Introducing Key Characters: Chapter 1

How many? Which? How much do you reveal? How do they relate to the story's problem?

Where Do I Start?

I’ve already written about the novel’s first line. But what does an author need to accomplish in his first chapter?

This is on my mind as I consider writing the COMMUNITY DAY prequel. How would I kick things off?

Work Backward

The biggest task of a first chapter—truly, the only MUST—is “get the reader to the second chapter.” In other words, the first chapter has to hook readers so they keep reading. You don’t have much time to get them interested. They could discard the book and not come back. You gotta move fast.

In COMMUNITY DAY, I had the prologue do a lot of this work. It’s only like 100 words, and after that the reader knows there was an awful crime at a neighborhood park, a young public defender has been assigned to the suspect, no one really understands what happened at the park, and—for some reason—this case needs to be wrapped up quickly and quietly.

I felt good after those first 100 words. I thought that I’d done enough to at least get the reader intrigued.

But then what???

First Things First

The second task of the first chapter, as I saw it, was to begin the work of fleshing out the heart of the story. I figured this could take one of three forms: Focus on 1) the novel’s problem-to-be-solved, 2) the setting, or 3) the primary characters.

I decided not to say much of anything about the novel’s central question (What actually happened on Community Day?). That would be slowly rolled out over the next 62 chapters. No need to do any of that straight away. Moreover, the narrator (the suspect) wants to explain why Community Day happened, so he needs to provide a bunch of backstory.

I also decided not to focus on the setting. No yet. The rural, isolated, depressed setting is enormously important to the novel. Just about everything of note must be understood in the context of the novel’s geography and era. In fact, I decided to introduce and focus on the setting in Chapter 2. It’s called “Orientation.”

I decided that Chapter 1 would be about three primary characters. But thanks to feedback from lots of readers, the chapter changed a great deal across the dozens and dozens of drafts.

Working Around the Narrator

The suspect/narrator is the main character. I wanted to establish his key features immediately.

The most important thing about him, at least initially, is that he is a fabulist. He’s also pretty snarky. I wanted to make these aspects of his character as clear as possible early on. So he begins by telling an exaggerated story about the second character I wanted to introduce. Her name is Nelly.

Nelly is constantly anxious—as we later learn, that’s because of her sense of guilt and fear of cosmic retribution. I wanted the novel to begin with her because the novel sort of ends with her. Her evolution is the novel’s moral argument (about selfishness, isolation, community, and flourishing).

So in the first drafts of the novel, the first chapter was just the narrator’s discussion of Nelly.

But the first reviewers didn’t immediately understand why the narrator talks about Nelly in such an over-the-top manner. I—the author—knew that this would be explained in time, but for the first-time reader, this was a problem.

So I had to get the reader to understand the narrator better. In fact, the toughest task I had in editing and rewriting the novel over several years was making sure the reader was sympathetic to—not angry at—the narrator. Since he’s mentally ill, scarred from his childhood, and a serial exaggerator, I had to find ways to get the reader to see underneath all of that. Needless to say, it is HARD to get information about the narrator to the reader when the narrator doesn’t want to reveal such stuff.

The Wife to the Rescue

One device I used throughout the novel was to have the narrator talk about his relationship with his wife (the third of the three characters to be introduced). This gave me ways—when she teases him, when she rolls his eyes at him, when she walks away from him, when she gives him advice—to have the reader understand him without him talking about himself.

So I added a second section of the first chapter in which the narrator describes a conversation he and his wife had about Nelly. On the surface, this is a way to learn more about Nelly. But it’s really a way for the reader to learn about the narrator and the wife.

After working on this for months, I was satisfied with Chapter 1. I thought it was good.

But the next set of readers had the exact same reaction.

“Your narrator is a kind of a jerk. I don’t like him.”

Humanize Him

Here’s the problem I faced. I wanted him to come across this way early on. That would enable me to have him evolve and have the reader’s understanding of him evolve across the novel. Presenting him as unlikeable was a feature of, not a bug in, my plan!

But readers, particularly women readers, had a hard time getting into the story when they didn’t like this main male character. So what could I do??

I added a third section to the first chapter. The narrator sentimentally explains how he met his wife. This short section advances the story in some important ways and provides some background. But really the overwhelming purpose is to humanize the narrator.

In this section, the narrator changes how he talks. He gets mushy. He’s even embarrassed about his mushiness. His sentences are shorter. He restates things to make sure he gets everything right. It’s clear he was smitten by her and then fell for her hard. She was more reserved, but she fell for him too.

By the end of the first chapter, my goal is to have the reader understand that the narrator’s exaggerations and snark amount to armor. Or at least a constructed part of his personality. There is a softer, kinder, deeper person once you get past his act.

What This Means for a Possible Prequel

As I envision the prequel, there will not be a prologue. The first chapter is the true opening. I want to introduce the two main characters—a man and woman in their late 20s in 1990. Both are complicated. They’re in love. With a gigantic asterisk.

I want the man to come across as inscrutable, maybe even cold. I want the woman to come across as admirable.

The lesson I learned from COMMUNITY DAY is that I need to be careful about the male character’s potential unlikeableness. I might need to humanize him from the jump. Or maybe I can balance his coldness with her warmth. That is, since they are both main characters, maybe the reader won’t mind one of them being impenetrable if this other is softer.

But over the course of the story, we will learn much more about both. He will become less mysterious, and she will become less admirable. I want to find a way to hint at that early.

The other thing I need to do in the first chapter is introduce the event that drives the entire novel forward. The female main character will arrive at work and learn that something awful has happened. And that it must be kept a secret for 8 months. And that she and a few others must secretly solve the secret problem in that time.

I’m looking for a clever way to set up for the reader that the relationship between the two main characters is entwined with the big event and the effort to find a solution.

I need to suggest that these two will be willing to hide the problem, will want to solve the problem, and will have what it takes to solve the problem.

And, most importantly, I want to signal that their future as a couple can’t be separated from their pasts or from the success or failure of this mission.

Whew. And this will just be the first chapter!