You get one shot to grab your readers’ attention. Don’t waste it with characters staring off into space.

Read Cathryn’s scene by entering your email below:

Does Your First Chapter Hook Your Readers?

You’ve put all this work into uncovering your character’s internal arc. You know them SO WELL.

When you step into a scene, you’re giving your absolute all to uncovering the deep meaning and purpose behind it, the profound arc of character transformation that’s happening in even the smallest moments.

Yet in doing all that . . . you’ve lost the plot. You’ve crafted complex inner worlds for your characters, but all they’re literally doing is staring off into space.

And you’re worried that in the times when you most want to hook your readers—like your absolutely critical opening pages—you’re boring them instead.

Bored readers put books down.

So what do you do? Throw in some discord and explosions to create external chaos? Cut the scene and start the story at a different point entirely?

Or is there a way to use what you know of your character’s internal arc to find the perfect external action that will hook your readers and keep them turning pages?

This is exactly the challenge Cathryn deVries encountered in the first chapter of her novel. So I brought her on the podcast and we workshopped it together.

And in this episode, you’ll hear how we solved it, and how you can hook your readers, too.

Meet Cathryn deVries

Cathryn is one part of a mother-daughter writing team. She won the 2023 Stuart and Hadow Short Story Prize with her story When A Slave Falls.

The scene you’ll hear us workshopping is from the first chapter of her romantic epic fantasy trilogy, which fans of Brandon Sanderson and J.R.R. Tolkien will feel right at home in.

She began writing this novel to capture the story her family was telling in her daughter Emalyn’s Dungeons and Dragons homebrew campaign.

She’s now in the submission process, and as you’ll hear in the episode, she’s gotten some really helpful publisher feedback on her first chapter that prompted us to revisit her opening scene.

Read More From Cathryn deVries

Enter your email below to read Cathryn’s scene:

• Read When a Slave Falls, her award-winning short story
• Read Lightning Hunter, a story set in the same world as the scene we workshopped
• Find her on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn