Writing a novel is a long and time-consuming activity. After all the work you would have to put into writing the novel, you would want it to be successful and bring a lot of attention from the audience. If you want the end product to be good, then you have to start strongly from the beginning because people might buy your book, but if it does not grab their attention from the first pages, then they might not even finish the book at all. In this article, we will provide you with some tips that you may find helpful when starting your novel.
How would an interesting start of a novel look like?
As we have already mentioned in this article, if you want your book to be successful you should make it interesting from the beginning. To do that you will need a clear idea in your head of how do you want your book to be understood by the readers. When you have this idea, try and set the tone for it from the first lines of the book and keep it to its last ones.
You will also have to determine the point of view from which you are writing. You should not change the POV because this might confuse the audience and create unwanted complaints. After you have thought about each of these steps, then you might want to write down your first line. The first line's way of delivery is very important for the attention of your readers. Make sure it is a good one, maybe a landscape description or a description of one of your novel's main characters.
But you cannot just put a description if you do not have a good follow-up for it. One very important tip for you to remember is when writing a book, no matter which genre it is written in and no matter the length of the book, you should always know what your next step is. You can't just write everything you have thought about without having a way to connect it to the context of the story. So the first line must be supported by the next lines in a way that makes sense to the readers but you should not overextend the supportive lines because this might actually make people lose interest in reading the next pages. Everything should be done in a precise range that keeps the readers hooked and doesn't make them think that your book can't surprise them in its next pages.
Another thing that you have to remember is to avoid telling everything about the book's characters in the first few pages. If you do not follow that tip you risk giving out too much information which may cause confusion in the readers' minds. Not only that but if your characters are fully revealed from the beginning then you have little to no space for character development in the later stages of your story.
We have looked at good ways to start your novel but now we will focus on ways that you should never even think about using when starting your new novel.
Starting with dialogue is a very bad idea because the readers don't have any knowledge about the people that are speaking and this might make them feel like they are not reading the right book or that they might have missed something, which is not the case. You should always introduce your characters to the audience before making them do anything, especially having dialogues with each other. You shouldn't start your book with a backstory. Backstories are good but they have to deliver a point. Creating one at the beginning of the book will only deliver a negative feeling about it in the readers' minds. Also, it is very important that you start the book in a proper way for its genre, you should not be mixing things up because this will have a negative effect on your book's reviews and popularity.
Is the beginning of the book that important?
The answer is simply yes. You can't expect a good end product if your way of writing is faulty from the beginning. Of course, you can always experiment and make a risky maneuver at the beginning of your novel but the rewards from this risk may not be worth it. As we have always said in our articles the most important person that you should aim to please with your books is you, the author. If you feel like it, you can make the start of your novel whichever way makes you feel satisfied. Who knows, maybe if you make things the way you want to, you may set a new trend and become famous for your unique way of writing.