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The first chapter of "The Canticle Kingdom" is going to be featured on LDSbookcorner.com's First Chapter feature.  Sign up at LDSbookcorner.com to try out new books by LDS authors right in your email.

Last week I entered Miss Snark's First Victim's Secret Agent contest (see my entry here) and got some GREAT feedback on my work. Since the contest deals with the first 250 words, all of which I rewrote for the contest, I thought this was a great time to talk about first chapters.

Last summer I attended the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. I took a workshop on first chapters called "Frontloading: The Crucial First Chapter" and the thing I learned that stuck with me the most was that the first chapter is a promise to the reader. It tells them what kind of story they're going to be getting, and what to expect. This is true, even if you don't intend for your first chapter to do that, because it's the way we read. Breaking that promise can frustrate, and disappoint your reader.

That doesn't mean you should give everything away. You don't have to reveal your plot twists, but if your book is a sci-fi thriller, don't let your first chapter read like chick-lit.

By the end of the first chapter, the reader should have some sense of what the main conflict of the book is going to be. They don't need to know all the details, but they should be able to tell the genre, have a good sense of who (what type of person)the main character is, and how their world is changing. Knowing these things sets up anticipation in the reader, it makes them want to read on and see how the events unfold. Not knowing these things makes the reader wonder what the heck this book is about, and if they should even bother to read on and see what happens.

EXAMPLE:
Here's an example of a book with great first chapters:

The Hunger Games - In the first chapter of The Hunger Games we get to see Katniss' everyday world. We learn about the Hunger Games and the Reaping and the high chance that Gale and Katniss will be picked. We see that Katniss is responsible and protective of her sister, Prim, whose name is in the Reaping for the first time. And in the very last sentence of the chapter there's a shock as Prim's name is called. This is a GREAT end of a first chapter. As a reader we are left with a sense of dread. We know what Katniss must do, and we know that we're in for an exciting ride because we're going to experience the Hunger Games with Katniss. We're also introduced to the mechanics of Collin's writing - cliffhanger chapters. Both with story and with structure, she has shown us what to expect, and how to read her book. And she delivers. (Seriously, if you have not read this book yet, go get it NOW.)

Now imagine if The Hunger Games started differently. What if the first chapter was an ordinary day at school for Katniss, followed by time at home dealing with her mother and sister. Suzanne Collins could've started there and gone into greater detail about Katniss' troubled relationship with her mom, given us more history on the District, how life in The Seam works, etc. She could've had the Reaping happen in chapter 3. If she had though, she probably would've lost a lot of readers. I know I would've been flipping back to the cover over and over again, wondering when these supposedly awesome Hunger Games were going to start. I probably would've put the book down before the action started and picked up something else.

Today, I get to revise.

I will . . .

• . . . rewrite the opening of a picture book ten different ways. I make my freshman composition students rewrite their openings three ways and always, the later tries are better. This picture book needs that kind of work to get past the cliches for the opening.



• . . . rethink a post for next week on plots. It’s an overview of the methods of plotting,a thoughtful piece that surveys the many books on the topic and makes some generalizations. It needs some filling in and some links and re-thinking to make sure the logic works.
• . . . reread a couple chapter of my novel. Re-reading is the #1 revision activity. Before you can revise, you must re-read. So, I’ll read and think and be ready to make changes next week.

Related posts:

1. Surprise Yourself in the First Draft

The holidays and the end of the year are bringing out the generous nature of agents!

The 2nd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge

• Deadline: 7pm. EST, Thursday, December 11, 2008.
• Who: Literary agent Nathan Bransford, Curtis Brown, San Francisco office
• What: Post the first paragraph of your WIP and compete for the prize of a partial critique, query critique or a 15 minute phone call.
• How: Skip over to Bransford’s website and post your paragraph in the comments.
• Warning: The competition is stiff. With 10 hours left, there were 1176 comments/paragraphs.
• Attention: This is a learning opportunity. Read through at least some of these paragraphs and see which you like and which you don’t. What grabs your attention? Check back when Bransford posts the winners and vote on the finalist. Do you agree with his choices or not? Why or why not?

For more on opening lines:

• Opening Lines: The Story in Miniature
• Openings: 5 Ways They Go Wrong
• Prophetic Openings

Take a Holiday Break from Queries and Submit a Chapter Instead

• Dates: December 15 to January 15
• Who: Firebrand Literary
• What: Firebrand agents want to read your first chapter and will forego the usual query. This is a big task for those agents and a great opportunity for writers of all kinds. For those of you who have never got a request for a partial (probably because your query was weak), this is your golden chance. Let your writing speak for itself.
• How: Go to the Query Holiday posting on Firebrand’s website.

For more on opening chapters:

• Take the Scene Box Test
• Begin at the Beginning

Attack of the Growling Eyeballs by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin
Feeling picked-on and underappreciated in your own family? Surrounded by people who don't understand you? What you need is a one-inch-tall identical twin brother. Really!

Daniel lives with his three sisters, his mom, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother, and he feels a little overlooked. One day, he shrinks to the size of his fourth toe. Yes, he does. He grows back to normal size, though. Perplexed to say the least, he turns to his great grandmother, Granny Nanny, who reveals that the tendency to shrink is a well-kept and little-understood family secret. Another secret is Pablo, his twin, whom even his mother has never known about. Granny has been raising Pablo in secret all these years. She suspects it's her goulash that makes people shrink.

Pablo, or "The Pablo" as he calls himself, is The Bomb. Nobody can hear him, so he is free to make wisecracks about the women of the house. He can give voice to the opinions and comments that Daniel would get SO beat up for. He can pick and choose what he wants to learn about - Granny homeschools him, but he hitches a ride to school with Daniel whenever Daniel's class is studying something interesting. Pablo can watch TV in the daytime. Pablo has lots of good ideas about how to have fun.

This is a super-funny, super-cool book for kids at about a 3rd grade reading level. The illustrations are slouchy and hip, and the cover is a can't-miss. So glad it's a series!

The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle
Your Neighborhood Librarian: Dude, thanks for reading this book to me in the car.
Prosper: You're welcome.

YNL: What did you like about The Giggler Treatment?
P: I don't know. I just liked it. It was funny.
YNL: Talking seagull?
P: Yeah! That was funny, and the Gigglers, they were funny.

YNL: Anything unusual about this book?
P: Well, there was a lot of poo in it.
YNL: And that's unusual?
P: Yes!
YNL: How about the questions?
P: That was unusual. It was like someone else was reading the book.
YNL: And asking the author questions?
P: Yeah! And he was always like, "Good question!"
P: And I liked the talking biscuits, the one was like, "When you put your feet in water, when you take them back out, they are wet! Isn't that interesting?"
YNL: That was funny. Because, like...
P: It's not!

YNL: We were driving, so I didn't notice it has illustrations til now. Are they just, like, decoration, or do they tell you about what's going on?
P: They don't tell you what's going on, but you can see what people look like.

YNL: What kind of kid would you recommend The Giggler Treatment to?
P: My friend [Titan], because he really likes funny books.

YNL: Thanks, man. Can I take your picture with that book?
P: I guess.



Prosper is seven and will be entering 2nd grade in a month. He also likes funny chapter books like Sideways Stories from Wayside School and detective chapter books like Encyclopedia Brown.

I would leave this review entirely to him, except I really have to note that the entire book takes place during the time it takes a man to walk four steps toward a giant pile of wet dog crap. Plus there's quite a lot of back-chat from an imaginary reader. Altogether Joycean, Proustian, Pynchonesque - name some other authors completely inappropriate for seven year olds and slap adjectival suffixes onto them - but funny (Ok, funny-er, if you, like four other people on the planet, thought Gravity's Rainbow was really a stitch).

This jaunty little first chapter book came my way courtesy Betsy Bird at Fuse #8. Every now and then she jettisons some excess ARCs, and I was lucky enough to snag one this time around.

Here's the old underdog-saves-the-day story with a new angle: Medusa, a gorgon, with the requisite snaky hair and reputation for petrification, and her pals Chiron the centaur and Mino the minotaur are picked on at school by The Champions, shiny shiny hero kids named Perseus, Theseus, and, oddly, Cassandra (presumedly pre-curse).

Teasing, name-calling, etc. A hat is snatched off and thrown in the gutter. Then the three freak kids have to go on an unsupervised camping trip with the hero kids, and, what do you know, by using their skills together, the monster kids save the jerky trio of champions and return to Athens big heroes.

Then Medusa turns The Champions to stone anyway, which actually sounds more satisfying here than it does in the book. In the book, her parents are very big on self-control, and you're led to feel proud of Medusa for exercising hers, so it comes as something of a surprise that she blows it at the end. I'm guessing that the author is setting up a conflict for future books.

My sixth-grade friend Alice, admittedly a little old for this book, read it and said, "Meh." I'm inclined to agree. However, the kids that lap up anything to do with Greek gods and heros will accept this book. And I won't hold it against Ross Collins. I adore his illustration style: it's like Marla Frazee with attitude. And Alvie Eats Soupand Supposing are marvelous books, and I'm hoping to get my hands on Germs sometime soon. Wait, no. Oh, you know what I mean.

Yes, my novel writing is continuing along. This was not the best of weeks for volume, but was decent for story structure, so yay! I'm at 38,780 words this week. I will be gone next week, so I won't be posting again until March 14, 2008.

This week I'm going to chat about first chapters. They are difficult to write, but I have a thought or two about how to make them happen well.

Don't be afraid of developing a setting. Be lavish in your description. I like to throw everything in at first. I give myself permission to be untamed and uninhibited in that first chapter, understanding at some point I will have to go through the entire thing at least dozens of times, refining and polishing.

I approach each first chapter from any angle. I open up to possibilities of shifting the voice, tense, and POV. This is where I pull out my mad skills. I find that a first chapter is not the place for a faint heart. Spin your tale out; believe you have a miraculous ability like a spider. Know you are able to cast out a web, though it starts as one thread after another, in the morning light, drenched by dew, it is a miracle to all that behold it.

Let every voice you've ever heard cheer you on. Be mad, fierce, fearless. Be willing to throw it all out and start again. The first chapter is the place to celebrate, anticipate, and conjure up that which is to come. This is the time to believe in magic, luck, angels, heaven, hell, hope, despair, just throw it all in, the more the better.

Here is the place that faith is born. Your words will create in your readers an unstoppable hunger, vision and passion; respect this with your whole heart. If you do these things, you will find your way. You will say, “This is what I meant to say.”

From Psalm 20, verse 5: We will shout for joy when you are victorious. . .

Barakat, Ibtisam. 2007. Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood.

In this memoir, Ibtisam Barakat provides a framework for sharing her powerful and emotional story. The frame of the story is 1981. As a young woman, a teen, her bus is stopped by Israeli soldiers. The passengers are taken by the soldiers and interrogated before they are finally released to go to their destination: Ramallah.

From the very beginning, her narrative hooks the reader with its simple yet powerful style:

Birzeit is where students go to college after finishing high school in Ramallah. Some also come from Gaza, Nablus, and other cities, towns, and refugee camps. In Birzeit, many students become active in politics and have fights with the Israeli army. They chant on the streets that they want freedom from the occupation. But I did not go there to chant for freedom. I have my freedom. It is hidden in Post Office Box 34. This is what takes me from Ramallah to Birzeit.

Post Office 34 is the only place in the world that belongs to me. It belonged to my brother Basel first. He left Ramalllah and did not want to give up the box, so he passed it on to me. On the days I don’t go to Birzeit, I bury the key in the dirt under a lemon tree near our house. If I die, the key for the box will be under the ground with me.

Having this box is like having a country, the size of a tiny square, all to myself. I love to go there, dig the key out of my pocket, turn its neck around, open the door, then slowly let my hand nestle in and linger, even if the box is empty. I wish I could open my postbox every day. I feel that my hand, when deep inside it, reaches out to anyone on the other side of the world who wants to be my friend. (8-9)

My true journal is written with no pen or paper, but in my mind, with an invisible hand in the air. No one will ever find it (12)

Tears are my secret ink, in the absence of real ink. Liquid stories. (14-15)

She continues on by saying that her many pen pals world wide are always curious about her childhood. But that up until now, she’s lived by her mother’s motto that it is better to forget the past. To forget the atrocities. To forget the fear. To forget the nightmares. But our narrator is coming to a time and place in her life where she wants to remember...needs to remember.

And thus begins the second part of our story. This second part begins on the first day of the six-day war. As a young girl (maybe three year old), her world is turned completely upside down one day when their father brings home news of the war. After a few panicked hours in a water trench in their garden, the family decides to flee their home and join the throngs of rushing refugees that are trying to reach Jordan. The family rushes to their home, takes a few belongings, and the children are ordered to put on their shoes and be ready to go right then. But this poor little girl, she is unable to lace her shoes. And she could only find one.

Initially separated by her family by the rushing crowds, Ibtisam manages to find her family later that day among the crowds. Now no matter what happens, they’ll survive or die as a family all together.

The second part of the book covers the years 1967 to 1971. It covers the war, the year or so spent as a refugee in Jordan, their return to Ramallah and the rebuilding of their homes, the continuing fear of living in a “occupied” region, and the knowledge that set a young girl free: the power to read and write.

She then returns to the frame story, 1981, and shares how telling her story has been self-empowering. And how she is no longer afraid to share with others the traumas of her past.

Like a bird flinging
Its freedom songs
Across the sky

The small girl
I once was
Sings out this story.

I see her smile. (168)

Vincent, Erin. 2007. Grief Girl: My True Story

Erin Vincent suffered great loss as a young teen--the loss of both of her parents.

I am just like you.
I get bored in school.
I goof off with my friends.
I fight with my family.
I have big dreams.
I am just like anyone else.
And then, in a split second, I'm not.
This is my story

It is a coming-of-age in the midst of grief story. It tells how Erin and her older sister, Tracy, and her baby brother, Trent, deal with the loss of their parents. How their lives change and don't change. It begins in 1983 and concludes in 1986. It's about family. It's about friendships. It's about first jobs. It's about growing up and finding yourself.

It is an emotional book. There are highs and lows in her journey to adulthood. And there are places along the way that are difficult to read about. But overall, I think it is a well written book that many will enjoy reading.

We get sent ugly flowers. The kind you only send to dead people because no one living should have to look at such crap. The house is full of unattractive carnations. Vases of flowers line Dad's bar...They're laughing at me. I'm living in a funeral home. (43)

http://www.griefgirl.com/

I'm enough of a Luddite that I found it more than a bit disconcerting earlier today, when bringing up the Amazon website to look at a book, to find the main page welcoming me with "Science Picks for Becky". But disconcertedness turned to intrigue when the first cover's illustration, and then its title, caught my eye: Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great

What have we done to reality?

In a publishing market flooded with memoirs, our relationship with fiction and non-fiction is dissolving. I say open the floodgates and let our narrators be swamped with our news, ideas, and personality quirks.

If you are thinking about writing a memoir, I have three dispatches from the front lines of the Battle for Reality--thoughts to consider as you shape your own story.

1- Writing too close to reality can be dangerous. Literary Saloon reports on a French writer attacked by farmers for the way he portrayed their village in a novel. The Saloon adds this observation to the original article: "Physical attacks are, of course, beyond the pale, but obviously this continues to be an author's dream: the publicity seems to be doing wonders for Jourde's book -- get your own copy at Amazon.fr, where its ranking was 23 last we checked."

2- The bloggers, critics, and readers who demand objective truth from writers writing about real life may be hurting literature. Ed Champion explores two faux memoirs in this essay, asking why contemporary readers insist that memoirs be held to the same standard as journalism--outlining a writing debate that our kids will study in college some day.

3- No matter where you stand on the Battle for Reality, don't sign a movie contract as a fake author. GalleyCat discusses here. And, as a bonus, Danielle Trussoni has some memoir writing tips here. What do you think? How should we write about reality?