How to Write Captivating Beginnings and Brilliant Endings for Novels
Have you ever picked up a book and read the beginning before deciding if you wanted to buy it? Are you one of those readers who (gasp!) reads the final page before knowing if you’re holding your next read? While I never ever read the last page of a book, I have often browsed the first few pages to see if the writing grips me. Does it leave me wanting more? Does it tempt me to walk around the store until I find a reading nook and plant myself in a chair, unwilling to pull away my attention from the story?
(7 Tips for Starting to Write a Short Story.)
As an author, this is exactly how you want people to respond when they pick up your book. You want a beginning so captivating that your readers must keep flipping pages. They must know what happens next. Just one more chapter before bed … then just one more chapter.
I can’t speak for every author, but based on my experience, a completely gripping beginning isn’t usually how the first draft comes together. Instead, in the beginning, my first chapter feels more like a wind-up doll with herky-jerky movements. All of the parts are there, but they aren’t smooth or coordinated, and sometimes the parts don’t even fit together well.
While writing The Magic All Around, I began chapter one with an enchanted and almost Gothic exposition about Halloween and its spooky history. My main character Mattie pondered on how the modern-day celebration has altered through the years from people dancing around bonfires to children dressed as zombies. You might not be shocked to learn that all of these pages, my not-so-hook-the-reader beginning, were ripped out of the final draft. While precious and interesting in their own way, these pages of exposition stalled the story, and does any author want to stall out their reader on page one? No way!
This action might feel cringe-worthy, but I encourage any aspiring author to know when to let go, to know when it’s more important to draw in your reader rather than fill their heads with backstory or exposition or, in my case, the history of Halloween. The heart of the story is about the characters, who they are, what they love, how they evolve; the extra stuff like details, exposition, and setting should play supporting roles.
So how do you start chapter one knowing that so much hinges on the beginning? You just write. Dive in. Take a leap of faith. Know that your chapter one might be like mine, a puppet with tangled strings, but this is when I’ll lovingly remind you (just as I do with myself), you’re writing a rough draft. They don’t call it “rough” because it’s mesmerizing and total perfection. They call it “rough” because for most authors, it’s exactly that. I encourage writers to let the words flow, get them down on paper or typed on a computer. There is always time to go back and polish that rock into a gem. Or you could be like me and rip out pages so that you can jump right into the action of the story and capture your readers immediately. When we read a truly captivating beginning, we can know that it’s been finessed into what you see printed; it’s unlikely it started out that way.
Check out Jennifer Moorman’s The Magic All Around here:
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As for endings, readers also want to reach the end of a book and feel satisfied. They want to feel they’ve spent their time on something wonderful and worth it. While this might sound like the same amount of pressure as starting a book, endings are easier for me. I always know how my books will end, even though I often rework the beginnings several times.
My endings remind me of GPS. I know where I’m going before I even start. I have no doubts that I’ll reach my destination, but here’s where it can get interesting: I don’t know all the specifics for how I’ll get there. Just as there are when driving to a specific location, in writing a book, there are multiple paths that can get me to the ending. When I start a book, I have a general idea of how I’ll write myself to the end, but I leave room for organic writing and for characters to surprise me. I stay open to the possibility that there might be a detour I didn’t see coming, whether that’s an unexpected plot twist or a character who makes a decision I hadn’t planned for.
Staying flexible with my writing keeps me from panicking or feeling boxed-in by an idea of what has to happen versus allowing unpredicted events to unfold that enrich the whole story. Such is the same with life!
When we grab a new book that we can’t put down, we can marvel at the way the author crafted the beginning and wonder how long it took them to feel confident with it. We can close the book after reading and imagine what road they thought they’d take to close out their story and if the ending surprised them too. Knowing a bit more about the craft, we can also admire their perseverance and dedication to taking an idea, spending hours molding and growing that idea into thousands of words, and finally completing a book so that we might enjoy the captivating beginning and the brilliant ending.
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