First Chapters (Nanowrimo Now What?)

First Chapters are a very fraught subject. Writers agonize over them. I don’t have to tell you! The pressure is enormous, isn’t it? The first chapter sells your submission and it sells your book once it’s published. It carries the whole weight of the book with it. It has to convey mood, tone, genre, foreshadowing, stakes, urgency, main character need and desire, setting, theme (especially, especially, especially theme) and the absolute sense that this is a journey that we want to take. And a dozen other things beyond that. (Note that I didn’t mention “a great first line.” I am not one of the cult of the first line.)

So how do we approach writing — or rewriting one?

(And if you’re writing a script, same advice goes, throughout this post.)

The best advice I can give you here is: Don’t sweat this one on a first draft. Or even maybe on the second.

Seriously.

Despite that scene we’ve all seen in practically any Hollywood movie with a writer character in it, there is no law that says you have to start your book by sitting down at your keyboard, cracking your knuckles, and typing “Chapter One.”

Your opening chapter might be the last thing you end up writing. You may be reading a first of second or third draft and find a chapter halfway through the book that you…