by Dela Bobobee

Created on: March 21, 2010   Last Updated: March 22, 2010

It is indeed very important that the first chapter of a novel be really captivating in order to hook your readers. All the well thought-out tips given by all these brilliant contributors here are invaluable to the writer. What I can add my voice to is that storytelling is a very daunting task especially when you don’t know how to keep your readers from getting easily bored.

Out of dissatisfaction many prospective writers quit at this stage of writing the first excellent chapter of their novels. My advice is to “Never quit at the first chapter, there are a whole lot of interesting surprises ahead of you”.  But that is only if you know how to drop the first stone that must cause the ripple to spread and disturb the entire surface of the water.  The first chapter is like the first ripple that spreads to generate other tinny rings that are the ingredients to write the rest of the remaining chapters of book.

 Writing is propelled by a conscious creative essence to achieve.  The happy fact is that creativity is inbuilt in humans, perhaps because God; the master creator wanted humans to partake in the joys and the exhilarating sense of accomplishments of creativity too. It took me sometime to figure this out myself.  But one thing we must all know is that, it takes inspiration to write a good story. You can have all the necessary tips to write beyond the first ten chapters of a book but without inspiration you may be beating about the bush and perhaps end up writing a very boring story. Inspiration is like a baby. It chooses the time it wants to come into this world. So are stories. Some stories choose their own writers. Good writers don’t choose stories; stories choose the ideal writers through inspiration.

Perhaps you would find some of these points helpful. I found them very useful when I started my writing career. They are still the roadmap for me anytime I take my quill and parchment to write.

The 3 way Structure Format is still very fundamental to writing any creative piece. The Beginning, Middle and Ending.  To write a successful Chapter One, you must use what is termed the Shark Attack approach. The Shark Approach is the way a story is designed to look like the picture of shark cut into three pieces; the head, middle and the tail.  The Beginning is like the head of a shark. It must bite very hard to keep the reader hooked till the very end. Suspense. The first sentence of the first chapter matters

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