with each act punctuated (and separated) by commercial breaks. The trick to television is that it seems like a story-delivery medium that carries advertisements but really it’s an advertising medium that carries story: the networks need you to stay through the commercial break, not just to come back to the story but to sit through the advertisements. And the way they do this is often by ending each “act” with a cliffhanger of sorts — a moment of mystery, an introduction of conflict, a twist of the tale. Your eyes bulge and you offer a Scoobylicious “RUH ROH” and then sit down and wait (or, like me, you just fast forward on your DVR). This trick works at the end of the first chapter. A cliffhanger (mystery, conflict, twist) will help set the hook in the reader’s cheek.

18. K.I.T.

Keep it tight. Also, keep it short. Don’t go on and on and on. The first chapter is not a novel in and of itself.

19. Voice Like Bull

You never want your writing to feel limp and soggy like a leaf of lettuce that’s been sitting on the counter for days, but this is 1000% more true when it comes to the first chapter. Your voice in that chapter must be calm, confident, assertive — no wishy-washy language, no great big bloated passages, no slack-in-the-rope. Your voice must be fully present. All guns firing at once: the full brunt of your might used to sink the reader’s resistance to your writerly wiles. BADOOOOM. *splash*

20. On The Subject Of Prologues

The prevailing advice is, “Prologues can eat a sack of wombat cocks, and if you use one you will be ostracized and forced to eat dust and drink urine, you syphilitic charlatan.” Harsh, but there it is. Also, wrong — a prologue should never be an automatic, but hell, if you need one, you need one. Here’s how you know: if your prologue is better used as the first chapter, then it’s not a prologue. It’s a first chapter.

21. Fly Or Die, And Why

Since you’re a writer, you probably have bookshelves choked with novels. So, grab ten off the shelf. Read their opening chapters. Find out what works. Find out what sucks. What’s missing? What’s present?

22. Sometimes The First Chapter Is The Hardest To Write

Writing the first chapter can feel like you’re trying to artificially inseminate a stampeding mastodon with one hand duct taped to your leg. That’s okay. That’s normal. Do it and get through it.

23. More Time Under The Knife

What that ultimately means is, a first chapter may see more attention — writing, editing, rewriting, and rewriting, and then rewriting some more — than any other chapter (outside maybe the last). That’s okay. Take the time to get it right. It’s also okay if the “Chapter One” you end up with looks nothing like the “Chapter One” you started with many moons before.

24. An Emblem Of The Whole

You’ll notice a pattern in this list, and that pattern is: the first chapter serves as an emblem of the whole. It’s got to have a bit of everything. It needs to be representative of the story you’re telling — other chapters deeper in the fat layers and muscle tissue of the story may stray from this, but the first chapter can’t. It’s got to have all the key stuff: the main character, the motive, the conflict, the mood, the theme, the setting, the timeframe, mystery, movement, dialogue, pie. That’s why it’s so important — and so difficult — to get right. Because the first chapter, like the last chapter, must have it all.

25. For The Sake Of Sweet Saint Fuck, Don’t Be Boring

Above all else, don’t be boring. That’s the cardinal sin of storytelling. If you ignore most of the things on this list: fine. Don’t ignore this one. Be interesting. Engage the reader’s curiosity. The greatest crime a writer can commit is by telling a boring story with boring characters and boring circumstances: a trip to Dullsvile, a ticket to Staleopolis, an interminable journey to the heart of PLANET MONOTONOUS. Open big. Open strong. Open in a way that commands the reader’s interest. Fuck boring.


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