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It’s Important: Your Opening Chapter

9/28/2019

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    You’re in the book store’s fiction section browsing the new arrivals. A cover catches your eye. You pick up the book and open it to the first chapter. The narrative waxes on about a cottage in an idyllic rolling meadow with grass so green that it takes your breath away. You continue to read about that bucolic scene for four more pages and feel your eyes closing as your consciousness wanes. Your eyes snap back open as you put the book back and move on to the next.
    The opening chapter of your novel is important. Next to the cover, it may be your most important selling point. So, what makes a good first chapter? What draws a reader in and causes him or her to tuck that book under their arm and head for the check out counter or hit that “Buy” button on Amazon?
    In the genres of thrillers and action adventure there are certain components that are common to all first chapters. This is not to say that they don’t work in any genre. Let’s take a look at them:
  • The opening line or opening paragraph has to draw the reader in. Here are some opening lines. Can you name the novel they are from? 
    • Call me Ishmael.
    • Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
    • It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
    • Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
    • All this happened, more or less.
    Each is intriguing and practically drives you to continue reading. (By the way these are the   
    books: Moby Dick, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Pride and Prejudice, The Trial, and  
    Slaughterhouse-Five. How many did you get right?)
  • Introduce your protagonist. The protagonist is usually in their ordinary world. But, in a thriller or action adventure novel it means the ordinary world may be fraught with problems or conflict which must be quickly addressed by the hero. This allows our hero to demonstrate their special ability and foreshadows the coming major conflict of the novel. The extreme example of this is the series of James Bond movies. Just after the opening credits, Bond finds himself in an impossible situation with death on his heels. He escapes with the aid of some space age gadget provided by Q. What we learn from this is that Bond is a man familiar with danger and that we’re in for a heck-of-a thrill ride. By the way, if your first chapter is fairly short, you can introduce your protagonist in the second chapter.
  • Introduce your antagonist. They are usually the instigators of the main conflict of your story so get them involved early. Now, you don’t have to physically show your antagonist at the onset. Sometimes opening your novel with a dramatic scene of mayhem entices your reader with the level of malevolence, sophistication, and drive your antagonist possesses and thus the hurdles your protagonist will face.
  • Your writing has to be done well in the opening chapter to keep your reader reading. This probably goes without saying.
  • Finally, end your opening with a cliffhanger—the first step in a rising staircase of cliffhangers throughout your story.    
That’s my list for opening chapter must haves. I’ve tried to incorporate them in my new novel, LETHAL PARADISE. Check it out. 


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One Last Thing: Editing

9/18/2019

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It’s finally happened. My book is ready to drop. After years of writing I had to release my baby into the world. Although, you could call the entire project a labor of love, the final part, the editing, was (putting it mildly) excruciating. 
    Before I say more about my editing ordeal, I must admit that I would have preferred to hire a professional editor. Even a cursory check of blogs and articles on the internet will bear me out. A professional editor for you book is the way to go. However, I wanted to get the book out as I have several others coming down the pike. Unfortunately, I also had significant housing expenses. The final results: no money for an editor.
     Editing is difficult. And really no fun. But, it’s a necessary part of writing. This is how I did it:
  • After completing the manuscript, I put it away for a while. 
  • I then did three read throughs:
    •  The first to correct obvious mistakes and to fill in those blanks writers create when a name or description eludes you at the moment and you don’t want to stop the creative flow to search a thesaurus; 
    • The second was to adjust the timeline. You don’t want to say your character, John, flies to Europe in two days, then later write, “Three weeks later, John boarded the plane for Paris.” 
    • Lastly, I did a read through to evaluate the entire manuscript. Finally finished? Not by a long shot.
  • I then obtained a beta reader. Her criticism gave me a sense that I was on the right track with the story. 
  • I next obtained proofreading software and ran the manuscript through it multiple times. I looked for not just typos and grammar , but passive sentences, word repetitions, sentence length, and vague words.
  • I then put the manuscript away again. This time when I came back to it, the manuscript read like a new story. This allowed me to see errors that I’d missed before.
  • Finally, I read the manuscript twice more: once for the flow of the story and the second time aloud, to pick up any further grammar and typo errors, as well as poor sentence structure.
Although, not completely satisfied with the manuscript (I think no author is ever completely happy with their work) I decided to release it. 
    LETHAL PARADISE will be available on Amazon. I hope you take a look at it. 

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