Your first chapter has a monumental task: to make potential readers care about your book right away and hook them to keep reading.

Every event, every character, every page, every line—each word is a chance to draw your readers in and earn their attention, or lose their fragile, baby-fresh interest and make them put your book down before your story’s even had a chance to begin.

And that’s assuming that your book makes it to the bookstore shelves. If you’re traditionally publishing, the first chapter’s burdened with even more responsibility: it’s your first impression with agents and editors, who will judge whether to consider the full manuscript based on the first five or ten pages alone.

The stakes are high. So high that it’s easy to get stuck here, trapped in a revision loop on your first chapter, revising and refining and polishing, experimenting with a dozen different openings while the rest of the manuscript gathers cobwebs and dust.

So I asked Abigail K. Perry, a fellow editor and book coach, to come help us break out of that trap.

She’s an expert on stories and especially on openings. And in our conversation, she’s sharing what great first chapters must accomplish, what information to include and what to skip for later, and most of all, how to make your readers care from the very, very start.

What Makes a First Chapter Work?

When I sat down with editor and book coach Abigail K. Perry, we broke down exactly what a great first chapter needs to do. Here are the key takeaways:

Make us care about the character immediately. We won’t care what happens until we care who it’s happening to. Start with humanizing, relatable, or intriguing qualities.

Put your character in an uncomfortable situation. This creates momentum and reveals personality through action.

Use interiority to show vulnerability. Vulnerability builds connection. Show us what the character is thinking and feeling as they act.

Establish the story’s two major dramatic questions. What’s the core plot question? What’s the internal character question? Introduce both early—even if readers won’t fully understand them until later.

Embrace mystery, not info-dumping. Give just enough context to keep us grounded. Save the rest for later.

Revisit your first chapter once you know your ending. The best opening sets up the story’s resolution. Don’t try to nail it before you know where you’re going.

Meet Abigail K. Perry, First Chapter Expert

I had the joy of digging into all this and more with Abigail K. Perry—a brilliant editor, book coach, and host of the Lit Match podcast.

She and I met years ago in our Story Grid editor certification. Before that, she earned her bachelor’s degree in radio, TV, and film, and her master’s degree in education. She taught creative writing and film, so she’s well versed in both storytelling and teaching storytelling—which are two separate skills.

And then, most exciting to me in the context of first chapters, she interned at P.S. Literary Agency, where she read queries and pitch packages and got to experience what it’s like to receive just the summary and first few pages of a manuscript and judge from there whether it’s a manuscript you want to build a career on.

Now, Abigail works with writers as a developmental editor and book coach. She’s also the host of the podcast Lit Match, which is all about helping writers find the right literary agent for your career.

All that to say: Abigail is an expert in story, and she’s particularly well-versed in first chapters. She read them with an agent’s eye when she interned at P.S. Literary Agency and reviewed queries.

And she’s studied them extensively—if you check out Lit Match, you’ll find tons of first chapter deep dive episodes. In those deep dives, Abigail puts first chapters under a microscope and examines exactly what they set up in a novel and how they set it up.

In our conversation, she shared exactly what makes a first chapter effective: how to emotionally hook your reader, when to include backstory or worldbuilding, and how to raise questions that make readers need to know what happens next.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to Study More Great First Chapters?

If you want to see these principles in action, check out some of Abigail’s first chapter deep dives:

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
• Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
• (Coming soon: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card)

What Makes You Care in Chapter One?

What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to first chapters? What helps you connect with a character right away?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below and let me know what you’re taking from our conversation.

“When it is done so naturally that you just feel like you’re listening to a friend who’s gonna tell you a really cool story, that’s when you’re in it.”
— Abigail K. Perry

Happy editing!