Seven Deadly Sins (If You're a First Chapter)

A friend linked this great post to me this morning, about seven reasons agents stop reading your first chapter. Y'all know how much I love diagnostics, so I though it might be fun to look at those reasons and then see what we can do to fix it if you happen to have one (or more) of these problems.

Generic or Slow Beginnings
I'm going to combine these two, because they can each be solved in the same basic ways.

So, your manuscript starts with mundane, boring things happening or plain vanilla description. The daily life of your protag. While it's usually good to show the protag's life "as it was" before the big story problem hits them, you have to be careful about what piece you show. Look at your protag's life again and find something that shows conflict as well as shows what their life is like. Even the most average day can have a moment where the protag wanted something and someone was keeping them from it, even if it's just the last doughnut in the pack.

Look for (or create) moments where:

• Your protag is trying to get or accomplish something important to them.
• Your protag is displaying a trait that will be important or necessary later in the story.
• The problem at hand is interesting and makes the reader curious about what's going on.
• Note: "What is going on?" is not a legitimate story question. If the reader is lost, they won't get hooked. You want to find questions that have specific details. "Why is that girl stealing chickens?" "What are they doing on that space station?" "Why is that hobbit so obsessed with his jewelry?"

Trying Too Hard
Your manuscript is full of "fancy writing" that's trying to show you know how to write. But truth is, great writing is almost always invisible. You get caught up in the story and only the truly wonderful lines jump out at you and become things you remember. Think of it like those great lines from a movie, the catchphrases that stay with you long after the movie has faded from your mind.

To help fix this, don't focus so much being descriptive. Not everything has to look like something or be metaphoric. Great writing has a rhythm and a elegance to it that's more than using a lot of fancy words. Read the pages out lout to hear their flow. Read the pages of your favorite book out loud next and hear the difference. Study those favorite pages and really examine how they put those words together and what they're doing on multiple levels. It's not just about the words, but the story and characters and the emotion underneath.

Too Much Information (the TMI kind, not the back story kind)
There are some thing folks just don't want to know about. If your manuscript is being overly descriptive about something gross or personal (do we really need a bathroom scene?), just cut it. Look at your manuscript and ask yourself why you choose that as your opening scene. What were you trying to show? To do? What emotion or thought did you want the reader to come away with? Now think about what other scenes you can write that get all that in there without describing things best left unsaid.

Cliches
This is probably an easier one to fix. If the cliches are part of the text, just kill the cliches. But if the cliche is the actual opening, well, that takes a bit more work. How do you know if your opening is cliched? Some of the more common ones are:

• Someone waking up in the morning.
• Someone looking in the mirror and describing themselves.
• Someone getting a "message," be it a phone call, letter, or arrival of a mystical person with information.
• Someone leaving on a trip.
• Someone writing in a journal to "tell you about what happened."

Quite often, these types of openings are just literary throat clearing, and if you look down a ways you'll find the real beginning of your story. Try reading on until you get to a point where something happens that changes the path your protag was on. Odds are, that's where you can start instead. It might need a little smoothing out to reintroduce the character, but sometimes you can pretty much just start there and cut the rest.

Loss of Focus
Your manuscript wanders and readers are left wondering what's the point. This one can take a bit of shuffling or smacking to get it into shape, depending on what the underlying problem is. Most common culprits are:

You don't know what the protag's goal is
If you're not sure what the protag is trying to accomplish in the scene, it can ramble on and seem pointless (because it actually is pointless from a structure standpoint). Take a step back and think about what your protag is after. Now, tweak the text so that goal is clear, and all the actions your protag makes is to achieve that goal in some way.

There are too many things your protag wants
Trying to shove all the story goals and subplots into one chapter will usually just overload the reader, and make the manuscript feel all over the place. You don't have to show everything in the first few pages. Pick one goal that has the best hook, and go for it. The rest can unfold as the story does. Readers want to eat the dessert a spoonful at a time, not shove the entire sundae down their throats at once. (ooo brain freeze)

You're trying to show what everyone wants
Your protag has a clear goal, but so does the secondary hero, the bad guy and the three supporting characters. Everyone has a story arc and all those arcs are being thrown at the reader at the same time. While having arcs for everyone is good, it makes it really hard for the reader to know who the main character is and who they should be rooting for. Show the protag's goal, and let the other goals come out once the reader is hooked.

Unrealistic Internal Narrative
This one is a POV issue more than likely. What's going on in the protag's head doesn't match what's going on in the story. As I've said before, when you're running for your life, you won't notice what color the drapes are.

To fix this, look at your POV and what's going on in the scene. How would someone in that situation think? Internalization isn't a free pass to describe what's around them. It's a great opportunity to let the reader know who your POV is and how they think. If you want to show the drapes, then write it in a way that feels believable to the scene. Let the POV look at the drapes and think about how to use them to shimmy out the window. Show the antique word carvings as how they provide hand holds to climb up on top of the furniture. Put those details in in ways that are relevant to the POV's state of mind, and the scene at hand.

Beginnings are probably the most important part of your book. If a reader doesn't like the beginning, the odds of them getting to the middle are slim. If an agent doesn't like your beginning, well, the odds of getting a full request are none. Great news though, there are lots of posts like the one I linked to that can tell you what to avoid before you send those chapters off.