Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on FacebookTwitterPinterest, or on her author website.

Last week I talked about different ways to start a story—that first paragraph that hooks your reader. Today I want to talk about two things you can do in your first chapter to keep that reader hooked.

1. A character you can connect with.

The reader needs a person of interest to follow, which means this person must be interesting in some way. Maybe the reader can relate, so they read on because they’ve been through something similar. Or maybe the main character’s situation is sympathetic, so the reader continues to read with the hope that things will work out. Maybe the main character is funny, and the reader keeps reading for pure laughs. However you do it, you need to give us a character that the reader connects with.

2. Inciting incident with high stakes.

I read a lot of people’s manuscripts, and too many have nothing happen in chapter one. A story begins when a match strikes, not when you lay out the kindling. The sooner you get to the inciting incident, the better. “The cat sat on the mat is not the beginning of the plot. The cat sat on the dog’s mat is.” — John Lecarre

The inciting incident can happen in the first paragraph of your book, though it usually comes later. In most books, we get to meet our hero, see his life, see his problems, then—bam!—he is faced with an inciting incident. This doesn’t always happen in chapter one, but it will help you if it does. And I say that to myself as well. If you give your reader an inciting incident in chapter one, you can avoid the “it took me a while to get into the story” comment and have an easier time hooking your reader for the entire book.

Consider the pitch statement:

When   (inciting incident)   happens to   (hero)  , he must   (live through the plot)   or face   (failure of story goal)  .

So the inciting incident is that first blank. It’s the “something” that happens that sets off the story. And it needs to have high stakes or lead to a plot that has high stakes. It needs to matter to the main character and the reader. It could have/lead to personal stakes: revenge, saving a loved one, proving oneself, love, overcoming guilt, acceptance, etc. Or it could have/lead to public stakes: saving the world, stopping mass murder, providing justice, ending slavery, etc.

Here are some examples of different types of inciting incidents or situations that set up inciting incidents. Whatever you choose, it’s what your hero does as a result of this incident that “incites” your plot.

-A disturbance or change (A tornado sweeps away Dorothy’s house. Eragon finds the dragon egg. A new “doctor” arrives at Jason Farms. Luke stumbles onto the recording of Princess Leia when cleaning R2D2.)
-Faced with a choice (Prim’s name is drawn in the reaping and Katniss chooses to take her place in The Hunger Games. Hazel decides to attend Support Group where she meets Augustus in The Fault of Our Stars.)
-A mistake (It could be a mistake that the main character makes that changes everything: In Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, it’s finding out that they’re failing history class that sends Rufus back in time to help. Or it could be a mistake that someone else makes that changes things for the main character: Lucinda casting her spell on Ella in Ella Enchanted.)
-An objective (A quest of some kind like Bilbo being asked to be a burglar. A detective arrives at a crime scene like any episode of Castle.)
-A meeting (A new friend like in Stargirl. Love interests meet for the first time—any romance novel. A meeting between an employee and his boss in which an assignment is given.)
-A loss (Of someone or something. In Legally Blonde, Warner dumps Elle. In She’s the Man, girls soccer is cancelled. In Taken, Liam Neeson’s daughter is kidnapped.)
-A revelation (Your hero learns the truth about something that changes his life.)

What do you think? Does your first chapter have these two elements?