Hot take, right out the gate, because I'm feeling a little spicy today.
I think every writer in the history of creation can benefit from hearing these five words: Your first chapter is trash.
Because, assuming you write your story in order, starting at Chapter One and ending at Chapter One Hundred and One, your first chapter is the first piece of writing you've done on this particular project (or at all!).
Because, no matter how well you plan and scheme the outcome of your story, things will change--often drastically--throughout the course of your drafting (never mind revision!), and your defenseless first chapter can't possibly anticipate the changes to come.
Because if your first draft is you telling yourself the story, as a wise writer friend of mine once said, then your first chapter is the literary equivalent of "once upon a time."
And no matter how hard you work in those early stages to make it perfect, your first chapter will never not be trash until you're almost done the global revisions, because of all these reasons and more. And if you're sitting there, thinking "my god, you are super presumptuous," then I can tell you from personal experience.
I know I said last week that there are certain scenes in my early drafts that are too cringeworthy to even consider putting out there on the internet, but my first chapter actually isn't one of them. I consider its badness more of a learning experience than anything.
So, without further ado, the story of the chapter so bad, my beloved beta reader and best friend could not get past it for months...which has now become the chapter that I read last Monday and felt my own heart pounding right alongside Ais.
When I set out to write Ais's story, there was a lot of weirdness going on. I'd mentioned before that I started with her character and essentially built the world out from there with little to no thought of the plot. I was eighteen and this doesn't mean I was a bad writer, but I was certainly an inexperienced one. I knew that Ais lived underground on the isle of the dead. I knew that her father had ruled the isle, but had since been killed in battle. I knew that her mother was...somebody? I knew that there had been a war between the gods and fae, which led to the fae becoming oppressed, and that one of Ais's goals was to free the fae--so she had to monitor their rebellion until she got her own powers. None of these things have changed from over five years ago.
But, at the time, I believed that Ais was the chosen one and that she was supposed to aid in the resurrection of her undead family members who, in this iteration, would become the eventual villains. I thought that there would also be a conspiracy where the gods were killing off their own, and these gods were landing on Ais's homeland. I thought it would be cool if one of them gets bound to her by blood and became this vague overarching shadow over the whole trilogy that I would do...something with? I didn't know, but it was going to be big and epic.
If this sounds horribly convoluted and vague at the same time, that's because it is. And so my first chapter, rather than having any single direction, ended up mired in this strange formula in basically every iteration up until Draft 3, April 2022: Ais is bored --> Ais gives the reader geographical details that ultimately do not matter much --> Ais sees something otherworldly and goes to investigate (either willingly or unwillingly) --> Ais ends up getting pursued by the otherworldly thing --> end chapter
That, my dear reader, managed to take up ten whole pages. That should not take up ten whole pages. There was absolutely zero dialogue and interactions with any other character for those ten whole pages. Instead, what we got were gems like this:
"The channel is knife-smooth, deceptively still as it cleaves the heart of Hy’Brasil, a bloody, golden dagger dividing the land. Tír Na Nóg, the land of the gods, to the east. Annwn, the fae prison, to the west. Tech Duinn eclipsed in the center. It taunts me, the way the waters of An Brasil feign innocence. As if the channel doesn't know its importance, doesn't know that it's under constant surveillance. By me." (my first lines)
"Solas Firenne has ceased rising, now a fiery cairn resting atop the ruins. Such a beautiful monument to the fallen gods, my ancestors, who’d made Tech Duinn their refuge. How I’d love to gaze at it all day, eyes locked with the blue blaze, letting it devour me, burn me up" (after two whole pages of watching what is essentially a magical fire pit)
"Take small steps down the mountainside, aided by my dagger: a half-fist down, maybe a fist, sometimes the length of my forearm if no better option remains. And each step of the way, I consciously flatten myself. My knee aches. Goosebumps rise along my arms. My hair whips into my eyes. I'm hampered by my dress. Still I continue, urging myself ever downward. I develop a rhythm of dagger, left hand, right foot, left foot, flatten. Small break. Two breaths. Continue." (when Ais decides to come down the mountainside in a bracing wind for three whole pages. AKA: the scene my friend lovingly referred to as "cliff gymnastics")
"It's the base of a massive cairn. The rocks from the cliff swirl around it, some joining the structure, others seemingly discarded and spiraling around eternally. As I watch, boulders and rocks align, shaped by invisible hands into a pillar, a prison that's assembling far too quickly. I've seen cairns built before, the stones filing into place over several years’ time. A new brick for each incarcerated soul. It's an organic process. And a slow one. This is unnatural." (when Ais sees the otherworldly goddess-in-the-cairn come to life...and proceeds to spend a whole page analyzing every aspect of this darn thing)
This writing style? This level of needless description? This is my first chapter. Now, will someone please tell me what on earth would compel a reader to keep going? I can't even reread it and I wrote the damn thing.
Without even needing to make you read the rest of the chapter, let's dissect some flaws here:
The lack of character, main and supporting -- what does any of this tell me about Ais? Or any of her family members? My dear friend thought Ais was going back to an actual village and was confused why her family was so small (once she got there)
The writing style -- it's so overwrought that plot (assuming there was any) is buried. In addition, the minutiae of details makes it so that no one actually knows what's going on. Especially in fantasy worlds, you've got to balance it. Too much detail and you're losing the reader, but too little and your world suffers from "white room" syndrome
The lack of action -- yes, there is action. But it's action that's pretty incomprehensible because it has no meaning. What is a cairn? Why do we care? What are the stakes? In terms of all the things that you can possibly fit into ten pages, what we actually get that is comprehensible is Ais watching a fire pit and then falling down a cliff
The lack of character initiative -- Ais passively reacts to changes in the world around her. In this first first chapter, Ais feels pulled by a force outside of her to investigate the cairn and then proceeds to react to the events it causes, ie. falling down a cliff. A passive character is a boring character
I knew that my first chapter was bad and would preface every interaction with a new beta with "please just slog through the first three chapters. I was eighteen, I know it's bad, but I don't know how to fix it." And that was the truth. Because no one could get past the first chapter and because I stubbornly held onto the idea of Cailleach, the god in the cairn described above, being a Big and Significant character, I had no clue how to make this meeting happen in any other way.
In later iterations, I managed to edit this down so that Chapter 2 (which consists of Ais running across the island for ten whole pages) could merge with Chapter 1 and become fifteen whole pages together. I thought that had fixed the problem, but it was still bad, and I had yet more betas to apologize to...and I was finishing Draft 3 and getting pretty darn serious about the whole query thing.
Queries often require the first five-ten pages of your story as a sample, pasted in the body of the email or a section on Query Manager. I was learning this in February for the first time, and I knew I was in trouble. My first ten pages were so bad that they were turning away my friends. A person whose job literally requires that they find the best possible books to market, and as such receives upward of 300 queries a day, wouldn't slog through that.
By this point, my brilliant beta had helped me identify the four problems above thanks to our nighttime chats. She also inadvertently gave me the solution.
Early on in Draft 2, I began to realize that, compared to Ais, everyone was flat, and that her twin solely existed to do nice things for Ais, like lend her books to study. Emrys himself had no personality. I decided to give him what my friend called a "side quest": send Emrys to the northern markets, the biggest trade hub on Annwn, to make contact with a spy named Maeve. Ais doesn't know this is happening, but she does know her brother is gone, and Maeve becomes an important force later in the manuscript. This "side quest" happened off the page, but as I began to explore Emrys, I realized that I loved him and I loved his interactions with his twin...and I thought what if I placed Ais in the markets while all this is going down?
I had my new first chapter. And my new opening sentence?
"Before I slip into the chaos of the Annwn’s northern markets, into crowds of faeries with sealed-away magic, into the ever-watchful eyeline of fae guards with painted-on runes, I tie the strings of my cape a bit tighter over my sole rune, and I curse my divinity."
Through this device, I was able to worldbuild where it actually mattered--on Annwn, the place where Ais spends almost the entirety of the novel. I was able to get her to interact with others and to explore the stakes of her world and why it actually matters that she's hiding. I got to explore Emrys's character, as well as Maeve's. Problems 1, 2, and 4 were solved.
But 3? Not so much.
See, this is the chapter I queried with and-- leaving aside that my query was bad, which is a whole other story for another day--I got responses back like "has potential."
"Has potential" but...
But I had stubbornly left the Cailleach scene in there. When Ais leaves the actually interesting part of the world behind, she treks home, mad at her brother and runs into this thing in the cairn.
But we go from "the chaos of Annwn's northern markets" to " I feel the thing inside within the cairn stirring again. Hungry. Come to collect its dues: my immortal soul" in the span of ten pages.
Downright whiplash inducing.
A brand new beta commented that it was baffling. My dear professor beta/alpha reader felt that it was "not really clear" what had happened or why it has consequences, especially since it only comes back in at the end.
And it was my turn to admit that what I had thought was a clever narrative tie in--I worked So! Hard! To weave in this five-years-old part of my story--actually was a confusing deterrent, and it was holding me back from an agent ever requesting a full- or partial- manuscript.
It was time to kill a darling.
I thought long and hard about this, because my professor's comments about extraneous narrative elements applied to not just Cailleach, but many things within these first six chapters, which were written anywhere between six-three years ago and belonged to a story that had changed drastically since then.
So, I thought about action. About what would not need massive amounts of explanation to be understood as deadly. About what may have a tie-in later, or may not.
And I settled on a hellhound, which also birthed the brilliant idea of the hours of death, Arawn's favored mode of surveillance. Since Ais spying on her brother's meeting takes longer than anticipated, she is out after curfew, which on the isle of Annwn means she is fair game for the hounds that Arawn lets roam to discourage rebels from congregating and from collecting the magic-charged leaves of the forest around them, the cógas (Irish for medicine). The hellhound comes back later, in Chapter 14, when Ais and Saoirse have to collect cógas themselves (a Draft 4 addition that I adore). The hellhound and its conjuring methods also have a narrative tie-in that runs throughout the entire manuscript.
I had my first chapter, a full eight rounds of edits later, if you count every minor tweak. And now, what was a strange, magicky abstraction with vaguely phallic connotations (which is crazy ironic for my little sapphic story), is this:
"On Tech Duinn, nothing can touch me, and I have almost made it.
Until I notice the groves have fallen silent. No crows, no soldiers. Nothing but the soft sounds of my own breathing.
Then the snapping of twigs from behind me. A quiet snarl, low and menacing. The hair rises on the back of my neck, as the sound of four paws trampling the undergrowth resounds throughout the quiet air. The rot of the beast's breath washes over the groves.
Heartbeats last a small eternity. My dagger trembles in my hand. In my peripheral vision, a shadow stalks between the trees, its red eyes glowing, its yellowed fangs dripping blood-tinged saliva.
I do not move. I do not breathe. I pray for one thing: that it will not notice me.
For a second, it seems my prayers are answered. Somewhere deep in the night, a caw resounds and the hound’s ragged ears prick up. It turns its head, makes to move in that direction, one paw frozen in step.
Slowly, carefully, I raise one foot and set it down as silently as I can. Then the other, my breath clutched tight in my lungs. I stop, watching the hound and waiting for it to strike. But it is still focused on the crow, whose caw has now been strangled in death, and I seize my opportunity.
I run.
Out of the groves, onto the shoreline, my boots tripping on the rocky coast, so close to safety.
It happens so suddenly that I have no recollection.
One moment, I am preparing to jump to the first rock in the crossing. The next, I am partially in the water, and a weight presses down on my chest. Hot breath strikes my throat. A pair of jaws, as wide as my head, opens above me, and saliva splatters my shawl.
The beast howls, deafening even through the pounding of blood in my ears, and its claws rake the thin fabric of my shirt. In its eyes, I see my own death.
Panic floods my brain, and all I can feel is my magic rising, hot and poisonous, and I only panic more. It could save me, I know it could save me, but I am afraid of Arawn discovering, when his wounded beast returns, that a goddess with Macha’s power still lives. And I am afraid, even as I’m staring down my own death, of the horrors that will come from my hands yet again.
But as the beast’s jaws close over my throat and pain strikes me, I feel my dagger still clutched in my fingers. I blindly stab towards its eye. A yelp, a hiss of pain--my own--and I am briefly free and bloody and half-swimming, half-crawling, to the first rock between the isles.
On the shores, the hound is writhing, dislodging the pieces of my dagger from an eye that is rapidly healing. I press my hand to my bleeding neck, feeling the flesh seal closed already in the only blessing my divinity has ever offered to me.
And then I hurriedly finish the crossing, stopping only long enough to watch the hellhound pace the shores of Annwn, the water slicking over its paws, as it sends up a series of violent howls.
I cross Tech Duinn’s shore to the nearest sidhe entrance, stepping between the cairns of the dead, and I fumble at the wards guarding it with my shaky fingers, and I feel the hound’s crimson eyes watching me still. The sidhe entrance--a lonely yew tree, its bark scarred with wards--begins to split in half, the branches bowing down, the staircase to our underground home emerging from the darkness, and the hound whimpers and bays so loud that I swear it is beside me.
My shawl and shirt are tattered and soaked through. My one glove is stained crimson. My rune is fully visible and I smear the blood across it to hide the damned thing, my heart pounding viciously all the while.
I rise and start down the steps. The barrier seals shut over my head in a rustle of leaves and a hiss of magic. The sidhe wards rearm. And yet I can hear the beast still.
And as I stand in the half-formed darkness, only one thought strikes me.
Emrys is still on Annwn, with no magic and a rusted dagger even more useless than mine.
My gods, I have left my brother to die."
And there it is. My final line of my first chapter: a grueling labor of love, and a thing I fully line-edited last Monday night.
Anyway, I wanted to save my updates for the end, so if you've read this far, 1) I love you and 2) I am on chapter 8 line edits as of today and super, super excited to tell you about the progress I make and the lessons I've learned from it next week
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