How to Write a Great First Chapter in Your Book

      Writing a great first chapter will be one of the hardest things you will have to do as an author.  The first chapter is generally the first thing that a reader will see if you decide not put a prologue in your book, and so it better be good.  When I say good, it better happen in the first couple of pages of your book.  If not, you might lose the reader and they just might choose not to read your book.  Don't get me wrong, some readers like a long drawn out first chapter, but personally, I am one of those readers that don't.  If a story doesn't grab my eye in the first couple of pages I won't read the book.  I don't care how many people tell me the book is great, I just won't read it.


     Here is a video below where the person is talking about writing a great first chapter:

     The one thing that this person in the video didn't suggest that I would, is to pick up books around your house and read the first two pages in them.  Find ones that you think are good and ones that you think aren't so good.  Then ask yourself what was good and not so good in the first chapter of the books you found around your house.  You can also do this out on amazon.com.  Go to the book genre that you write in and look at a few books.  Amazon.com lets you do this through their LOOK INSIDE feature.  Ask yourself after reading a few pages in this preview would you want to read that book.  If not, why not?  If you would, then why would you?

     If you have already self-published a book and it isn't selling all that well, you might just want to edit your first chapter and see if you can fix anything that might be causing any future readers to look elsewhere.  Making this change just might help you in the long run.  This is the great thing about self-publishing; you can always change something in your book and re-publish it.

     In my next blog entry, I am going to talk about how to outline your book before you start writing it.

     So stay tuned!