Character sleeping, dreaming, and waking up to nothing? Funeral
calls, death, psycho lurking around? Terrorist planting a bomb, rape scene? Protagonist
in the middle of a bodily function like jerking off, peeing, vomiting? Cheesy
beginnings with a play of words like “opening”? Opening what?
These are items literary agents dislike to see in a
novel’s Chapter 1, writes Writer’s Digest
University. If you want your book published, it is best to follow them. After
all, literary agents are also editors, and they know what’s saleable to
publishing houses. Working with an agent for
publication or not, the recommendations are worth considering.
Here are more of their pet peeves: Starting your story
with a battle, projecting characters as perfect heroes and heroines, inauthentic
dialogue, over- description of the scenery.
More: Beginning with a killer’s point of
view, sex and violence; a laundry list of character descriptions.
All of these slow down writing and it shows in their
nature: Prologues that have nothing to do with the story; long,
flowery descriptive sentences for introductions, character’s back-story, information
dump.
These are patently unnecessary: Introducing the narrator to the reader, introducing
the character, setting up the scene, description of the weather, addressing the
reader as in “Gentle reader.”
These are boring: An ordinary, predictable outlook, too
much accounting.
And these cheat the reader: Adventure-dream stories
where at the end, the author says it was only a dream; Character would find out
later this and that; Character dies at end of chapter.
What do they want to see in Chapter 1? Action that hooks the reader, some mystery. Moreover, you do not tell but show through the character.
