In an article for Writer’s Digest, Jacqueline Faber shares five strategies that can keep readers turning pages past the opening. “Get the opening right and readers will stick around,” she says. “Get it wrong, and they’ll jump ship before we even set sail.”
While there’s no formula, Faber says the following five tips help keep her on track:
- Create stakes that matter. “If your opening lacks stakes, readers will be slow to get onboard,” Faber writes. “Show us what matters to your character (along with what they stand to lose if they don’t achieve it), and we become invested.”
- Arouse our curiosity. Questions and mysteries draw readers in. “Make the reader feel like they have shown up to a story already in motion and must work, just a little, to keep up,” Faber says. However, you should be careful not to layer in too many questions without answering a few. Readers want to feel like the story is progressing, as well.
- Banish unnecessary exposition. “Bulky, cumbersome, overwrought exposition may be the most detrimental to an opening,” Faber notes. Choose details the reader needs to know to make sense of the story and its world. If the reader doesn’t need a specific piece of information now, hold it for later, when it matters.
- Give us characters we can root for. Whether your protagonist is likable or not, your reader still needs to root for them. “Let us see how your character makes sense of the world, how they feel about what’s happening around them,” Faber writes. “If we understand their internal rationale, we will rally behind them, even if we don’t agree with their decisions or behaviors.”
- Leave us hanging, just a bit. Regardless of genre, your first chapter should end on a high note. You don’t need to put your hero in danger, but you should pose a question or drop information that draws the reader in.
