EmmaD recently talked about writing oneself into a chapter, or the novel, ie, simply keep writing until the story, the scene, the character, starts to come alive, and write on from there.
I've also been taking a peek in Litopia's Pitch Room, and the Agent advises something similar - "Write the first line and throw it away. Write the first paragraph and throw it away. Write the first chapter and throw it away."
There are a lot of opening chapters failing in the slush piles because these were the summary pages that introduced the plot and the character to the writer - they are full of background information in a 'tell' format - once established, ie, once the character, the 'voice' and the story comes alive, they do not need to remain in the opening chapters to bore the reader. Throw them away.


- NaomiM

I agree. Or edit it severely. My 3000 word opening chapter became a 1000 words that became the start of chapter 2. So much of the writing process is finding our own feet in the narrative and I think the main push of an edit should be akin to taking the stabilisers of a bicycle.

JB

There's a not-always-true but quite good suggestion that the way to write a story is to start as near the end as possible. It's certainly true that an awful lot of aspiring novels spend pages and chapters working their way in. That's not a mistake, that's process writing. Sometimes the writer's learnt to put a body on page one, so they do. Then they spend Chapters 2-13 doing all the working their way in, only more awkwardly because it has to be done with flash-backs and slabs of backstory.

A writing teacher I know has a classic workshop exercise, which he does with even quite beginnery writers. It goes:

1) Imagine the rough outlines of a novel you're about to start writing - a couple of people, a problem....

2) Now write p.47.

3) Read it over.

4) Okay, that's page one of a story which may or may not become a novel.

5) Keep writing...

Emma

I quite often hear the excuse that the opening chapters need this background because it explains what motivates the character to do what he/she does in the rest of the book - which is another very good reason to delete it. Explanaitions are what keep a reader reading to find them out. If you give it too them too early they are liable to stop reading.
The agent went on to say that if there is background information in the opening chapters you feel is essential to keep, then condense it right down and drip feed it into the later scenes, and, anything longer, preferably keep it for the second half of the book, where the reader now has a vested interest in the mc, and by then is interested in knowing more about them and stuff from their past.

<Added>

Saying that, I am still struggling with the opening chapter of my wip which falls into this trap but I'm loath to change it.

Naomi - I know exactly what you mean. Get the knife out, and murder those darlings!

I also think that readers very often don't need as much as you thought they did, or that you needed to work out - which is why it can be so useful to think of this as process writing: it was a necessary part, just not something that ends up in the book. Except it does, of course: as that agent suggests, you put it aside, rather than deleting it, and drip feed what turns out to be necessary, wherever it turns out.

Having said that, it can come out horribly creaking to pop in the essential bit of background just before it triggers a piece of plot. I'll never forget the truly dire blockbustery novel I read, where about 9/10s of the way through, having been fed all sorts of pop psychology along the way, we were suddenly told that the villain had always had an irrational fear of being stabbed, when we already knew that the enraged hero was on his way for a final denoument. Yes, you've guessed it...

Emma

Lol, Emma. I can imagine it now, chap.41 of 50, 'Oh, have I mentioned I'm terrified of knives?'...

I know there is a great temptation in fantasy novels to put in a whole load of scene setting about the world - maybe including the politics/power structure - but, again, the only bit the reader really cares about is what the mc can see in their immediate surroundings.

Very true. The adage I've always heard and flagrantly never stuck to (at least in writing a draft) is 'get in early and get out quick'. I went into this edit determined to be savage, and to keep an eye on these things and it's astonishing how many scenes have been lopped off at the beginning and the end. Things should unfold, shouldn't they, rather than being set up and then wound down. I've been concentrating in other books on how much my imagination makes up for a lot that isn't actually written. That too is pretty enlightening.

JB

I'm just reading the first chapter of an unpublished writer's work that falls into this trap (not here on WW). What I'm telling her is that you don't have to explain everything right up front, but you do have to grip the reader. You can do that through creating an intriguing plot, stating a problem up front, creating emotional empathy, through a humorous tone - all kinds of ways and combinations of ways.
(Also wrote something about starting a story on my blog:
http://bookchildworld.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/how-to-start-a-story/ )

Yes, I came across that on another forum where the first three chapters were all tell, starting with background, then setting up the characters, then scene setting....goodness knows how long it went on for before they actually got to the plot itself.

I find this thread very interesting because this is exactly what I have come to realise in the last couple of weeks or so... I had a good 4000 words in my intro chapter which added nothing to the story, explained too much and were absolutely pointless to the book itself - but I needed them at the time to get to know my characters better.

Now I have slaughtered those 4000 words and my book starts on the next chapter, which I think makes the whole story much smoother.

I guess I need to let that stew for a while and see if it was the right decision. Think it was though.

Good for you stagename.

The other thing to avoid is moving it into the prologue.

I've found it also works for short stories - especially where there's a max. word count. If you go over it, throw away the first paragraph, or first half a page, rather than trying to cut it from the other end.

Don't know about anyone else but I could rephrase it 'throw the first book away' - not literally of course but the first draft of my novel (all 95000 words of it) was essentially a very long and detailed synopsis, purely for my benefit. Once I had realised this I did the redraft really quickly because I knew the characters, their motivations and their entire life history inside out. And because I wasn't having to spell everything out any more the finished product is 15000 words shorter. Don't think I'll be trying the same approach with book 2 though...

Oh, and the 1st chapter/ prologue was almost the only thing that survived from the very first draft!