Writing a collection of short stories or a novel is easier said than done. If you are an aspiring author who is about to embark on a new story – you might already know the terror of staring at a blank page. You already know that getting started is a critical moment, and the first page or the first chapter of your book will either make or break it.
Speaking of the first page of your book – even the opening paragraph – that is what will create the first impression of your writing.
Why Does the First Page Matter?
Writing the first page of your book puts a lot of pressure on you. What your readers will see on the first page will determine whether they want to continue reading or not. As an aspiring writer, you might be an avid reader yourself.
What do you do when you go book shopping? The chances are that you will take your time browsing and looking at everything, and if a book cover stands out, you will pick up that book to see what is written inside. You will spend at least five minutes reading that book and decide whether or not you would like to continue.
Avoid Starting with Exposition About the World
When you are writing a short story, you need to focus on showing and not telling what the world is of the characters. If this is your first time writing short fiction, then you might want to find out more about the essentials that go into writing short fiction. Short fiction is usually about the character’s journey, and you don’t have much room for world-building.
However, if you are writing a novel, you have room for world-building, but starting your novel while explaining the world, society, and system isn’t what will get the reader’s attention. If you start with world-building, it will lack internal conflict, and the readers will feel overwhelmed by all the information.
Only Introduce Necessary Information
As a newbie writer, you might make the mistake of overwhelming the readers with too much information, including names and characters, on the very first page of your book. If you do so, your reader will find it incredibly hard to get past the first page.
If you place an excess of character names, world-building, place names, or too much information on the first page, you will disorient your readers, which is why they will abandon your book. You should keep in mind that the reader already knows absolutely nothing about your book when they first open your book and start reading it.
In the best-case scenario, your readers will only be able to handle one or two names on the first page. However, if you feel the need to introduce more than two characters on the first page, you might want to consider referring to them as relations, such as friend, sister, bully, etc., instead of their names.
Introduce the Interesting Stuff Right Away
Many newbie writers make the mistake of having a slow start as they attempt to save the good things for later. The reason why you might do the same is because you are attempting to make your protagonist mysterious – but it won’t make a good impression on your readers.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to save so much crucial information that your readers won’t be able to form the main idea about what the character cares about, which is why they cannot care about the characters.
To get your readers hooked on the story and care about the main character, you will want to give them a glimpse of the good stuff at the beginning.
Avoid A Boring Start
As you already know, the opening page of your story creates the final impression on your readers’ minds, where they decide whether they want to continue reading or not. On that note, one of the worst ways to start your opening page is by narrating your character’s boring day and all the details about what they do after waking up.
If you have a start like this, it clearly indicates that you are saving the good stuff for later. What this will do is that the readers will lose attention even before they get to the good stuff. Starting a story like this is a common cliché that many first-time writers do.
You need to understand that you don’t need to set the stage by portraying what your character’s average life looks like before an important event happens that pushes them out of their comfort zone.
Introduce A Conflict From the Very Beginning
Now, at this point, you might be wondering about how you can actually start the first page of your book to reel the readers right into the story, where they will be eager to turn one page after the other to see how things go.
On that note, the best way to start the story is by introducing your main character in a conflicted place from the very beginning. Ideally, your readers should see the character dealing with internal and external problems.
The opening page, where you introduce the internal and external conflicts that your main character is dealing with, happens to be the most important moment in your book. These are the first five minutes, which will be the ultimate deal breaker – also known as the hook.
Reveal Something That is Enough to Spark Curiosity
In your opening page, you should introduce the main character’s conflict. The only rule to follow when sparking curiosity is that you should reveal just enough of your main character’s internal conflict and not all of it. What this will do for you is make your readers care about them, even if some part of the conflict remains a mystery.
Your readers will have twice as many questions as they get the answers – but – they are still getting the satisfaction of some answers even when they don’t understand all of the backstory. You might want to read some books and focus on their opening to see how other writers have nailed this crucial part of their books.
