In my experience, the best chapter introduction that get the most reader engagement is when the author shares a personal story. This is for two reasons. Describe how you felt before, during, and after your personal challenge. What did you see, hear, and feel? I attended a screenwriting class recently. What I learned was that the most successful Hollywood movies are those with characters that have the most flaws. People are not looking for solutions or anecdotes as much as they are seeking for connection.
This author has been there, and done that, so they must know what they are talking about. I should read what they have to say. Share your story of being in the trenches and having gone through the challenges that your readers are currently facing. Create a bridge between you and your readers. Once your readers know that you understand them, they will begin to trust you and will be more open to hearing your advice. Okay, so you have a great opening and people are hooked.
Expand your opening and begin to explain your points. This is where you are offering your reader the gold. How will you solve their problem? What does the reader need to know? Keep the momentum going and make sure each point is cohesively building up. You can have as many points as you want. I personally like sharing three points within chapter topics just because there is so much to write about for each point.
For each point, you can simply apply the same strategy just as you would starting a chapter. Add a story, quote, stat, or some other kind of evidence. Remember when you had to write a five paragraph essay in school? Think about this in terms of your five paragraph essay. These are your body paragraphs in your chapter! This step is where a lot of writers can get sidetracked. Related: Writing Goals. The key takeaway. Keep this short and to the point.
For example, in my book, I summarized my chapter points by creating sentences on each point. Then, I combined each of those sentences together in order.
How can you fix something without knowing its broken in the first place? Begin writing daily in a journal. Track how you feel throughout the day without any judgment. A call-to-action CTA is when you ask the reader to take action by implementing what they have learned and applying their new knowledge in some way. Instead, come back with a fresh perspective after having completed the story. Then you can spend as long as you like working on perfecting your opener.
Containing over 20, words in total, the bundle is packed with advice on getting your novel planned, written, edited and published. Plus, join our email list to stay up-to-date. In any novel of any genre or style, characters are key. No matter whether your story is told from one point of view or several, the opening chapter must introduce a compelling, important character.
The best way to ensure that you introduce a compelling character in Chapter One is to get to know that character as well as possible before you start writing. Work out their voice, their unique perspective, their personality, and their importance to the story. As Patricia C. Wrede points out :. It is the job of the first chapter to get your readers to care about the main character, or at the very least, to be interested enough in the character to keep reading.
As Stephen King puts it :. They know that voice, they love that voice, and something in them connects profoundly with it. This kind of unique voice is something that comes with time. Unique voice comes out naturally the more you write, so make sure you write a lot, and allow your narrative voice to develop itself. When the time comes, your editor will help to draw out and clarify that voice even further, especially in the first chapter of your novel. There are so many options for where in the story to begin your novel, and the choice you make is crucial.
Your novel should begin with something to intrigue and engage the reader: an inciting incident, a significant event, a mystery or problem that needs to be solved. Remember you can always come back later and add, remove, or shift around scenes. To get an idea of the different kinds of possible starting points, take a look at what the authors of your favourite stories have chosen as starting points.
The opening scene is fast-paced and set to a countdown, which draws the reader immediately in. This time-jump, and the retrospective that the first chapter provides, piques the curiosity of the reader, making them want to figure out the puzzle of how things got to where they are.
Whatever you choose as a starting point, make sure it does one vital thing: makes the reader want to know more. You're absolutely right, it's all about pacing. There is only so much you can write at the same pace… And yes, our last paragraph explains that these are merely guidelines. If you want to do it differently, all the more power to you. It's been a best-seller for so long, and the chapters are one and two pages.
Any comments? We couldn't cover all the bestsellers, however we're working on expanding our data set for the infographic and will hopefully be able to include more of those. All the Light We Cannot See is an interesting example though, so thanks for mentioning it! It seems like the takeaway is not to focus on trying to hit any standard measure, but to use chapter breaks deliberately for effect.
This seems to be the case with most aspects of writing and art in general. A chapter should be as long as it needs to be. A chapter can be broken up into sections; the passage of time or a change of venue divided by an extra paragraph break. This, too, like a chapter ending, gives the reader a chance to put down the book, to come back later to continue reading.
Best practices are far too concerned about manipulating and catering to the reader. As writers we all manipulate the reader. A two-paragraph chapter, used as a sort of cliff-hanger, is but one of many bells and whistles writers are encouraged to use to keep the reader turning pages.
Exquisite writing, the turn of a phrase, how a writer tells their story, can just as easily keep a reader immersed in the text. A book is only as good as what its words make happen inside the reader's head, and no two readers are alike. No number of best practices can save a poorly written story. When I read that, I thought it was strange! Is the author tired of the writing teachers emphasizing that so many bits of writing advice are guidelines, not rules?
Is this some kind of backlash? Is the author an uptight martinet? Arriving at the actual section, which of course is "Guidelines, Not Rules", I realized that no, it's none of the above. It's simply less-than-stellar proofreading. You might want to fix that. Fixed, thank you for kindly letting us know about it. Hope this didn't detract you from the main message of the article. No, it didn't distract me from the main message.
The article was informative and helpful. You can say that this stuff doesn't matter all you want, but it really does. I for one get super irritated with marathon chapters. If a book is plugging along at pages a chapter and then all of a sudden you throw in a 40 pager, I very well might stop reading. A painter picks a canvas before painting and a writer makes decisions about pacing and length. Adhering to formulas or convention does not necessarily diminish art.
In fact, it can elevate it. Just look at classical music. And from what i have seen words per chapter is not a lot as i am on right now la little worried any advice thank you in advance. I like the disclaimer at the end that these are guidelines, not rules. It's a very informative article. I write epic fantasy, which is more forgiving of meatier chapters I think.
I average about k words per chapter. One of the conclusions I came to was that fewer chapters in a book make it easier to format. So my formatter's hat always pushes me to write bigger chapters, lol. That said, I write the story and let the words fall where they will. I have short chapters and long ones. An story that uses words efficiently has more effect on readers holding onto that book. Chapters are a tool of writing just like sentences and paragraph.
As a new writer, this blog was tough to swallow. However, I am grateful for the time it took to compile the statistics and example. Very helpful.
I am still stuck on a chapter with plus pages. Being new to this my goal is to just write and go with the flow. Once I get to the point of editing then I will work on the daunting but needed word count. Thank you.
In my story, a few chapters are thirty pages long and one even more. I publish it on a website but readers never told me it was too long or that I annoyed them, even if many times I should have divided it in two. In the end, however, I didn't change a thing. Normally, however, my chapters are fifteen pages long. Thank you for making this! This is a great guide, and I love the chart.
I write so slowly, I have a hard time knowing how long a chapter I am working on would feel to a reader. Obviously I don't spend my energy trying to adhere to a specific number, but it helps me to know if I'm roughly at the length of a Jane Eyre chapter or a Name of the Wind chapter or a Giver chapter, since I know how the pacing in those books feels when I read them.
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