Writing that tricky first chapter with A. Connors

Adam was an Undiscovered Voices finalist in 2020. In this guest blog he takes a deep dive into the first chapter of his debut novel, The Girl Who Broke The Sea…

(“Deep dive” … do you see what we did there?)

You know that feeling: when a piece of writing zings off the page, when reading it gives you shivers. That’s what we’re all aiming for, right?

It’s what the judges at Undiscovered Voices are looking for as well. 

But how do you make it happen?

By now you probably have a good sense of the idea behind writing a great first chapter. Maybe you made it to the Standout First Chapter Masterclass, and you should certainly check out Patti’s post with some amazing tips about writing strong openings.

But putting all these pieces together is a different matter, and knowing whether or not you’ve got it right is even harder when you’ve just re-read your own first chapter for about the fiftieth time!

The Undiscovered Voices team thought it would be fun for me to pick apart the first chapter of my novel, The Girl Who Broke The Sea, and see how well I did at following the rules.

That’s… quite daunting to be honest. Because books are never finished, and there’s plenty of things I’d do differently if I wrote this book again. But there are a few things I’m proud of as well, and it sounds like a useful exercise, so let’s give it a go.

You can have a quick read over here: The Girl Who Broke The Sea — Chapter 1. It’s short, just 650 words, but I’ll cut and paste as I go, so don’t worry if you don’t have time to read the full thing.

The Hook

The first sentence of your book is the front door to your world. It should seize your reader’s attention like a well-designed shop front. It should invite them in, but pique their curiosity and force them to ask questions as well. It should establish the tone, the theme.

What makes that first sentence so hard is that it’s the point where the gap between your knowledge and the reader’s knowledge is the greatest. One of the most common pieces of feedback I’ve heard in writing groups (and received myself plenty of times) is to start later. It’s so tempting to feel like there are things about your character that you absolutely must establish before the action can begin.

But, in most cases, it’s not true. You’re better to start in medias res (in the midst of things) and plunge the reader into your world. 

Make the reader feel it just as your characters are feeling it — in the moment. And then come back and fill in the gaps later, when you (and the reader) are ready for a breather.

My opening:

CH-CLUUNK! CLAANK—

“Mum?”

CH—CH—CH—CH—GRRRRR—

“Mum, I changed my mind, I don’t want to go.”

CHRAANK—!

“I want to stay topside with Dad. I don’t even like the sea.”

I rewrote my first chapter about thirty-eight times over the two years it took me to write this book (seriously, I have all the drafts), but these opening lines never changed.

Not that I’m super happy with them. But if you’ve ever heard the bow thrusters on the ferry coming out of Dover, you’ll recognise the loud, dirty, painful but weirdly exhilarating feeling I was going for.

The thing I do like about this opening is the fact that we know right away what Lily wants: not to go.

And we have a whole bunch of questions in our heads: Where are they going? Why are they going? What’s Lily going to do when they get there?   

Introduce your main character

Fundamentally, the thing that makes books work is the fact that the creatures inside them feel real. Humans are social animals, we need that sense that the people we’re reading about exist in their own right, and behave according to their own rich, inner worlds.

The only way to do that is to know your characters really, really well.

There’s a saying: You don’t know what you’re made of until you’ve had the stuffing knocked out of you. 

That’s what I do when I’m writing. I start with slightly sketchy notions of who my characters are, and then I put them through all kinds of hell and watch what they do.

This is one of my favourite moments in the opening chapter:

I twisted in my seat, trying to make myself more comfortable. The straps were designed for someone taller than me and they chafed against my neck. I watched through the porthole as our logistics ship uncoupled and moved away. Our sub rocked in its wake, the sea rising and falling around us. I felt like a flea riding on the back of an enormous animal, its great grey hide rippling as it walked.

Lily feels small and fragile, she doesn’t really belong there — even the seats aren’t designed for somebody her size! For me, it’s a detail that lets the reader into Lily’s world, it lets them feel what Lily is feeling far more efficiently than anything she could say or think.

A vivid setting

One great piece of advice is to use all the senses — sight, hearing, smell, touch. It’s another way of saying that you should have your reader experience the world just as your characters are experiencing it. If your character walks into a restaurant, don’t describe the bits of a restaurant the reader already knows about, describe the bits that are unique to this restaurant, describe the bits that your character would notice.

You learn about the setting through your character’s eyes, and you learn about your character through what they see and the meaning they take from it.

Looking back at my first chapter I have sounds, and physical sensations. The first smell Lily remarks upon comes in Chapter 2:

There was a damp, salty, seaweed taste in the air, mixed in with sweat and engine oil and the school-canteen odour of stale vegetables.

Conflict and foreshadowing

Conflict, and your character’s journey through that conflict, is what drives a story. You won’t have it all in your first chapter, but the reader should get a taste for it from the beginning. Stories may start in the normal world, but we need to see the storm clouds forming.

I took a deep breath and tried to settle the cage full of monkeys in my chest. Yes, I’d agreed to this. Yes, I’d promised Mum I was up for this. But what had I been thinking? I couldn’t do it. This was a mistake. A terrible mistake. I was going to mess up, just like I always did, and it was going to be worse than ever this time.

Not only does Lily not want to go, she’s afraid to go. And she’s not afraid of what’s down there (actually, she should be, but that comes later), she’s afraid of herself. She’s afraid of her past.

This generates a whole bunch of questions in the readers’ minds, and it’s those questions that propel them onto the next chapter.  

In closing…

If you’re about to submit your entry to Undiscovered Voices (eek!) you’re probably desperately re-reading and editing and tweaking. My advice: don’t sweat it. You’ve already done the hard work. You’ve written and rewritten your story, you’ve laughed and cried alongside your characters, you’ve made them your friends and your family.

That’s the important part.

If you’re lucky, a few months from now you’ll get a call from one of the lovely Undiscovered Voices team telling you that you’re one of the finalists. And if not… No biggie. You’ll go back and keep writing, because that’s what writers do, and as Nora Roberts said: The only thing that can’t be fixed is a blank page.