Hi Reader,

Your first chapter has a monumental task: to make potential readers care about your book right away and hook them to keep reading.

Every sentence is a chance to earn your reader’s attention—or lose their fragile, baby-fresh interest before your story even begins.

And that’s assuming that your book makes it to the bookstore shelves. If you’re traditionally publishing, the first chapter’s burdened with even more responsibility. It’s your first impression with agents and editors, who will judge whether to consider the full manuscript based on the first five or ten pages alone.

The stakes are high.

So high, in fact, that it’s easy to get stuck—revising and refining your first chapter over and over while the rest of the manuscript gathers dust.

So for today’s brand-new episode of Your Next Draft, I asked Abigail K. Perry, a fellow editor and book coach, to come help us break out of that trap.

You’ll hear:

• What great first chapters must accomplish
• Why mystery is a good thing in first chapters (and info dumps are not)
• How to make your readers care about your characters in a matter of pages, paragraphs, or even sentences
• And more

​Listen to How Great First Chapters Make Readers Care (with Abigail K. Perry) »​

Abigail and I talked for over two hours about first chapters. She’s read pitch packages with an agent’s eye, studied first chapters in granular detail, and coached writers to craft powerful openings to their stories.

So we had a lot to talk about! I was taking notes the whole way through, and I still felt like we’d barely scratched the surface.

Since the conversation ran so long, I’ve split it into two parts. Today, you’ll hear how to build an empathetic relationship between your readers and your characters within a single scene. And in the next installment, we’ll zoom in even more and see how to hook your readers from the very first line.

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in a first chapter revision loop, this one’s for you.

​Listen now »​

Happy editing,

Alice