Hey everyone! 

 I may have started writing the second draft of Window Lake’s first book already, and that got me thinking about first chapters. The first chapter is obviously very important to the story and, honestly, a pretty hard part to write. But how exactly do we write it? What do we need to include in order to have a functioning first chapter? 

 So in honour of the FicFrenzy (a writing event for those of you who don’t know) starting next week, I decided to talk about the five important parts of a first chapter. Let’s dive right in! 

 1. Hook

 Ah yes, the infamous hook. The thing most writers get stuck on for five years because we can’t figure out the perfect first line. It can be easy to obsess over making the coolest line ever, but honestly I think writers tend to overcomplicate it (and yes, I am guilty of doing this too). The point of a first line— or more accurately, the first paragraph— is to pique curiosity and/or tell us something about the character or world. It doesn’t have to be the best written line in existence, as much as we would like it to be. It can start with an action, a piece of dialogue, or honestly anything that gets the reader to ask questions. If the reader starts asking questions, that means they want to know more, and if they want to know more they’ll keep reading. 

 2. Protagonist (+ relationships) 

 This is arguably the most important thing to include in your first chapter. Introduce the protagonist to your readers and show them who they are. Let the readers learn something about your character as soon as they meet them. It doesn’t have to be in the very first sentence of the book, obviously (unless you want it to be), but establishing what kind of person the character is early on can help readers connect with them more easily. Introducing your character in the first chapter is also important for their growth later on, since it gives readers an idea of what they’re like in their normal life before whatever adventure you throw at them gives them a chance to grow and change. The growth won’t hit as hard if readers don’t know what the character was like from the start. 

 Another point related to characters that I haven’t seen talked about often when discussing first chapters is introducing important relationships. Now this doesn’t mean introduce every single character your protagonist will ever meet within the first chapter, but if there is an already existing relationship that’s important to the story, it might be a good idea to establish it in the first chapter. If there are other characters your protagonists will meet later on who are important to the story, then you should leave those to later chapters. But introducing a pre-established relationship can help us get to know both characters better. 

 3. Goal

 Give your character a goal— give them something to want. It might be the driving force for the story, or it might be a smaller goal that makes way for the main goal to be introduced. Either way, the goal should help move the story along. Having a goal is a great way to help us care for the characters more, and therefore be more interested in the story as a whole. 

 4. Conflict 

 Conflict is another good way to make readers care for your character. Don’t introduce too big of a conflict though— you want to save the worst (or best) of your conflict for later. But a smaller (usually internal) conflict can give readers a look into the mind of the protagonist and is also a great way to push them toward their goal. An example of this is Bilbo in the Hobbit. In the first chapter he struggles between choosing adventure or staying in the comfort of his home. It’s obviously not the largest conflict in the Hobbit, but it helps us get to know Bilbo better and therefore care for him more. 

 5. Setting 

 Another important part of the first chapter is establishing the setting. It can be easy to just dump all the information about your world into the first five pages and be done with it, but info dumping can be in the way and even be a turn off for some readers. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have some information about the setting in the beginning, especially if there’s something special or unique about it, but having too much can be distracting to the story. A good way to show setting in the first chapter is to have characters interact with it. This is a great way to introduce parts of a setting without throwing it in the readers’ faces, and it can also help them learn more about the characters and how they interact with their environment. 

 So there it is! Hopefully this is helpful for anyone starting a new project or draft. Anyone else starting a new project soon or just started one recently? 

 Thanks for reading! – Em