Susie Helme
So, assuming that your first sentence has fully grabbed the attention of the reader, your first paragraph (Introduction) must accomplish some basic objectives:
- Show us the protagonist.
- Set the scene within the protagonist’s status quo, unchanged world.
- Hint at the protagonist’s motivations, what they want to change about their world, what obstacles they face. Introduce a central question or conflict, which will be a major theme in the story. Use indirect characterisation to build questions around the character’s motivation.
- Set the genre, atmosphere and tone of the story. The reader should understand what kind of story they are going to be reading. Establish your voice.
If you haven’t filled those criteria with your first sentence, you must do so with your second, third and fourth. It does not have to be the beginning of your story. You can start in the middle of some tense dialogue or plot-defining action and backtrack from there.
Four main types of Openings:
- Narrative or descriptive opening
Give us a reason to care about the protagonist. But beware of info-dump.
- Action scene
Should be interesting enough to captivate the reader despite not knowing the protagonist yet.
- Situation beginning
It’s not linear, as you start part-way in. Often features a really eye-catching first sentence.
- Insight beginning
Begin with a piece of wisdom. Hints to the reader that there will be something worthy about the novel.[1]
What is the main Concept of your novel? Which scene, dialogue or action most dramatically encapsulates that? The whole point of Lord of the Flies is how the boys’ struggle for survival pushes them into beast-like behaviour. We don’t really need to know how the plane crashed. The important question is, how are the boys going to survive? So, don’t start with the plane crash. Start with a moment of struggle to survive after the plane has already crashed.
Your first paragraph should have a distinctive voice, some introductory plot and some characterisation. We should know the setting of the protagonist’s status quo world and what their conflict is. Make sure the first thing you hit us with is what’s going to turn out to be important. If your protagonist is selfish and struggles with that character flaw all through the story, show us that trait in your first paragraph.
Inciting Incident
It’s sometimes good to establish the Inciting Incident in the first paragraph. If not, you should hint at it while describing the unchanged world—ie if you paint the status quo world as boring, we can infer that the protagonist wants something exciting to happen. If not in the first paragraph or two, you should get to the Inciting Incident fairly quickly.
Note that the Inciting Incident is not the moment when something first happens in the story; it is the moment when the protagonist first takes action to change their status quo. So, in Lord of the Flies, the Inciting Incident is not when the plane crashes, but rather when Ralph usurps leadership of the boys by seizing the conch shell. In a murder mystery, it is not when the dead body is found; it is when the detective takes the case. It’s a definite no-no to begin at some point in the story after the Inciting Incident.
The main conflict in the story should be evident within the first two pages, and I believe it is most artful when opening paragraphs foreshadow what will turn out to be the main conflict without expressly stating it. The conflict becomes evident stage by stage as the protagonist struggles against it, thus character development has a momentum.
Personally, I don’t like it when the author introduces too many unknowns in the first paragraph. We want to be questioning the dramatis personnae and the main themes and plot points of the book; we don’t want to be pondering the definitions of a lot of new vocabulary or alien placenames.
It’s a good idea at some point to reveal or at least hint to the meaning behind the title of the book, but we don’t need it in the first paragraph.
[1] Reedsy, How to Write a Novel Opening
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