First chapters are tough. They are the ones people read first; the ones that either draw readers in or turn them away. Because of this, many writers (including myself) are tempted to start their books with a bang. But this is wrong. Very wrong.

The purpose of the first chapter is to set up the bang (aka, the inciting incident). I know, you’re thinking blah blah blah, why bother? If my character is going to end up on a boat that explodes, why not just start with the boat exploding? Here are two reasons why you shouldn’t do this:

1) We don’t care about strangers
We must care about the main character before we can care about the inciting incident. Otherwise, it’s like when you read a story in the paper about some stranger getting in a car accident. Yeah, you think that’s too bad but your heart probably doesn’t ache as much as it would if it was your neighbour in the accident. Or your friend.

2) We need to be touching the ground before we can feel it shake
The whole point of the inciting incident (and the novel really) is to rock the character’s world in a way that it hasn’t been rocked before, but if we don’t know the character when they are still, we can’t understand how they feel when they rock. For example, imagine that your inciting incident is your main character finding out she has to go to a new school. If you tell us this on page one, we’re like, so? Maybe she wants to go to a new school? Maybe it’s better? But, if you take the time to show us that the main character LOVES her old school–that she can’t live without her best friend and the members of her photography club–then, we get it. We feel her pain. We feel the BANG!

I will admit that I’m more anal than the average person. My closet is divided by colour, with sub-divisions by item type. The cans in my pantry have their own shelf as do the boxes and bagged items. And anyone who has seen my cork board knows I might just possibly organize my books to death.

It should come as no surprise then that I’m pretty picky about books being accurate, but I honestly think this is an important thing to do, whether your readers have colour-coordinated sock drawers or not. Here’s why: no matter what genre you write, readers are reading your book because they want to suspend their disbelief. They want to immerse themselves in the world of your characters, even if only for a few hours.

In order for readers to trust you as a storyteller, you have to talk the talk. You need to know the name of the street your main character grew up on. You need to know their favourite food. You need to know who first broke their heart. In fact, the more you know, the more likely the readers are to trust you as the creator of the world.

So why do mistakes matter? I’ll tell you using an example. Say you’re reading a book about a farmer in Illinois. It’s a wonderful book and the detail is so great that you can practically smell the manure. You believe everything the author tells you. If he says the main character is sad, you see him weeping in his oatmeal. If he says he has red hair, you see the red hair peeking out from under his John Deere cap. You’re so completely and utterly immersed that you really feel like you are the main character.

But then the author says that the main character hurt his shoulder during harvest last January and you go, Huh? Even if you aren’t a farmer, you probably know that harvest in Illinois doesn’t happen in January. At first, maybe you just note this as something that will surely be explained by a plot point later. But it isn’t. The author later says that planting started in August but then there were ripe peaches in September. Now, what you’re thinking is that the author doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You lose your sense of trust in the author and suddenly, you don’t believe that the main character has red hair. Heck, maybe you don’t even believe he is a farmer.

The point in this long-winded example is this: always be accurate. If you’re writing facts, use the Internet so you can check them or find someone who can verify them.  If your character is speaking, say the words he is saying and imagine you are him and that they make sense coming out of his head. If your character is doing something physical, try to do it yourself or find a video of someone else doing it.  

Or, if all else fails, go organize your sock drawer.

I would like to write, “Depends who you ask,” and be done with this post, but I think I owe my readers a bit more than that. But to be perfectly honest, it does depend who you ask. Lucky for me, this is my blog so I can ignore what everyone else says and tell you what I think (mwoo ha ha…the power, the power!)

Whether you want to call it an inciting incident, a turning point, an opportunity or a donkey, this is the event that kicks off the story. For example, the main character gets a new job, moves to a new city, meets a new boyfriend. Note the multiple appearances of the word “new”. The new is very important here as the inciting incident must be something that has never happened before. After all, if your main character takes the train every single day, you can hardly expect his world to be rocked if he, all of a sudden, takes the train.

In screenplays, the inciting incident occurs at exactly the 10% mark, but in novels, it tends to occur at the end of chapter one or in chapter two. Its purpose is to put the main character in a new situation where he/she will discover the outer goal. The inciting incident is NOT when the main character starts to pursue the goal. The thing that happens to make the main character start to pursue the goal is called the first plot point, second turning point, or change of plans.

Since I like examples, I will give you one.

Bob is miserable in his current job. He sees an ad for a new job at X so he applies for it and is hired on the spot. (inciting incident) When Bob goes to his first day, he finds out that the person he is replacing disappeared after a meeting with Jack.  (first plot point) Bob decides he must stop Jack. (goal).

What does this mean for loglines? Well, I’ve always said that you need to have your inciting incident and you do because that is what sets up the story. Do you need the first plot point as well? Depends. If you can show an obvious link between the inciting incident and the goal then you might be able to skip it, but if it leaves readers saying, Huh?, then you need to include it as well. For example:

When Bob takes a job at X, he discovers that he’s replacing a man who disappeared after a meeting with Jack. Bob must find out why the man disappeared, or he will end up the next target on Jack’s list.

I realize this is the worst logline ever written. My point is to show that, if you left out the first plot point here (italics) the logline wouldn’t make sense.