Unskippable: Drag Your Readers Past the First Chapter

You get one shot. That’s it. One chapter. One page. Sometimes just one sentence. If your reader isn’t hooked, they’re not turning to the next page. They’re closing the book, backing out of the Kindle sample or walking away from the shelf.

They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Nowhere is that more true than in the opening pages of your book.

Most writers know the opening matters and still struggle to get it right. They overthink it and overwrite it. Or they use it like a warm-up lap, easing into the story with speed bumps like backstory, throat-clearing and weather reports. The character’s wardrobe gets whole paragraphs, but telling the reader why they should care doesn’t even get a mention.

If you want your first chapter to be unstoppable, you have to treat it like a high-speed collision. No warning. No slow build. Just impact.

Here’s how to make your opening a hit and keep readers compulsively turning pages.

Start Late

The first mistake most writers make is starting too soon. Readers open the book to find a character waking up, getting coffee, reflecting on their bad breakup or their terrible childhood. We get reflections on the character’s work and home life. We may find out exactly how they like their eggs.

All useless to the story. And a dead stop for the reader.

New or unseasoned writers often write the scene before the scene, thinking it builds atmosphere. What it really does is stall the engine and kill all momentum.

If you want to punch up the opening of your book, the best advice is to start late. Start at the precise moment that everything changes.

Ask yourself: what’s the first moment in the story where the character has no choice but to act? That’s your starting place. Readers get swept along if the characters are already in motion when we meet them.

AMC’s hit series Breaking Bad doesn’t open with Walter White’s drab and boring life, but with him barreling through the desert in an RV, pantsless and panicked, gas mask on, body in the back. And we viewers … we have questions. We stick around to get the answers.

You want your book to open with that movement and sweep the reader along. Think tsunamis, not streams.

Skip the Setup

Backstory, if it’s ever needed (it often isn’t), comes in the middle, not the beginning and not the end.

“But the reader needs to understand—” No. They don’t. Not yet.

Readers don’t need context to care. They need curiosity. Suspense. A question they need to have answered. The details can come later, layered in with action and reaction.

Explaining your character’s entire backstory in the first chapter is the snooze button of fiction. You need to show us who they are under pressure. We need to sit there with our jaw hanging, wondering how things could have possibly gotten to this point—and see … you’ve got us. We’ll be happy to sit through the backstory, a little later, if it helps explain how Walt ended up in the desert in rolling meth lab wearing only his tighty-whities.

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Think of your opening like a movie trailer. You’re not giving them the whole story—you’re giving them the reason to want it.

And one last thing—keep the cast simple.

You don’t need to introduce everyone in the first chapter. You need to introduce someone we care about—or someone we’re at least curious about. That’s it. Too many names, too many threads and the reader gets lost in the crowd.

Give us someone to care about, and someone to follow.

Details That Matter

Your opening doesn’t have to be all action and explosions. But every detail you include has to mean something. Don’t describe the furniture unless the character is about to throw it through a window. Don’t describe a sunset unless it signals something about the character’s state of mind, or the world they live in.

If you want to worldbuild in chapter one, do it through the character’s lens. Let us see what they notice, as they notice it. Or show us what they don’t notice, what they react to and what they ignore.

That’s how you build a setting that matters—not by describing it, but by showing how it affects the character we’re following through it.

Details should plant a question the reader wants answered—an unresolved, open loop that creates an itch in the reader’s brain that only finishing the story can scratch.

Curiosity may kill cats, but resolution kills momentum. Leave the questions in the air to keep readers reading.

Cut the Fat

This might be the single most important piece of advice you’ll ever get in your writing career…

Once you’ve written your first chapter—cut it.

Maybe not all of it. But enough of it. Cut the fluff, the warm-up, the flowery exposition. You don’t need any of it. It’s all just the literary equivalent of clearing your throat.

Your reader doesn’t want to hear you warm up. They came to hear the music. So give them an overture that will make them stay for the symphony.

And don’t be afraid to take a risk. A lot of first chapters play it safe, trying to be “clear,” or to “build tension gradually.” They try not to confuse or offend or go too far too fast.

But “safe” is forgettable. Take the road less traveled—the road more risky—and drag the reader along for the ride.

If you want to write a book that people finish, you have to write one they can’t put down. And that starts with an opening that takes a risk. Make them lean in. Make them uneasy. Make them question what they thought they were getting into.

Then keep it going. Because if you can make them forget what time it is, that’s when the real story starts.