11 Terrible Ways to Start a Novel

25% of novels are abandoned before readers even reach the end of the first chapter. You don't want your book to end up like that. Starting your novel well is one of the most important things you can do for your book. It's the difference between a five-star review and radio silence. I've seen each of these 11 terrible ways to start a novel in actual unpublished novels. They're very common mistakes. Now, if you've already written your novel and committed one of these mistakes, don't fret too much. You can always revise it. Number one, starting 10 pages before the beginning. This is probably the most common mistake I see in books that I edit. At the beginning of a book, a writer's often settling into the story a little bit. Just getting a sense of the characters and the plot and all the information and the place. But what they aren't doing is starting the story. Your goal is to find the real beginning of your story. It's where your character first encounters that initial problem or conflict. And you want that to be on your first page. Don't wait seven pages in to bring it up. Don't wait until the second chapter to bring it up. So my recommendation is, after you finish writing the novel, go back to the beginning and see what you can cut from the beginning. Is it the first two pages? The first three pages? The first five pages? Start the story as late as you possibly can, as close to the action. Then you can catch the reader up on that background and information later. Two, introducing too many characters. Nobody likes meeting 20 people at a time, either in real life or in fiction. So do your reader a favor and stick with a few most important characters in the first chapter of your book. Let me clarify what I mean by few. By few, I mean two or three, maybe four. I read a lot of novel drafts where the writer introduces 10 characters in the first chapter and nobody's going to be able to keep those all straight in their brain. Your readers are smart and when they cannot remember for the life of them who the Tommy character is, they're going to feel dumb and that's going to make them stop reading. Three, not creating conflict. The goal of the beginning of your novel is to show some sort of conflict on the first page. If I, as a reader, can't latch on to some danger or tension or mystery, I don't want to keep reading. There are tens of millions of books to read in this world, so give me a reason as soon as possible why I should continue to read yours. Without some element of tension or conflict on that very first page, you have a bad novel opening. Four, not introducing your main character. It is annoying to read the first five or ten pages and figure out that this character that I invested in turns out to be completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. If it's possible, and most of the time it is possible, show your main character from the very beginning. Think of the beginning of a novel as kind of a promise or a contract with the reader. You are promising them that, listen, this person, which I'm having you spend time get to know, they matter for the rest of the story. They're not a red shirt that's just going to be slaughtered a minute later. Don't be coy in your novel openings. Just start talking about the main person. Five, starting with summary. In general, it's a great idea to start with some kind of scene. Are there plenty of exceptions to this rule? Well, yes. But if you're a beginning writer, it's much harder to pull off a good summary that opens a novel rather than just starting with a gripping scene. That's because ultimately readers don't want information about your story. They want to smell something, see something, touch something, taste something. And just a little extra tip for your scene, try to start in the middle of your scene rather than at the boring beginning. Start in the middle and let the reader figure it out. Six, burying the reader in info. Look, mysteries are good. You don't have to dump everything in your story right in the first couple of pages. Give the reader just enough knowledge that they can figure out who this person is and what they're struggling with. If you do that, they'll keep on reading to find out all the other stuff. If you're writing sci-fi or fantasy, this is often called front-loading your world building. You are telling us about the world itself and what life is like and their religion and their architecture and all this information about the world that you know, but you're not starting with a single character and their problem and what they're doing to solve that problem. Information dumps and storytelling are completely different activities. Like that little dance there, did you? Yeah. Start with the storytelling. Seven, making the reader feel dumb. One of your goals as an author is to trust your reader. What I mean by that is trust they're smart and don't try to over-explain things. Sometimes I'll see an author where they're like really trying to hit you over the head hard to make sure the reader gets the point that they're making. But an author who trusts the reader knows, listen, my readers are smart. They're going to figure this out. I don't have to like bludgeon them with the truth. What that does is it allows you a little bit more subtlety and prevents you from having to explain everything in your book. And if you don't spend time explaining, you can actually spend more time telling the story. Number eight, changing point of view. It is almost always a mistake to shift point of view from omniscient third to first person and then back again. Yes, yes, yes. I know there are experimental writers out there and if you're one of those, hey, more power to you. But for 99% of writers, you want to pick a point of view and stick with it. If you are writing in the first person, I want to hear that first person narrator speaking as soon as possible. If you're writing an omniscient point of view and you're going to be switching point of views throughout the book, that needs to happen at the latest by the second chapter. The vast majority of books could be improved by simplifying the point of view. In other words, when I'm reading a lot of unpublished novels, often they'll want to include 15 point of views, 20 point of views. Then I'm like, this would probably be better as two point of views or one. I'm not saying there's not amazing books out there with a ton of point of views. Obviously there are. What I'm saying is use Occam's razor and try to simplify your point of views. Have as few as possible while still being able to tell your story. Nine, starting with a dream sequence. I am deeply morally opposed to starting a novel with a dream sequence. I'm smiling. I don't know why I'm smiling because I am dead serious. But really, I don't want a cheap trick to start the story. I want something that's actually real, that's happening in real life. Anybody can make a dream fascinating because it's this dream world. The trick is to make the reality of your character just as fascinating. Because at some point, that character has to wake up and then your reader's going to feel cheated. Oh, like they were just tricking me with a dream sequence. What else are they going to trick me with in the rest of the novel? That's a good rule of thumb. Never cheat your reader. Now, if you want to have a dream sequence later on in your novel, that's perfectly fine. You just don't want to start the book with this fake out of something that's not real. Ten, waking up to an alarm clock. Waking up to an alarm clock is always unexciting. Do you want to start your novel in the most boring way possible? Now, if they woke up to a gunshot or an alien invasion or woke up being turned into a giant cockroach, now that's something you can work with. But when you have a character wake up to an alarm clock, it's kind of like you're starting your story with the everyday. Like this is their normal life. There's nothing different about it. Start with what makes their day unusual. Choose the unusual over the mundane. A good way to start your story is to say to yourself, and then one day, what happens to your character? So write your first line and then delete the, and then one day. Number 11, believing confusion is the same thing as subtlety. I think subtlety is a wonderful tool to have in your writer's toolbox. But if the beginning of your novel makes your reader feel confused, they're not going to keep reading. And also, confusion is different than subtlety. Some writers attempt subtlety and end up just being confusing. One of the most important goals in the beginning of your novel is clarity. The reader should know who is there, what's going on, where they are. If you have to choose between giving the reader information outright and sort of giving it elliptically and hinting at it, choose the straightforward route at the beginning of your novel. People would rather understand the story than feel like they're being toyed with in some way. Now, are there some novels that break the 11 rules I've listed above? Yes. And if you want to be a rebel, you can attempt to pull them off. Go for it. But I would say, more often than not, your book will probably suffer if you try to make these work. Now, if you're less of a negative Nancy and more of a sunny side up person, then you should check out my video on good ways to start your novel.