..... i dont agree with this. But it seems like these days, the first chapter (or first episode) MUST tease the entire story instead of providing a foundational piece for the story. My coworker told me once that he feels like tv (particularily anime) seems to give action-packed first episodes to hook people BEFORE going into the plot in the following episodes. He believes its because people are losing their attention spans. I noticed that ive come to expect it, too (edit for clarity: I've come to expect getting a sense of everything in the first episode). I started watching a series and after the first episode, i had no idea what this series was going to be about. I found myself getting annoyed and reading the synopsis of the following episodes (i caught myself and stopped). The manuscript rejections i get are mostly from submissions that require only the first chapter. The feedback i get include "i like your writing style" "interesting premise" (And the kickers) "im not sure where this is going" and "it wasnt immersive enough" I guess this post is part vent part question and the vent is now over: why must we tell everything in the first chapter? Do you guys do this/have you noticed it in tv and books?
It sort of depends. Are you telling the story in the first chapter, or are you beginning at the end? By the end of the first chapter (or it might be the prologue, I can't remember), we know the main character is being hunted by vampires and travelling to escape them with a boy. The rest of the book is about how they got there. I don't agree with that approach at all. I can't say I've noticed it with anime either. good anime still has to hook you in, it just has less time to do it in (since each episode is about 22 minutes of actual footage). It's nearly as bad as making your first chapter an info dump, IMO. I don't hold that doing it the normal way doesn't still work. But I think this does highlight the need for an agent if you're going the trad pub route. I got "The narrative style didn't resonate with us" on one rejection, but I thought that was great. It means they engaged with it and noticed it - it probably wasn't what they were looking for. They didn't say they didn't like the story. It just needs the right market. Of course, I write short stories, so I'm not the best judge as far as novels go.
I have 2 book examples of both... In the book, Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes.... you get who the MC is and her purpose and basically the story in the first chapter. She is heir to a kingdom, has lost many family and friends to war, the other side seems cruel but she sympathizes with them, and by the end, she says she would do anything to stop the bloodshed. (The plot then goes into the "anything" and just how far she'd go). Second example: The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Brennan (Bannen?.... im blanking on the name at the moment). First chapter sets up the 2 MCs and their pseudo platonic dynamic and even 1 of the MC's frustrations, and the other MC's will to reture and open a bed and breakfast. But.... the plot (aside from them falling in love) is not set up in the first chapter. The book synopsis involves dragons and mines/dungeons and poachers. None of that is teased in the first chapter. The only thing thats hinted at is their relationship turning into something more. Granted, one came out in 2004 and the other came out last year i think. Both are fantasy novels, too. And both involve romance. But the openings are so different
I think it comes from the fact that modern readers like to be told what to think. They don't like to have to actually think - in other words, you can't trust them as much as you once could and you need to spell everything out. It's not so much telling the whole story in the first chapter but spelling everything out.
I can see where some plot lines could be pictured in the first chapter, like caught on an island and everyone is eventually killed. In chapter one, the first character is killed and the next victim is missing. I can deduce that most will die. Also, with serial killers, no matter how interesting they make it, I don’t care. I guess you could include romance novels where relationships are on the mend ...again.. that could be told in the first chapter. Most of my novels have a character arc that would defy you to recognize them by chapter ten. I have one novel where the protag is killed in the opening chapter, and another short story—soon to be a novel—that starts out with the MC being a rebellious teenager but in chapter 12 we learn her father is an accountant for a Mexican cartel that split with a lot of cash and fled to Del Mar California under another name. When one chapter tells the complete story, that would be a turnoff for me. If I can figure it out whether it’s a book are a movie, I’m done.
In my manuscript.... the first chapter sets up the situation. Not HOW they got into the situation or whats to come after the situation. Just... the MC has this problem she is trying to resolve, which is talking to the other MC who has allegedly been dodging her. The end of chapter 1 is the MC finally reveals the situation to the other MC. This chapter also introduces side characters and how they interact with the MC. The NEXT chapters reveals who the characters are, why their friendship ended, and HOW they got into the situation and the plans they make to deal with it all. It just doesnt work well starting with the build up and the plan to fix the situation because then, whats the point of reading? Even if the plans go wrong, there would be no interest in getting to know the characters if everything is laid out in the first chapter....
Telling the whole story? I don't know about that, but I would definitely agree that you should have a sense of the conflicts that will need to be resolved to bring about a natural ending to the story. Not the same thing. I would agree too that I have read first chapters that leave me no idea of what the book is going to be about. Or what it should be about. I can't say for sure if that means auto-fail more often than not, but I think there's some correlation that you're in for a very rambling, scattershot kind of story, which isn't irredeemable but is more likely to be lame than good. Depends on heavily the writing style/focus demands plot focus as opposed to character or language. To use television, Breaking Bad might be the most perfect opening episode ever. Definitely in this department. By the end of the first episode you know: Central Conflict: MC high school teacher decides to sell Meth... that shit ain't going to end well. Side Conflict #1: MC has terminal cancer and isn't telling his family about it. #2: MC's wife is unaware of his incipient descent into crime. #3: MC's brother in law is a DEA agent who specializes in meth interdiction. I'm not saying the show wrote itself after that, but you could have sketched the narrative arc on a cocktail napkin and correctly anticipated in which order the conflicts would crescendo. Almost season by season, you could have said, this is going to happen first, this is going to happen second, this one is definitely going to happen last. And the show unfolded by the numbers from there, but while you knew what was going to happen in the broad sense, you had no idea how it was going to happen or what the consequences might be. About as brilliant a setup as brilliant gets.
The first chapter needs to be interesting, entertaining, dynamic, and not passive or boring. The second chapter should set up the direction of the whole novel. That was the style of Anthony Horowitz, and he was qutie successful with it. I will never finish a novel if the first chapter didn't hook me like a fish. But telling the whole story, you need to be able to surprise your audience a bit with an unknown end.
