Writing Tips: Don’t Get Stuck on Chapter 1
Why Stressing About Chapter 1 Kills Your Creativity.
Is your first chapter important? Yes! Will the final version of chapter one happen before you finish your book? Probably not. For example on, Honor Bound, which I originally published 8 years ago and never really marketed it, the opening chapter always irritated me even after I finished it. It never felt right. It was good, but not good enough.
At the time I wasn’t focused on writing for a living and was just happy the book was out. I’d written 500+ pages (at the time I had combined both books), and figured I would get around to writing the third book later.
And 8 years passed. I finally figured out how to end it and while writing the ending, I actually nailed the opening chapter the way I wanted to. YAY ME!
Now, is that the optimal path for writing? No. However, my point is this: I see a lot of people getting stuck on making the first chapter perfect right out of the gate. Most likely, that won’t happen, you’ll go back over and over it, you’ll get frustrated, and maybe even quit writing it.
But how well do you know your world, characters, author’s voice, tone, vibe, or what you really want to open with, until you’ve spent a decent amount of time in that headspace? Probably not all that well.
As a writer, we’re inhabiting other worlds in our heads and it’s going to take a while to figure out how we want the entryway to look for other people. Chapter one is sort of like curb appeal for your book, you want to invite people to come and play, but until you know the style for your house, you can’t really figure out how that invitation is going to look.
So stop stressing about it. Get some furnishings in your house, live in it for a bit, paint the walls, hang some decor, then invite people over.
Write your chapter one, and keep going, and keep going, make it to chapter five or six, then take some time to go back and mess with chapter one if you feel you need to. Then KEEP WRITING, keep going, finish it.
THEN go back to chapter one and see if it is the invitation you want and if it matches the interior of your imaginary house. If not, NOW you can fix it because you know what you need to do to make the outside look like the inside.
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