How Important Is the Beginning Really?
I’ve been a bit quiet on here lately, so it’s about time I wrote another one of these. So, what better to make a return to articles than to briefly discuss something that’s been on my mind recently?
You see, I’ve heard the advice that the first chapter of your story is the single most important part of it. Hell, I’ve heard people say the first pages or even the first sentence of your story is the most important. It’s a theory built on the idea that we’re in some kind of arms race against shrinking attention spans and need to grab the attention of the audience with some sort of incredible hook or lose them forever.
There is a degree of truth to this. Attention spans are getting shorter on average and short form content is some of the most consumed media there is. You really could argue that it’s rotting our brains. It’s also important that your story is engaging enough to make someone want to keep reading it.
But, does that make the opening the most important part of the story? The more I think about it, the more I think that this is just wrong. I’m a pretty cynical person, but even I’m willing to read a few chapters before I decide if a story is worth reading or not. I also don’t DNF a book just because it’s not a masterpiece, I’ll still finish a story that’s pretty average if I don’t feel like it’s a waste of time. And, honestly, I think it’s like that for most readers.
A strong opening is good. I would even agree it’s important. But I just fundamentally disagree with the advice that it is the most important part of the story. Just think about it. Whether it’s a book or a television show or even something as quick as a movie, what leaves you feeling more disappointed? A story that has a middling opening but only picks up steam from there, ending on a massive high, ends up feeling great to the audience. However, a piece of media that felt like it was having a generationally good run only to completely fumble the bag at the end of the story feels awful. Even though the second story in this example was really good for a much larger percentage of its existence, we end up feeling like our time was more wasted than with the first.
Consider that slow burn romances are among some of the most popular stories on the market. Or that people still think incredibly highly of classic mystery stories to the point that some of Rian Johnson’s most popular and acclaimed films are his Knives Out trilogy - which are basically a love letter to Agatha Christie’s old school murder mysteries. Consider the number of comic and manga fans out there who follow along with incredibly long, epic stories that are made up of volume after volume after volume of material. Hell, people will sit there and sink anywhere from tens to hundreds of hours into longform video games like Final Fantasy XIV or Baldur’s Gate 3 - neither of which have particularly incredible opening acts, really.
It almost feels like its editors and producers who care the most about how attention grabbing that opening chapter is. And, now that I’m writing this, I feel like I’ve seen agents, editors and publishers giving that famous advice way more often than actual writers.
None of this is to say that you should be able to get away with a sloppy opening chapter. Like I said, it is important to write a strong opening. I just do not agree with the idea that the beginning of a story is the most important bit when it is neither the part where most of the story happens or the part responsible with the shaping our final impression of the work.
A strong, attention grabbing opening is definitely important. But I don’t want anyone to feel discouraged from writing a slow opening that doesn’t delve headfirst into the intensity and action if that is what suits their story better because, despite what some people will tell you, there’s a lot of evidence to the contrary.
