Write a Compelling First Chapter

1. About the Workshop: Hi, my name is Barbara Vance and welcome to this workshop on writing a compelling first chapter for your stories. First chapters, they have so much stress that goes with them because they have to accomplish a lot. You may have to grab your reader and pull them in and make them want to stay for the rest of the story. And that makes them a unique challenge to write in this workshop, we are going to cover how do you set the story up so that the reader wants to know more and doesn't want to leave. How do you engage them with a gripping character? How do you insight action into the story? How do you establish the setting, your authorial voice, your point of view? There is a checklist of things that first chapter as to achieve. And we're going to work through each one of those things. We're going to look at creating initial suspense. We're going to look at designing the different ways that you can start a story and the different facets of character development that you may or may not want to address when you start that first chapter. First chapters don't have to all start the same way. They don't all have to just dump you immediately into action. You can start first chapter suddenly, you can start them very action-based. There are a number of ways to do this, and we want to look at all of them so that you can choose the right one for your story. We will be looking at a lot of wonderful examples from literature. I, you know me, you know my, I love to teach concepts, but I deeply believe that looking at examples is so important and we will definitely be doing that in this workshop. You will get to walk through all the things that it needs to accomplish. And then you will get to see wonderful examples of it from literature. This would include the character development, the plot development, the inciting incident, the settings, the points of views, the authorial voice and the narrative itself. And then how do you set the reader on the way to the rest of the story? Because the first chapter doesn't just introduce the reader to the story. It has to set us up for the plot that's to come. So it's not like it's just o the first chapter. It's just that chapter that really counts where I have to make sure it's all really neat. Know, it has to point the reader toward the rest of the story. There's a very strategic things that it has to accomplish. This workshop is going to help you address all of those things. As with all of my workshop, it comes with class notes so that you can follow along with all of the video lessons. It comes with two full excerpts from literature so that you can read them and follow along as well. And it comes with worksheets that you can immediately put into practice what you have learned. I don't want you to just learn concepts. I want you to get your story done. And the questions on these worksheets are going to help you really think these things through. First chapters are, they're very exciting, but a lot rests on them. It's very helpful to start to degenerate and brainstorm the different ways that, the things that you can do in your first chapter. But then think of them in the context of the story you want to tell and the characters you've designed to make sure you're choosing the right opening for this story and these characters. I am so excited you're here. This is a really important topic and I'm just delighted that you are writing a story. I've been teaching and consulting on story for over 16 years, so I must love it and I do, and I am thrilled that you are interested in this subject as well. And I cannot wait to learn about the wonderful things that are riding by. 2. Challenges of First Chapters: Alright, before we dive in, I have made for you a wonderful little set of class notes, outline for you to follow along. These are fill in the blank, so we're going to be proceeding throughout the course through these. I cannot say enough, I cannot encourage you enough for you to go and download these and follow along and fill in the blanks and write things in. It is going to help you remember things. I assure you. I say this from years of experience, just listening while that's absolutely fine. And if that's all you can do, I'm still so glad you're here listening because you will learn from it. But if you can focus and you can sit down and you can take notes, you will retain it in a way that you most likely won't if you're listening. I do encourage you to download the notes and use them if you're not sure where to find them, do look in the course description because I will specify there where you can download this note sheet. So you haven't done that. Take a pause, go download that note sheet, and then come back. What I'd like to do in this course is just talk about some of the challenges that we are facing when we are writing that first chapter. What makes writing a first chapter so hard? And I don't say this to intimidate, but it's important to know what makes it hard so that we can know what are the goals for that first chapter. The first thing is that the start of your novel is a first impression. It is for readers who've read your work before. If you have more workout, they might already be receptive, but even they, this is a first impression of the story. And certainly for people who have not read you before. This is their first taste of you. And you want to just as you would meeting someone, you want to make a good first impression. The truth is that it's very, very easy for someone to put your book down on your note sheet. You'll see what that first thing we're looking at three main reasons that first chapters are so important. The first is, it is your first impression. You are not going to be given a lot of time and they're going to make a decision. Most readers about your work very early, this may or may not be fair. So this is not a matter of how much time should a reader give a work of literature? The truth is that especially today times, time attention spans are really short and you only have so much time. So that is the first challenge. The second challenge sort of bridges off of that. But not only are you making a first impression, but your readers, there's so much media to consume, they have more reasons to put your book down, then they have to read it. Most Say that again. There is more out there. There's more out there than we could ever read, ever watch, ever listened to. So not only are you trying to earn a reader's trust and interest in a very short amount of time. But you have all of these other things grabbing for their attention. Even people who do want to read your story, things are constantly pulling them away, their phone or the computer or text or social media. That there are always things that are going to be trying to draw your reader away. So really it is just so important that you make something that is engaging and that is engaging quickly. Now, the third reason that the first chapter is such a challenge is because this is the chapter where you are setting up your character. You're setting up your setting. You're setting up your plot. You're getting everything going. And while any, any part of writing a story can be a challenge. And I wouldn't say that one part is always necessarily harder than another. That's really dependent, not only on person to person, but story to story. Sometimes you're going to write a story in the beginning is just there and you know it, and it's great. But then you get stuck in the doldrums of the middle or sometimes the ending is very hard, so I'm not saying that this is always necessarily the hardest part, but I'm saying there's a lot of heavy lifting you're having to make sure you're doing in that first chapter because it is the launchpad for everything else. And so you want to make sure that you've built a good foundation in that first chapter on which the rest of the story can rest. Because ideally your first chapter is sending the reader off into the wider world. That is your stories. It's setting the train and motion. And therefore, you really want to make sure that the train station is it what it needs to be. So these are three of we could go on and on challenges of a first chapter. Having thought about those three things, it is important for us to then sit down and say, What are my chapter goals? What are some of the main goals? Generally speaking, of a first chapter. 3. What First Chapters Should Accomplish: There are many things we could say are sort of goals or things that you're hoping your first chapter would do for the purposes of this course, I just wanted to focus on for now. Again, every book is different and every story is different. And for every one of the guidelines that I'm giving you here, I could easily show you great works of literature that don't necessarily do all of these things. What the guidelines in this course we'll do. These are going to very much be things that if you were having an editor or an agent looking at your work, these, these are very much the sorts of things they would be looking for because editors and agents are looking for marketability. They're looking for a book, they can sell. It's not uncommon that an editor or an agent might read a book and say, I like this, I think it's a good book. I think it's well written, but I don't think I can sell it. And at the end of the day for them, publishing is a business and they have to make money off of your book. So the guidelines here are, yes, they're literary guidelines. Yes, this is whether you care about how many books you sell a naught. But we are really focusing on things that would make a book marketable. Just so you understand where we're coming from with these four goals. The first goal, and this is here on your outline, is that you want to draw the reader in. And in publishing terms, this is often known as the hook. It's the thing that's just going to grab the reader and pull them in. Now, we could do an entire course just on hooks in novels. But for the purposes of this course, what is important is that you can say to yourself, what is it about this first chapter that is going to make my readers go? I have to know what's happening next door. That's really interesting. I want to know more about that. Sometimes a hook is something very short, sometimes it's something longer, but it is In the beginning of your story that just grabs the reader and says, you have to come along for this ride. The second thing that you have for a goal in that first chapter is setting up conflict. So the first goal is drawing the reader in. The second is introducing conflict. You're setting up your story. If a reader reads the first chapter, nothing terribly eventful happens, then what you haven't done is set a story in motion. A story has conflict. Sally and Jane went to the pork and played, isn't a story. It's, it's, it's got narrativity to it. It's got characters doing something, but story has conflict. So Sarah and Jane wedge to the park and Sarah pushed Jane so she could have the only available swing. Now we have the sort of story because now we go whoo with Jane going to do. First example is not terribly interesting. The second one is. So not only in the first chapter two, we want to grab the reader and make them interested, but we want to set up some kind of conflict. And as we will see in this course, there's a specific kind of conflict. We should have certain goals. You, it's not generally helpful to just say, okay, well, I'll just have some kind of action scene here without thinking of how it relates to the grander plot purposes. So the third goal that we have is that you want to set your reader's expectations. Your reader wants to know where she is going and every reader, when they open a book, if you've no idea, you haven't read anything, you don't know the author, you don't know much about the plot or anything else. You come to a book and it's more or less a blank slate. But the minute I start reading, and by the time I get to the end of that first chapter, I have certain expectations. Generally, even before I opened that book, I have certain expectations when we go to the bookstore and we take a book off the shelves, we expect there's going to be an interesting character that I'm cool. I'm going to get to know. We expect there will be conflict. We expect that conflict will change the character in some way. And we expect some kind of cohesive ending, some kind of conclusion to all of the conflict that we're going through. Some basic things that we expect from our stories. But when I open a book by Dickens and I start to read his style and learn his voice. I have certain expectations for how the story is going to go now because I've been given certain information. If I read something that reads much more like a thriller novel, I have certain expectations of that because I have associations with what thriller novel is like. If you've started a plot where Sarah pushes Jane, I have expectations that are going to get some resolution to the conflict of Sarah pushing Jane. So the choices that you make in that first chapter set your reader up to expect certain things from you. And it's incumbent upon you as an author to fulfill those expectations. And if you don't, you have a reason for not doing it. So you'll read it wants a roadmap. And now there are many, many kinds of expectations that can be set up. They're not, you don't have to do certain things, but some of the things that you might do. First, who is the storyteller? This is one thing the reader wants to learn and we'll learn in a first chapter, who is telling me this story? We're going to look at that. The Second, who are the characters? Now, obviously not all of the characters are going to be introduced, but you're going to introduce a certain amount of them. And the reader is going to be wondering that when we open a book, we want to know who is, who is this about? The third expectation you might be doing is setting up is what is the setting? Where is this taking place? When is this taking place? And the fourth expectation that you might help set up is, what kind of a read is this? What is the tone? What is the mood? Is this more of a sort of woody literary novel in the ILC of a Charles Dickens or George Eliot? Or is it a very fast paced novel? Is it something more haunting like a Stephen King? So all of these sorts of tone, mood, literary style is another expectation that might be setup when you're setting those up. Now the fourth goal that you will have with the first chapter is to create suspense. Yes, it's important to set up with a character, is yes, it's important to set up the setting. Yes, it's important to set the style of a voice. But to go back to this idea of what a story is, a story has conflict. Once you have conflict, you're creating suspense. Now as we will look at, there are numerous ways you can create suspense. But you want that first chapter, part of what's going to engage a reader is saying, what happens next, or why is that, or what's that story there all kinds of questions. If suspense means there are questions that are unanswered. So creating tension. And if you've watched my courses on creating scenes and creating plots, I talk all about tension and release in those and what that means. But you want to create this tension in your readers that makes them want to read on so that you've created a conflict without a resolution. And now they have to move on in the story to try to find, to try to find the resolution. So these are four goals that you might be facing and you will definitely want to consider when you're writing your first chapter in the next lesson, I want to go ahead and dive in to setting up your authorial voice and your point of view. 4. Point of View & Authorial Voice: Alright, I want us just to focus on two main takeaways from point of view and setting up your storyteller. I've complete courses about point of view. And so if you're not sure what point of view you want, I definitely recommend going and looking at those because those classes actually get into what are the different points of view and why you might choose one over another. But for the purposes of this class, I want us to just Consider a couple of things as we're starting to think about what is the point of view for my story. And remember that when you are starting your first chapter, you're introducing the reader to not just the characters in your story, but the character who is the storyteller. In, for example, the case of first-person, the storyteller is the protagonist. Generally speaking, not always or some other character in the story. But if you were in say, third person or third person omniscient, if 2, third person limited, you're still one of the characters in the story. In a way, if you're third person omniscient than the narrator has more of a presence in the story. There's just this, this idea of all of these varieties that you can have. It's important to remember that your point of view absolutely shapes the characters in your story and your plot. You can have a story in your head and say, well, it's the same story, whether I tell it through the first-person, or whether I tell it through the third person omniscient, those two points of view are very, very different. And even if in your head as the author, you know, okay, well these are the events that take place. What is revealed to the reader. When it is revealed, how it is revealed is so different that it absolutely shapes the way they understand the story that's happening and the way that they understand the readers. So your decision about what do I want my point of view to be is a very large, weighty decision on your novel. It is just as important as coming up with great compelling characters and a compelling plot. So you want to take it very seriously. One thing that can really help you as you're trying to decide, what do I want my point of view to be? And this is on your outline and I recommend writing it down, is to ask yourself how much access to the characters to I want my readers to have. How much access do I want to my characters? Do I want my readers to have? And how much of a filter do I want my narrator to be? How much access to the characters do I want my reader to have? And how much of a filter do I want my narrator to be? If you're third person omniscient, you can float in and out of a lot of people's heads. If your first-person, you're in one person's head. So you don't have access to all these other characters. You only have access to the first-person, and you only have use of the first-person language and voice. If you're third person limited, you still only have access to the mind of the first-person, but you're given a certain amount of linguistic of free freedom that you don't have a first-person. So knowing the perspective that I'm coming in at is going to determine how much access I have and I'm giving my readers. So just to give you an example, say you're starting your story and there's a car accident. And your character, your protagonist is in the car accident. There are two people in the car and they see something strange moving in the woods. Now if that's first-person, what do we know? We see something strange moving in the woods. We're not sure what it is. We go through the experience, the physical and the mental and emotional experience of being in this car accident. We don't know what the person next to us is thinking where everything is chaotic around us. If I tell this same scene from third-person omniscient, then I can go in and I can say, Save in first-person. We don't know why we got in a car accident, something happened and we don't know what. Well, third-person omniscient we might be saying there was a something blocking the road and the car hit it and it popped it's tire and then the car did this thing that the people in the car couldn't possibly know because they didn't see it and they don't see their own car. And we might say there was a wolf in the woods moving through the woods. Well, the first person doesn't know that because it's different. So the amount of suspense and the amount of ability and freedom that you have changes. The other thing that you want to think about again is that second question of how much of a filter do I want a narrative to be? How much of a character 12 out my narrative to be. You can give your narrative quite a personality of her own, of his own. And what that tends to do if you watched my the course, you'll see this, but it tends to remove the reader a little bit from the characters themselves, but it makes an archer more of a character himself or herself. So these are all these choices you want to make. So again, when you're trying to consider your point of view, think about how much access to the characters and all the different characters you want your readers to have. How much of a, which is another way of saying, how much of a filter do I want my narrative to be? The second to consider when you're designing and choosing your storyteller and your point of view is that the point of view and the author's personality is a lens through which the story is told. The point of view you choose, the personality, the author is a lens. So if you want this sort of sarcastic protagonist to tell the story, That's a lens. And that means that you're going to tell your entire story from this sarcastic bent because your first-person and your protagonist is, say, a sarcastic teenager like Catcher in the Rye. So consider what is the lens through which I want, I want my character, my readers to experience this. And these are two very important things to think about. Now, in the next lesson, I want us to talk about the characters that you set up. 5. Setting Up Characters: Alright, One thing that most first chapter is due by no means all of them, but a lot of them, is that they introduce the protagonist. And there are two main reasons that the first chapter introduces the protagonist and these are on your notes, I recommend you're writing down the first is because the reader wants a relationship. So you want to work to create intimacy quickly. You put the protagonist in your first chapter because the reader wants a relationship. Because they want a relationship. You are trying to not just introduce that protagonists, but create intimacy between the reader and the protagonist. Fast. You very short amount of time to get their attention. And you want them to get a familiarity in them and an interest in them. So you want to set up that relationship. We read stories because they have characters in them. We will go through a plot because we care about a character. When we read. We're interested in characters because we are humans. So we want to read about other humans. We want to read about people's successes, people's failures. Because when we walk out ideally on the other side of the story, we come to understand what it is to be people, what it is to be flawed, what it is to be heroic, what makes someone good and what makes someone bad? They're all of these sorts of questions about being human and a fallen humanity and what we should aspire to be. All of these things are wound up in the characters in our stories. So we're looking for that connection. So it's very important that you set up that kind of emotional connection quickly. Now, not all chapters do set up the protagonist right away, but most do because you're reading and you're saying, okay, well, what's a story about? Who is the story about? So if you don't introduce your protagonist immediately, you should have a good reason that you're not doing that. The second reason that you want to introduce that protagonist because of stories, themes are generally connected to the main character. And you would like ideally to try to begin to introduce your themes in the first chapter. So having your protagonist in that first chapter is going to matter because the themes relate to the protagonist. Now, there are several things and I'm six. Again, so many we could talk about, but we're going to talk about six things that you either want to begin to establish or introduce in your first chapter. And again, I recommend writing these down. The first is a sense of personality. Who is this character? Whether it's, you know, their, their quirks, the way that they talk, they're speaking mannerisms, the way that they see the world like you think of Holden Caulfield and Catcher in the Rye. Very, very distinct character. We get quite a sense of his or her personality. Same for Scout into Kill a Mockingbird. She, To Kill a Mockingbird. Both of these, again, first-person stories. She's setting up Macomb County and they're setting and she's really actually describing very much the people around her in that first chapter, setting up this whole space for us. But we get very much a sense of her voice and a young girl's perspective on things. For example, when she talks about the ladies and Macomb County, who it's very hot, very hot. So they take bars and then they put on talc powder so that they smell alright, and then they sweat throughout the day. So they put on more talc powder and then they've sweat and then they put on more top powder. And she says that they end up looking like these T cakes that they eat. Well, a child, a young child is far more likely to pay attention to the t cakes than necessarily someone who's this grown man. If a grown man had done it, he might have some other association that he thinks of somebody being kinda kicked up with white powder. But for a little girl, it looks very much, It reminds her of icing on a cake. So it's just these kinds of tonal voices and things like that. So you're going to have when you design your character. So you're going to know so much more about them than you share with your readers. And there can be a desire to want, to put a lot of it out there right away because we love our characters. We've sat with them. We know they're hurts, their heartaches. We know their struggles, we know where they're going, where the god of their world and of their lives. And so we want to sit there and say, Don't you love this character as much as I do. But the truth is, you want to pull back. You want to give your readers a place to go. You want to give your character runaway. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone where you felt like you talked about so much, so intensely. Right away. And then you thought, well, there's nothing much left. I feel I can talk about with this person. The conversation has been exhausted. You don't wanna do that with your characters. Give you a reader some runway, something to look forward to getting to know them. And you do that by setting up some of their personality and making you go with that. What I'd like to know more about this person, whether it's some of the off-putting things about them or some of the lovely things about them. You want to give me a taste, not too much. Give me a taste of who they are so that I can sort of go, Well, yeah, I'm, I'm sort of interested in getting to know this person. Now the second thing that you want to begin to introduce and establish is your characters awareness. What does he know? What does she know? This sounds nebulous, but what I'm getting at here is you have a story situation that you're setting up. And you have a space setting in which this character dwells, and a time in which this character dwells. How much information does your character know about the story you're going to tell this space and her life, what's happening around her. Some people are more aware than others of the conflicts that are going on. What have you than others? Some people are less aware. To go back to our example about the car and the crash. We're looking at that saying, well, what is my she's not aware of what caused the crash. She's not aware quiet where they are in their journey. She's not aware that that thing up there as a wolf. How much awareness does she have? The Introduction To Kill a Mockingbird? Scalp, actually four little girls is quite aware. She's, she really understands may coal. She's lived there all her life. She's clearly a very observant child and she has opinions such as opinions about the different personalities in her town. So she's very bright and she strikes you as is quite aware of what's happening and what's going on. So really think about that because sometimes you're reading in a character isn't necessarily as aware. You think of the start of Lord of the Rings, for example. Frodo. Frodo knows the Shire and what have you, but he is not aware of the start of that story, of the gravitas and the seriousness of things that are happening in the wider world. He is unaware. He has to be informed. So when I say awareness, one of the things that you're establishing for me is what's the characters starting point in my story, of the great novel and of the world and of what's happening in it. Because you need to start a starting point. You need to establish where they are so that you can establish the change that will take place. The third thing when you are introducing an establishing your character, our internal and external struggles. Now, the first chapter, you may or may not introduce a lot of these things. It's helpful to have some sense of a struggle, whether it's external or internal or both. Some kind of adversity they're facing. This goes back to what we were saying earlier, where you want some kind of conflict. That conflict is going to relate to your main characters. So I need to see them struggling either in their hearts and their minds or with an actual adversary, whether it's the weather or another person or something like that, we need to see some sort of struggle happening. Alright, number for establishing and introducing motivations, goals, wants, needs, what is driving my character? What does he want? What is making him do the things that he's doing. Now, the character might not necessarily always tell you what that is. And these, these wants, these needs, these struggles. They don't have to be the main struggle that they will go through in the course of the whole story, like the big story struggle, the big story goal. It can be a little story, a little goal. And we'll get into this. But, but the conflict that you see it, it could just be a mini conflict. It could be a minor arc in your story. That's okay. It should ideally relate to the grander purpose vision of the story. But the point is that I get to see this character in some kind of interesting action. Whether it's the action and the tension of working through struggles in your head or the action and the tension of actively working through a struggle. But if you want conflict, you want your characters doing something. So we need to see some kind of struggle happening. And that will tell us a lot about who that character is. Okay, number five, weaknesses. You don't have to introduce a weakness in the store to the story. But it allows the characters to connect with them and have that intimacy that we were talking about. Now, a well-developed character will have weaknesses of things that are character weaknesses, whether that's a short temper or You know, just a bad perspective on something, bad behavior of some kind. But there are other weaknesses as well. And that could be just simply be a weakness of position, Harry Potter. And what would be the second chapter of the first book in the series, the Sorcerer's Stone or the Philosopher's Stone. Depending on where you live. He's got weaknesses. He's in a very compromised situation, living with his aunt and his uncle. That's its own kind of weakness. We need to see something where he's not strong because that helps us connect and relate to them. So some kind of munis. As the stories go on, we see the kind of character deficits that Harry has and he needs to work on. But that second chapter is primarily the weakness that we see is a situational one. And that's alright, but just give me something that says, okay, well my characters in this perfect human being, because that's not terribly interesting and it's very difficult to relate to perfect people. Perfect characters are the hardest kinds of characters to write and make interesting and make relatable. So weaknesses will go a long way into making your reader actually want to read through the rest of your story. And last number 61 thing that you can like, I will not say this isn't all first chapters, but if you've watched my other courses, you know that there is, in general a lie that the character believes that causes that character to make certain bad decisions, bad actions. Introducing what that lie is can be an interesting way to start a story. Not always, but it can be an example of this is the first chapter in Jane Austen's Emma. And that first, just the first few paragraphs of that really set up certain lies that the character Emma believes certain lies. She believes about marriage and who should marry who, and who's a valuable member of society. All sorts of things that then sort of tossed and her face throughout the rest of the story. So when you set up a live at the character believes that you are still setting up the mental hang-up that is going to in some ways derive them through the story. It's not just random. None of these six things are random. All of these six things drive the plot going forward. So thinking about the lie that the character believes. And if you want to delve into this more, I have courses on character values, character weaknesses, and character strengths. Both of those courses, we'll get into those things. But you want to set up some of these false beliefs because the false beliefs drive the character weaknesses and drive the actions of the characters, which leads to conflict in the story. Now, as you're trying to set this up, you want to make sure that you are considering the ways that your character will be different at the start of the novel and at the end of the novel. Because if you want to establish a maximums, you know, if you're an art and you're doing a painting, you want to say, what's my darkest dark, What's my lightest light? And then that helps you set up your middle tones. You want to do the same thing with a story. You need to think about where your character is going and who you want your character to be so that you can set up who your character is in the beginning so that you can have interesting drama and dynamic throughout and that there's a sufficient character change. And remember, the bigger the change, the more drama is going to happen. Part of what makes Scrooge, ebenezer Scrooge, and Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol. Such a dramatic, powerful story aside from how beautifully it is written, is that Scrooge goes from being the worst of the worst to the best of the best. And that's such a powerful dramatic change. And Dickinson is such a wonderful job setting up how does terrible Scrooge's in the beginning. And then sort of softening him throughout and getting us to where we like him, right? You know, the beginning of Charles Dickens. We don't like screwed, screws is not nice. We have no reason to like them. So Dickens puts this character in front of us, says, look what a miserable ODS person, Ss. And then he takes us along with Scrooge and we have to spend our story with this miserable Odysseus character who's slowly, slowly changes and who we can see through cracks. We see things we like in him. So that at the end when he turns out to be a good person, we're so happy that that's how he turned out. So really think about where your character begins, where you want your character to go, because it's going to establish how you start your story. Okay? That'll be example that I have and I'm not going to read through these examples word for word, because you will see that on your, on your outline. Some of them can be a little bit lengthy. But I have throughout this course given you certain examples and I'll just tell you things that I like about them. Now, the example you have here is if Jim burden, it's a character in myotonia by with a catheter and just This is in the first chapter, everything, all of the literary examples here are in the first chapters of their respective novels. And you'll just see where the narrative, the story just goes on for a good paragraph about Jim. But what makes this such a strong description is that within this, through talking about Jim, he sets the story up. He sets themes up. Themes of the outdoors, themes of nature, themes of the wide open spaces that are so present in myotonia setting is almost a character all of its own. And you see that setup and these, these descriptions. And I'll give you he loves with a personal passion, the great country through which his railway runs and branches. His faith in it and his knowledge of it have played an important part in its development. And he goes on and he talks about Jim as being a very upstanding person. Now he's talking about the adult Jim. We're going to go back and read a story of Jim is a boy. So what's so wonderful about this is that we know who Jim is going to be. So when we read the story of my Antonia, we're not going, who's Jim burden going to be? What we are doing is saying, How did this young man gets shouted? This good man gets shaped into that person. And what was the influence of these people in his life. So it's a beautiful description that goes well beyond just he looked like this and this is how I stood and this is how I talked, which can be a little bit boxy into something that's far more thematic and and sort of fresh. And it does talk about his appearance, but it sets in motion the themes of the story very beautifully. Now a few other points on characters. You do want to introduce other characters, ideally in the first part whose Troy? Because again, that's how you set up a lot of conflict. You really want some kind of antagonist or antagonistic force. If you don't have it literally at least hint at it. Whether it's a societal pressure or personal issue, a government, a person, it doesn't have to be an actual person. But in your first chapter is ideally you've got some kind of antagonist or antagonistic force. A bad person, or struggle with the government, struggle with the weather, struggle with society, struggle with a personal hang-up or an issue, something that the characters fighting against, that's where you're going to get your conflict. You also want to introduce perhaps some supporting characters. Flesh this out a little bit. Now that being said, there are a few best practices that I'd like to go through and I've just listed five just to keep in your head. And the first one is that you don't want to overdo your characters. Don't overdo your characters. This includes the number of characters you introduce and their descriptions. It can be very tempting to want to throw in all of your characters at once. You really don't want to do that. You want to limit it to a few so that they are important and I can focus on them. You also don't generally want to over describe. Readers will be more likely to sit and listen to your descriptions when they care. But the first chapter, they don't care yet. So you want to just get things moving. It's fine to give a description, but don't overdo it in the beginning. Point to character interactions are often the most interesting situation, especially when there's dialogue. So when you're saying, what sorts of things do I want to have happen? In my first chapter? Know that interactions between characters are often the most interesting situations to readers, particularly when it's dialogue happening and it's not just action descriptions. Dialogue is very Clippy. It moves quickly and it gives you a lot of a sense of a person's voice. The earlier story element is introduced, the more important a reader will attach to it. This is in part why you do not want to overdo how many characters you put into the store to the story. If you're giving me information in the beginning, I'm generally going to think this is very important information. These are very important characters. If you spend a bunch of time in your first chapter introducing the character who really actually doesn't have that much to do with the story, then you've just wasted your first impression time on something that's not very germane. So pick your most important characters, the most important things and put those in your first chapter because that is what's going to then drive the plot. Again. Your first chapter is setting up the things that drive the plot. So they need to be a strong, powerful foundation. 45. Have your protagonist's go through a life-changing incident that sort of drives us to the next chapter. It's again, this noise happen. But very often having the character goes through some really interesting changing incident that propels us into the next chapter. It just grabs the reader and says, I have to keep reading. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Sasha Philosopher's Stone does this very well in their second chapter. The reason I keep referring to the second chapter is that the first chapter of Harry Potter functions for more like a prologue, even though it's listed as Chapter one. So in many ways, chapter to actually functions like the first chapter. But even the first chapter does what I'm talking about. But the second chapter, Harry and I, plot spoilers. By the way, if you plot spoilers in my classes, so I'm sorry, there are plots boilers that Harry sees this snake and there's this magical moment that happens where the glass falls away and the snake talks to him and all of these things happen. That's a rather life-changing incident. It affects the Dursleys who are taking care of him and it affects Harry. So having some sort of really big changing incident that pushes the story forward is very helpful. Again, to think of Frodo very early on in that story where Gandalf comes and helps set him off on this mission. It's a life-changing thing that happens. The first chapter of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, where the, the convict grabs PIP, grabs Pip in the grave yard, is he's looking at his family's sitting on the graves and asks him to get him some visuals. That that totally changes the whole story. That conflict, conflict isn't just there, he's very prominent in that story. So things get set in motion because that happens. Pride and Prejudice, where Mr. Darcy moves into town, life-changing situation. So you start to go through and look at your favorite stories and say, what's the big changing situation here that's setting the story in motion. And think about that in relation to your characters. Alright, in the next lesson, we're going to talk about setting up conflict. 6. Jump Start the Plot via Conflict: There are several best practices that I'd like for you to consider when you're setting up your conflict. The first is that a question that needs to be answered. Now, often, this question is the primary problem of the plot. Doesn't have to be. But again, have we talked about this, but you want a question that needs to be answered, whether it's, how does Harry Potter have these powers that he has, or who is Mr. Dorsey or what happened in Jim Jim burdens path that made them like this. Something that you're not telling me that needs to be answered. And often that's something we'll connect to the grander plot. So think about that, like really put yourself in your reader's shoes and say, well, what do I want my readers thinking about? What do I want my mystery for my readers to be wondering about at the end of this chapter. The second thing is avoid too much backstory. I cannot say this one strongly enough, especially for those of you out there who are big planners and big world builders. It can be so tempting to want to give me all kinds of backstory. But the truth is that backstory, to go back to something I said earlier isn't interesting to the reader. Until they care about the characters, then the backstory is interesting. You don't care about all of these things that happen to a person or place until you care about the person themselves. So a little bit of backstory is fine if you need it, but don't overdo it. It's far better to sprinkle backstory throughout by weaving it into your plot. That's more challenging, but it's far, far more interesting for your readers. Otherwise, you've got paragraphs and paragraphs and pages of backstory, you will likely lose your readers. Number three, put your protagonist in conflict quickly. We've already talked about this, so I'm not going to just dwell on it too much. But again, conflict is interesting. So you want to put your protagonist in conflict quickly, give the character and immediate goal, even if it's not the primary goal. Now often this conflict will foreshadow the larger task at hand. Again, we've really talked about this, but you want to give your characters a goal. It doesn't have to be his goal for the big story, but it needs to be a goal for the time being. Whether that goal is just getting out of the house, are not getting into trouble when you're out with the Dursleys at the zoo. Or whether that goal is just say the goal for the first chapter is just getting to a party. That's the goal. And then when she gets to that party, a lot of other things are set in motion. Or whether that chap, the goal in the first chapter is sort of like Pride and Prejudice is to get Mr. Bennett over to meet with Mr. Darcy. There are all kinds of goals that one can have. Doesn't have to be a big goal, but it should relate to the big goal. And you want that conflict being set up quickly. Number four, now, often the primary conflict, the antagonist, are not really hashed out in the first chapter. So again, don't feel like you've got to throw all of your plot to me at once. But that antagonist and that big conflict, they do grow out of your first chapter. Think of your first chapter like a seed. A seed that has what you need for the tree that is your novel to grow out of. So you need the seed to have all the little seeds in it. That will be your antagonist, that will be your plot, that will be all of these other things. So remember, okay, how am I showing my readers certain things out of which will grow the antagonist saddle, which will grow the plot. If your readers get to the end of your first chapter and they don't feel like they know where the story's going. They're going to close your book and they're not going to read anymore. Or they're going to say what was the point of that first chapter. It didn't really relate to anything else. Your first chapter is the station from which the train leaves. Now, there is a good question, Two, Two good questions to ask yourselves, and I would recommend writing these down. Now, does the opening conflict, either one set up the protagonist facing the antagonist eventually, or to drive the protagonist toward her goal. Maybe she doesn't know her goal yet, but it pushes her toward finding her goal. Again. Does that opening conflict either set the protagonist up to face the antagonist or does it set the protagonist step to find his or her main goal? I'm gonna go back to the Harry Potter example. How he does not get to the end of chapter two and know that he's a wizard or anything else. But that conflict begins to set up his finding out about this wizarding world. The first chapter with where they talk about Voldemort, where they put Harry on the doorstep. All of that totally sets up what will be Harry's main goal over the course of the entire series to fight this Nemesis. The first chapter of Harry Potter introduces Voldemort, introduces Harry Potter. It introduces the conflict between the two, the importance of them. And it totally sets up what's going to be the big dramatic problem of the series. So you want to do one of those two things. Once you establish, by the way, the characters goal, you want to hinder it. So once I know what my character's goal is, you want to throw a wrench into things and not let him get it so easily. And you can do this in several ways, a character. And again, this doesn't even have to be the big plot goal. This can be your couch little goal, but give your character goal and then say, okay, several things can happen. Your character can fail to get the goal of a want, or the character can get the want. But it's got negative ramifications, in which case now we have to deal with those. Or the third and again, this is the third bullet on your outline is that they partially get what they want and now they need a plan B to get the rest of what they want. All three of these setup different conflict situations that your character can then move on into the rest of the plot width. So again, different things that you can do, these are just different options to think about. But when you're thinking about how you want to start your story, ask yourself, what is my character's goal for this chapter? What is my character's goal for the larger story? And what are these three ways of hindering it do I think is most interesting. In the next lesson, I want us to look at how we create suspense in our first chapters. 7. Create Initial Suspense: I want us to talk about three ways that we can create suspense. In a first chapter. There are many, many, many, but I want us to just look at three because I think these three are very helpful, especially for a first chapter. So I recommend writing these down. The first thing that you can do to create suspense is through your character descriptions. When you describe your characters, you can weave in things about them, mysteries about them. Things left unsaid but hinted at that make a reader go. I wonder about that. Remember, suspense can be related to characters, that can be related to plot. It can lead to all kinds of, all kinds of things that creates suspense. So if you want to create some suspense about who is that character, you can do that through descriptions. Think of a television series, Mad Men with the whole question of who is Don Draper? Well, if Mad Men had just introduced Andre Perez, Don Draper and everything else and never sort of hinted at his backstory, then we wouldn't have the suspense of wondering who he was. We would just accept him as Don Draper in the same way that we just accept that PIP is Pip and Great Expectations, or Emma is Emma, or any of these, Harry Potter's, Harry Potter. Harry Potter, we do sort of wonder who he is a little bit, but we know we're told a lot of things but not so with madmen, they do small things that make us realize that Don Draper has some secrets and that makes it interesting to us. The second way that you can create suspense is through just conflict, just plot point, conflict that what's going to happen next. And this is the most frequent kinds of suspense that you see in stories. It's just that plot based what happens, Sara Jane at the pork, and what's going to happen next. Kind of suspense. When you are going to do that sort of plot based suspense, there is a question that you want to ask. That question is, what is the normal flow of life in my world with my characters? And then, how do I disrupt that? With that, Frodo's, what is the normal way of life and the Shire which we get a taste of. And then how do I disrupt that with Gandalf coming in saying, hi Frodo, we need your help here, right? Or with Harry Potter, where the normal flow of life is one thing for the Dursleys, and it gets totally disrupted when, um, these strange people start showing up and Harry gets left on their doorstep, what's a normal flow and how it's disrupted? Even something like Pride and Prejudice. The normal flow of life is it's not a very large town, it's sort of colloquial and everybody is looking around to get married and what gets disrupted. This very wealthy man who was an eligible bachelor moves to town, disruption of the North of life. What happens now? The third way that you can create suspense is to sort of foreshadow the initial major plot points. So just giving us a hint of things that are to come makes us go. Okay, I understand because of the way the narratives told me this, that some things on the horizon, whether that's, you know, they're describing something. You say that if she had known, then what she would know, she probably never would have gone. Well, now you're going Well. What does she know? What did she come to know? You know, you want to know. So that's something that you can think about. And I do have a couple of examples for you here. The first being a character description and how you can utilize a character description for that kind of suspense. And so I do want to read some of this to you, not all of it, but you have a narrator and he says, I have the story bit by bit from various people. And as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. If you know stork Field, Massachusetts, you know the post office. If you know the post office, you must have seen Ethan Fromm driving up to it, drop the reins on his Hollaback today and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade. And you must have asked who he was. It was there that several years ago I saw him for the first time. Site pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in stark field. Though he was what the ruin of a man. It was not so much great height that marked him. For the natives were easily singled out by their leg, longitude. The stock, your foreign breed. It was the careless, powerful look he had in spite of a lameness, checking each step like the jerk of a chain, There's something bleak and unapproachable in his face and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than 52. He had this from harm and girl. I heard this from home and GAO who had driven the stage from bets bridge to stork field and pre-trial the days and near the chronicle, all the families on his line. He's looked that way ever since he had this mashup. And that's 24 years ago, come next February, harm and throughout between reminiscent pauses that you see all the suspense it's created here. We get character description of this, this grizzled old man is all before its time, drags his body across. But there's the sense of he's so striking everyone wonders who he is. And then we get this whole thing about a smash up that happened 24 years ago and like Okay, well, what was the smash up? What was he like before the smash up? All suddenly there are all these questions. And if they hadn't described Ethan Fromm in this way, we might not have cared, but we get such an intense description of him. And that description doesn't just talk about his physical appearance. It's sort of hints at his emotional state. And so we've got what happened to this net. So really creates suspense. The second example is an example of foreshadowing. And this is from David Copperfield. And he says, Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else. These pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life. I record that I was born, as I have been informed, I believe on a Friday at 12 o'clock at night, it was remarked that the clock began to strike and I began to cry simultaneously. Now I'm just going to pause there. You can read the rest of this paragraph because there's foreshadowing throughout. But even in that first couple of sentences, we get the foreshadowing that he started to cry the same time that the clock strikes 12. So there's this foreshadowing of someone who's going to have a sad life is going to have struggles. And Dickens goes on from there. And he sort of lists other things that sort of tell us where the story is maybe going. So those are just a couple of examples for you. In the next lesson, I want us to look at setting. 8. Establish the Setting: Okay, some best practices for setting. Again, I keep saying it. There's so many things we could talk about. I just wanted to give you some things to sort of get you going. And the first thing is just like character descriptions, just like backstory. Don't overdo your setting. Ledger setting gracefully come out over the course of the story. If setting is more of a character in your story, you can dwell on it more. But in general, don't overdo your setting descriptions. When you do describe setting, be very specific with it. It's those small details that are just very specific. Those are the things that make your settings stand out. If I say, Sarah walked into my apartment, it was a mess. She sat down in a chair uncomfortably. Not terribly interesting. If I say Sarah stepped into Martha's apartment. There was trash all over the floor and it smelled like three-day old pizza. That's something very specific. A mess general, with relatively few extra words. You can give me something very specific and that is more engaging for your readers. Third, on this, do you want to consider both your tone and your mood? What is this? This is funny. I mean, I could describe Sarah walking into modes apartment and it could be humorous, but I could also describe it in It's just sad. What is the tone? What is the mood and forth? You want to establish the normal world. We looked at this before when we talked about suspense and we said, what's the normal flow of life and how do you disrupt it? It's the same with setting. You want to establish what's the normal world. And again, this does not have to be a physical place. You can think of it as an outlook or as a symbol that's represented by, I have here three things. So this normal world could be a physical setting that the character will leave behind. Think of The Wizard of Oz with a normal setting is the farm. And Dorothy leaves the farm and goes to us. You've established this normal world so that ours is wonderful and unique. Harry Potter, we established the normal world of the dermis and it goes to the wizarding world. It's very different. But sometimes the world and the setting isn't a place that character leaves behind. So it can also be that this is a physical setting that is altered in some way. The Pride and Prejudice, they're in the same town. What's altered is that Mr. Dorsey shows up and now you have Mr. Lee and Mr. Darcy moved into town and that's shaken up. Another field, shaken up where they live. I think it's in the field. So the, the setting that they are in has changed. And then the third thing could just be a mindset that you are really establishing, not as much as setting, but a mindset that's going to change. This would be true of Ebenezer Scrooge squished sort of takes place in a lot of different places because it sort of goes into his past or whatever. But what Dickens establishes in the first piece of Scrooge is his mindset, his homogeneous, his miserly, this, he establishes this and then this is what's going to change. So you want to set up that setting in some form or fashion. The example I have here for you is from Great Gatsby. And this example, he really is just setting up the setting itself. But through doing it, you will note when you read it that he introduces Jay Gatsby. By talking about Jay Gatsby's house. He just begins to introduce him, but it sort of sets in motion characters and themes that will matter throughout the rest of the novel. Alright, in the next lesson, I want us to talk about how do we choose our starting point? 9. Starting the First Chapter: No matter where you start in your story, remember that you are actually starting in the middle of the story. Therefore, a story always needs context. This is all of this is on your notes, no matter where you start. Stories always enter in the middle. Therefore, my story needs context. Harry Potter starts, Let's take chapter one out. It starts with Harriet the Dursleys. But there's a whole backstory there. Pip stores sitting on the tombstone of one of his family members, but he's still in the middle of his life. Disturbingly and Mr. Darcy show up. There was still a whole life going on for the Sisters of the family. So you are always in the middle, which means you always need to think about what is the context of my story and what do I need to set up? And I want us to just look at for ways that you could start your first chapter. The first is just to start in the very middle of the action. Just start right, literally right in the middle of something happening. We're all very familiar with this. Action and thriller stories do this quite a bit. It's very, very common. I have an example for you here from Dostoevsky's, The Gambler, where literally this is the first paragraph of the story and it starts at length. I returned from two weeks leave of absence to find that my patrons had arrived three days ago and roll it. But Rutenberg, I received from them a welcome gift, different to that what I had expected. And we could go on from there. But notice that with that, It's like we're in mid story. It's like the narratives been talking with us. And we don't have any of that. And we've just started right here. So this is an example, a starting in the middle of the action, in the middle of a conversation between the reader and the narrator. But it could also just be right in the middle. The car veered off the road or something like that. So you can start in the middle an action. The second way that you can think about starting your story is with a prologue. Harry Potter does this. It'd be very careful with prologues because I very often find that people who want to write prologues want to invest in a lot of backstory into the prologue. And again, people slog through that and very often people don't read something called the prologue and they move on to the first chapter when those paralogs get to be dragging. Particularly Harry Potter has that first chapter is quite prologue like but children, I think it's more receptive for young adults, et cetera, to just call it Chapter one. But the prologue of Harry Potter setting up his being given to the Dursleys, et cetera, is so important for the rest of the story that that's a situation which the prologue really does matter. The third way that you can think about starting a, starting a chapter and starting your very first chapter is beginning with the character description itself. And the example I have for you here is rather lengthy, but it's from Michelle habits, The Maltese Falcon. I wanted to include it because comets is much more thriller like short, punchy sentences just really gets at it. And first words, Samuel spades. Joel was long and bony. His chin, adjusting the neck under the more flexible V as mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another smaller v. And it goes on and on and on. And he starts to have a conversation and she brings in other people. But you'll notice that hamate here is just really describing characters just in a very visual way, as opposed to when we looked at Ethan Fromm are some of these other characters. These are, this is very, very visual focus, not so much about what they're thinking or things like that. So you can totally do that and it can totally work. But again, think about that. I think we said, what's the tone, What's the mood, the tone and the mood of the shell hamate is very different. Like you read this and you go, Okay, this is short, punchy. Police, cops and robbers and detectives. It's much more of a punchy, fast-paced dialogue, heavy story that I'm reading, but it all starts with, boom, here are the character descriptions and let's get into some dialogue. And finally, the fourth way that you can think about sorting and setting up your first chapter is to set up a situation and introduce themes. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice test is very well, as does Emma. For Emma is another great example. But in just a few sentences here, she really sets things up. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However, little-known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering and neighborhood. This truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered the rightful property, someone or other of their daughters. Two sentences totally foreshadows and sets up everything, right? This is things of marriage. And it's, the situation is very clear. Single man got a fortune. He must want a wife. Families in the neighborhood have daughters, and everyone wants to get their daughter married to that man. That's what the whole story is about. Austin's set that up. Very lovely worded in just two sentences. Now when you're choosing, Okay, Well, there are all these different ways that I can set my chapter up. Again. You want to think to yourself what are the most important things? Because what's introduced in the beginning my character is going to think is important. And notice here that, again, list these things depend so much on everything we've talked about. If you've got an interesting narrative, you might want to give that narrow at a time to be featured and have a personality. Jane Austen's narrator in Pride and Prejudice has that now it has got our own, I think it reads very feminine, but her own opinions. So to start more thematically, really works. And if you have something that's a really fast-paced story and you don't care to so much get into the emotional psyche of your characters. Then starting in the middle of action. Or just with those very straightforward character descriptions, like the Maltese Falcon does is very interesting. We get the character descriptions and the action starts. And again, as we said, dialogue, dialogue, and character interaction are some of the most interesting things to the readers. And that's exactly what we dive into with the Maltese Falcon. So you can really think all of these things as you can see they tied together. But you're always thinking, what do I want my reader experience to be? In the next lesson, let's just look at a few ways that you end that first chapter. 10. Ending the Chapter: Just as there are many ways to begin a chapter, there are many ways to end one, and I just want us to look at three, and I recommend writing these down. The first one is to bring your story to the starting point of a new chain of events. So whether it's in Frodo at the Shire where these chapter ends and the next chain of events is Frodo going out and beginning his journey. Or with the second chapter of Harry Potter, where they've had the experience at the zoo that has not gone over well, but this sort of leads into the conflict that he's going to have with his cousin. And then eventually these letters starting to arrive, Mr. Bailey in Pride and Prejudice and Mr. Darcy showing up into town, which leads us into these other events that are happening. So look at what's the arc that's going on here. Very often that first chapter, as we talked about love, some kind of conflict might not be the major conflict, but it will be some kind of conflict. That conflict will then push us forward. You have to say, I vital get to the end of your chapter and say what's happens next, then something's missing from that chapter. Getting to a place where you say, Okay, I've finished this moment. But there's things left unsaid or there are new things introduced that are pushing me into the next chapter. What are the strong threads? What are they loose threads at the end of your chapter to close a minor story arc. Now, you don't have to do this, but it can happen where we have a story in and hence we get a bit of a break. The Harry Potter does this as well. Whether it's between Chapter 12, which chapters 23. The story arc in chapter one sets up the Dursleys family, carries just a baby. The wizards come, they leave, hurry on the doorstep. There's this whole arc going on. And at the end of that we get a breather and then we're introduced to Harry. I think it's 12. When you close an arc, you let your reader breathe again to go back to the plot and the scene courses that I've done. You're constantly creating tension and then you're releasing it, tension and releasing it. So if you've done your job and created some tension in your first chapter, it can be helpful to let some of it dissipate so that the reader gets a break. So you're not just build, build, build, build, build too quickly and your story, if you build up too much intensity in the beginning, you have no where to go for your climax. You can have a very intense beginning, but just thinking to yourself, how am I going to ratchet this up later on in the story when its climax time. Then the last thing to think about when you're ending your chapter is that you want to leave questions and answered. Don't tell me everything. Think of the description of Ethan's frome. Not everything is said. You are leaving questions answered with the Bennet sisters and Pride and Prejudice. Who's going to get the guy? We don't know these things. So look back and say, what do I, what do I want my readers wondering about when this chapter is over? 11. Putting it All Together: Now, I cannot say enough about this next piece of advice and what is your class project? And that is to take these notes, this outline, and do one or two things with it. You do both. But one is to write a first chapter for Australia that you are working on using these notes as a checklist. But the other thing that I actually recommend, even before you do that, is to go and take three of your favorite stories and run down these notes with those stories and say, alright, how, what are the goals of their first chapter and what is their point of view and how do they set it up? And how do they introduced their characters and see what, which of these things they are doing? Do it for all three. What you will see is that some of the things on this seemed to be the same across. But then you'll see that other things are very, very different. You might very well even see things that we have not talked about. But that's going to tell you so much you're going to learn more. Go into the books you love and breaking them apart and analyzing them in the light of things like this than anything else I can tell you. Doing that mental heavy legwork yourself. Analyzing stories yourself, teaches you so much. It's wonderful to take a course or listen to it, or read a book or a guideline, that's great. But going and assessing the stories you love and asking why they work or why they don't. It's a very irreplaceable exercise. So I recommend so much that you do that and then go ahead and try to write your own chapter and see how you can answer these questions for yourself. I have another course on Chapter introduction in which we just sort of take a lot of these things and we do exactly what I'm wanting you to do with your favorite books. And we're just going to look at the store to the first two chapters of the Harry Potter series. And just break them apart and see how they work and why they work. Because I think that looking at those lessons from literature, it's so important. So if you're interested in really getting just focused on one story, I recommend taking a look at that class. I also recommend highly taking a look at the plot development course and the scene course that I have done because both of those will help you as well as the characters, wants and needs course, character values and character strengths and weaknesses. All of these courses describe much of what we've talked about here in very great detail that will help you then really pick the best choices for your first chapters. If you enjoyed this course, please take a moment and leave a review. That's tremendously helpful for me. And the other thing that I would ask you to do is if you know anyone who's interested in writing, Would you please share these courses with them when you leave reviews and when you spread the word about these courses, I'm able to make more of them. So please do spread the word. I wish you the very best of luck with your writing. I'm so glad you're here watching this. Thank you so much. I hope you're having a wonderful day and I'll see you again soon. Bye.