6 Different Ways to Start Your Book

When you’re writing a novel, it’s no secret that you want a beginning that stands out and that entices your readers to keep turning the pages. Because of the weight the first chapter holds, it can be intimidating not only to start, but also to determine how you want to start.

This article covers 6 different methods you can use to introduce your characters, setting, and plot. You can experiment with these techniques to determine what fits your book’s tone and point of view best.

THE MID-CONFLICT BEGINNING:

In this type of introduction, your protagonist is partway through a situation already. The reader will not fully understand what’s happening, and should receive crucial information about the conflict in pieces as they progress.

These action-packed beginnings can be great, but there is a difficulty writers must find a way to bypass: the readers do not have any reason to care about who is in danger and who gets hurt, as no emotional attachments to characters have been made yet. Why would they feel mournful after someone died who they knew for less than five minutes? Imagine if Dumbledore died before Harry went to Hogwarts.. it just wouldn’t carry the same weight. Because of this, you want to be selective of who you throw into harm’s way, and make it more impactful on the plot as opposed to being an emotional event.

What does get your reader hooked with these types of beginnings are questions: why is the main character in this conflict? what started all of this chaos? what is happening? They will also, of course, be curious about who the opposition is and what their motives are, about the personalities of the characters being introduced and how they fit into all of this, and what type of world they are in.

Keeping that in mind, answer questions that are brought up slowly (bread crumbing), beginning relatively early on, while keeping the larger answers in the dark until the end. You will also want the starting conflict to be gripping enough to peak the reader’s curiosity, and to include tidbits of information about the protagonist’s personality to lay the foundation of the connection your readers will have with them.

We see an introduction like this in The Witcher series on Netflix, where season 1 begins with a tragic battle, and then that same battle is returned to in the season finale from another perspective and with more context.

THE PEACEFUL AND MUNDANE BEGINNING:

This type of introduction is a common one. It shows what life was like before conflicts ensue, giving the reader some contrast and the sense that the balance of the world can easily be thrown off.

This peaceful beginning can include anything from describing a normal day in a small town, to your protagonist waking up from their sleep (though that particular beginning has been overused). Many people enjoy these types of introductions, I just urge you to introduce a question early on, to not info-drop too much, and to not drag it out for too long and bore the reader.

We see this type of beginning in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien. Hobbiton was the perfect place to begin this series because Hobbits enjoy the simpler things in life (which the heroes were later deprived of), because it’s such a peaceful environment that you, the reader, could never fathom harm coming to it, nor would you expect a hero to arise from such a homebody community.

THE DAY/EVENT THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING:

This type of beginning is often paired with the mundane beginning so it’s not carried out for too long.

Everything is the same until something out of the ordinary happens, even if that thing seems ordinary at first. The protagonist might discover that they have magic powers after being angered to the point of using them. They could be tasked with an important quest or with solving an unusual crime that turns their world upside-down. They might witness something unspeakable, such as the death of a family member. They could make a seemingly simple decision that completely changes their life. They could be being falsely accused and imprisoned, or simply stumble across the love of their life in a shopping mall. No matter what it is, something either good or bad disrupts their everyday — and often boring — life.

A classic example of this type of introduction is in Spider-Man, where Peter Parker, a dorky man who doesn’t seem to have anything special about him, gets bitten by a spider, which grants him superhuman abilities.

Another example is in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, where the once-happy lives of the Baudelaire children change drastically after their parents die in a mysterious fire.

THE PRE-STORYLINE BEGINNING:

This type of introduction shows an important plot point that took place months, years, decades, or even centuries before the main storyline. This could be a dark power rising a hundred years ago, which has only grown stronger since then, or a birth scene where the protagonist had an unusual birthing experience, marking them as important or different early on.

Foreshadowing is a powerful literary device that can be implemented, especially in this type of beginning, though I suggest not making it too obvious. It helps to imagine your reader going back to chapter 1 for a second read-through and saying “Aha! Now I see how this fits into the rest of the story.”

In Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, the first book begins about a decade before the main storyline, giving us the information that Harry’s parents had been murdered, and that the wizards of Britain were celebrating that night because the young Harry Potter “defeated” Voldemort. Of course, this leaves us readers with the same questions Harry himself had when he got older: “who is Voldemort?” “how did Harry defeat such a powerful wizard as a baby?” “why would Dumbledore make Harry stay with the horrible Dursleys?” This sets the tone for the rest of the story, letting us readers know why Harry is seen as a hero amongst wizards before even he knows, and foreshadowing Harry’s ongoing strife with Voldemort.

*A good technique to get the reader to ask questions is to have the protagonist want and seek the same answers.

THE NARRATIVE BEGINNING:

These begin with an explanation — or a collection of explanations — by the narrator (sometimes in the form of an internal monologue or a written account), who may be the protagonist, a secondary character, or an all-knowing unbiased voice outside of the story. This type of introduction often has more “explaining” rather than “showing,” making it difficult to do well (you don’t want to info-drop, bore, or overwhelm your reader).

These types of beginnings tend to be very descriptive, and can consist of explaining the world’s history (like recounting the bloodthirsty wars and fables of old), how the magic system works, the backgrounds of a certain characters, and the setting (what it looks, feels, tastes, smells, and sounds like).

F. Scott Fitzgerald introduced his novel The Great Gatsby using narration, using the secondary character Nick Carrway as the narrator. Nick remained mostly on the sidelines, observing and later recounting the events that took place (it is also possible that he gave an imperfect account of said events, as he was biased and slightly egotistical, wanting to make himself look better). The beginning of the novel consists of Nick giving a lot of information about himself and his past, which is honestly rather boring. I love the story, but the introduction is, admittedly, hard to get through.

THE RETROSPECTIVE BEGINNING:

This is often a narrative beginning, where the voice of the narrator, often the protagonist, is looking back on how things were before everything unfolded and their lives were changed forever. By this, we know that they are telling their story from the future, sometimes in written form. It can sound something like, “I wish I appreciated my family more when I had them,” “I would give anything to go back to my old life,” “if things changed for better or for worse, I honestly couldn’t tell you,” or “I’m not the same person I was back then.”

Memories are often used to set the tone and to describe the character who is doing the reflecting, which is a great way to make them feel real to the reader.

For this introduction you need to know how the protagonist’s experiences — which will be told throughout the story — altered their lives (their character arc). It is common for this reflective technique to taper off after the beginning is completed so the story can be told in a more linear and present-tense fashion.

Once again, The Great Gatsby is a great example of this, as Nick Carraway is writing about his past experiences from his future perspective, and not as things unfold. In chapter 1, Nick says of Gatsby,

“Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction — Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn” .. “No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.” – The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1

Here we see Nick’s opinion of Gatsby before he even introduces him. This has the ability to influence readers’ emotions toward Gatsby and pique our curiosity about him very early on: “Who is this man who is being spoken of so highly?”

When this type of introduction is used, the novel often closes in a similarly reflective way:

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning—So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – The Great Gatsby, Chapter 9

If you’re still stuck, it’s helpful to write more than one beginning, or to have more than one idea for your introduction, and then choose the one that fits your story the best once the rest of the final draft is completed. Just because it’s the first chapter, doesn’t mean it’s the first thing you need to write!