Great Beginnings
Making the Most of First Impressions
By Julie Tollefson
First lines, first paragraphs, first chapters. So much of a novel’s success lies in the impression those firsts make on potential readers. Here, Lina Chern, whose debut novel Play the Fool (Bantam/Penguin Random House) came out March 28, offers five tips for crafting great beginnings that will keep readers enthralled from page one through “The End.”
1) Think like a reader — Readers want to get lost in a story. As important as plot and beautiful language are to that experience, the first connection most readers make is to character. Intriguing characters — whether protagonist, victim, or villain — ground your story and pull readers in.
“Readers want to root for someone,” says Lina. “It took me a long time into my own process to understand that, and I feel like most of the critiques I received about early versions of my novel centered on those critical questions: Who is the character? What do they want? What happens if they don’t get it?”
Plant those questions in the beginning and give readers a reason to read on. Let the answers grow throughout the story.
“Once I was able to answer them for myself and for the reader, I feel like my novel really started to take shape,” Lina says.
Bonus: Knowing the answers to these questions yourself will be a huge benefit when it comes time to write that query letter to agents or editors.
“There’s a reason agents and editors want these questions answered up front: because readers will, too,” she says.
2) Make your first line sing — Lina, who wrote poetry before delving into crime fiction, says she expects her first sentence to do some heavy lifting in setting the stage for the rest of the novel.
“I obsess over single words and their position in the sentence, making sure the whole thing reads as musically as possible,” she says. “And if it’s the first sentence in the novel, it better be a banger.”
Lina points to the first two sentences in Kellye Garrett’s award-winning Like a Sister (2022, Mulholland Books) as a sterling example: “I found out my sister was back in New York from Instagram. I found out she'd died from the New York Daily News.”
That setup gives readers everything they need to know, with enough mystery to keep them reading. “We know that the main character’s sister is dead, that she was famous, and that they were estranged,” Lina says. “That’s the whole novel, right there! Incredible!”
The first sentence should hook the reader, and the rest of the paragraph and chapter should lay out enough of the story to engage the reader and leave them wanting more.
“One mistake I still make over and over is to try to reveal too much too early on, because I’m paranoid that my readers will be confused and jump ship,” Lina says. “Readers don’t need to know all the answers at the beginning. They just need to know the right questions, so they can keep reading in search of those answers.”
3) Crank up the tension — From the very first word, infuse your novel with conflict.
“Something should be wrong,” Lina says. “It doesn’t have to be the novel’s main conflict. It can be as minor as a character rushing to an appointment and being foiled by traffic.”
Again, Lina points to character as the means to achieve the tension and conflict you need to carry your story forward.
“In my own novel, early on I was using the first chapter to narrate the inciting incident but struggling to communicate who my main character was and her relationship to the murder victim — the main drivers of the story,” she says. “Late in the revision process, I added an intro paragraph that addressed these things, and it snapped the chapter into shape, putting the inciting incident into context and raising the stakes.”
4) Surprise your readers — Lina calls herself a writer’s worst nightmare: a picky, judgmental reader.
“I can pretty much tell from the first line whether or not I’m going to keep reading,” she says. “And what I’m looking for in that first line — maybe the first paragraph, if I’m feeling generous — is something that surprises me.”
Surprises can be small or large — “a surprising event, a blast of unexpected humor, an intriguing stylistic turn, a particularly strong voice,” Lina says — as long as they offer the reader a glimpse at the road ahead.
“Basically, I want some evidence that the next 300 pages are going to continue to surprise me and teach me something I don’t already know about writing or the world or even about myself,” she says.
5) Study the techniques of other writers, but find your own way — Advice and “rules” are only useful if they advance your storytelling in a way that entertains or informs your readers. If a technique or method that other writers swear by doesn’t work for you or for the story you’re writing, move on.
“Writing is an art, not a science, and any so-called rules are just observations of what seems to work well most of the time,” Lina says. “Break all the rules you want, as long as you keep the reader interested.”
Experiment with different styles and starting points for your story until you find the way to portray character and conflict on the page that works best for you and keeps your readers turning the pages.
“There are as many ways to start a novel as there are writers,” Lina says. “I’ve read wonderful novels that didn’t do any of the things I described and still managed to grab and hold my attention.”