There’s lots of advice out there about what you should (or must) include in your first chapter, first scene, first page, first paragraph, first sentence, etc. But what shouldn’t you include? In a post on DIY MFA, Disha Walia shares her thoughts. “There are a lot of things you can do to produce an ideal first chapter, but here are 4 things you must avoid to make it even more perfect,” she says.
- Worldbuilding. You might be tempted to immerse your reader in your spec-fic world right away, but Walia recommends you hold back a bit. “No reader is going to care about an awesome world until they know who or what they are going to follow into that world,” she says.
- Overwritten narrative. “You don’t need to write everything to where it sounds like you’re spoon-feeding the novel to your readers,” Walia says. “This also includes, especially for Sci-Fi, over-explaining the science part to your readers.”
- Too much physical description. “Even if your world is amazingly different, or your characters look a certain way in your head, please do not give too much physical description,” Walia advises. “Give valid descriptions and let your readers’ imagination take it from there.”
- Information dumps. This includes backstories, motives, inner conflicts, and everything in between. “Info-dumping destroys the illusion of fictional reality,” Walia writes. “It is like the characters are trying to point out something to the readers. That becomes a barrier between a reader’s imagination and the story.”
