The Right To Write

How to Not Bore Your Readers to Death (For the first three chapters)

And I bet you stopped sincerely reading that title eight words in.

I recently finished my novel, and handed it to a bunch of people to read. The first thing I noticed was that one of approximately fifteen people I asked made it past chapter five. Why? 

Frankly, I knew the answer before anybody read it. It was terribly boring. It wasn't just terribly boring, it was both terrible and boring, and still remains to be.

Fortunately, I have a few points to make about what to do within the matter of those few chapters. Here are a series of things you should make clear and keep clear in your mind within the matter of three chapters:

Set A Main Goal. This is an issue that is easily prolonged and twisted on Wattpad. Your character needs the actual concept of direction. Give your reader something to root for. Make your readers watch as your characters bleed out to the last, fighting for what they believe and strive for, or let your character come parading in bliss for finishing what he started.

What your characters strive for, die for, and live for, begins within the first three chapters.

Clarify Stakes. In Terrible Fantasy Novel, what I intend to call it for time being, the goal was blatantly clarified in chapter three, but that was where most everybody stopped reading. It took me a book too long to finally realize why. The actual stakes of the novel became the slightest bit clear in chapter fifteen, halfway through the book. Take a moment and think about that. My characters didn't know what they had to lose, much less what they were up against, until half my book through. 

Your characters have values, and under their values is everything they have to lose as a result of their goals and causes. They are willing to risk everything they know and love to strive for a better cause. The question you should be asking yourself here is what are they willing risk?

So I say, and will say again: make everything your characters will suffer as a result of failure crystal clear. 

Opening Hooks. I've discussed this, but let's just keep it at this: If your book isn't introducing one interesting concept, situation, or character for the first couple chapters, then your readers will only know you for your two first blunt chapters.

Never Overwhelm. There's a fine line between a developed character, and a whitewashed, personality-caked, over-complicated character. Overwhelming doses of development, backstory, and complication is the main reason readers are gone before the third chapter mark. Same goes for plots, concepts, and backstory. 

Michael came up to Alice. He had hated her ever since she stole his lollipop for revenge. He stroked the scar where the glass from his Honda's windshield had sunken into his flesh. "Alice, forgive me."

"No Michael, how could I forgive your for eating my lollipop," she said. Alice was conflicted with other problems, such as her brother's murder, but she had long set that aside to mourn for her lollipop. 

"Fine," Michael said curtly, and walked away. He knew he would have to leave her be, since she also had cancer, and many other diseases.

Besides being completely uncorrelated, rushed, and packed with backfiring attempts at igniting audience empathy, it is overwhelming in every way. Backstory is plastered onto every statement with no actual relation to the situation, Michael and Alice's characters are blown up into a grand example of over-personified caricatures, and everything about the provided information sounded forced and unnatural.

Here are a few elements of writing that are often overdone:

-Backstory. Backstory is so easily overused, and is often piled over in the first chapters as to have the reader get a good glimpse at the character. A word of the wise, your reader doesn't necessarily care. At least, they don't really care that Michael had a piece of glass in his cheek from a Honda, until, you know, it's actually relevant. Readers want to see what is happening rather than what did happen at the start of the novel.

-Character Introduction. Give me a second to scream my head off. 

Losing Your Reader 101: introduce five characters within three pages. Now, take a moment, give each character a couple pages, let your reader have the intimate experience of having a one-on-one with one character at a time. If you're introducing more than three characters within the first couple pages, your readers have run for the hills.

Pace it.

-Over-characterizing. Believe me, it wasn't until Wattpad I realized there was such a thing. This often happens when the writers try to force good impressions of the character onto the reader which quite often backfires. 

Personality is easily overdone by a rushed series of rather uncorrelated and excessive thoughts, showing off abilities, and a rush of values and personality traits. Let your character show through in time, don't force anything.

Take less time telling your reader what your character is like, and more time letting the story show the character's personality.

-Reader Empathy. Alice's brother died, she has no friends, she's the nerd who is relentlessly bullied, did I mention she had no parents? This is another example of a writer forcing the readers to love this character. But believe me, it gets to a point where readers are no longer feeling sorry for the character, they're just reading a list of tragedies which make your character officially pathetic.

Raise Some Questions. Terrible Fantasy Novel  raised rather the opposite issue, the book itself could be translated into a question mark. I kept the stakes, the goal, and the motive for everything a complete mystery, thinking it would set a certain suspense. I just have to chuckle at myself. Unless you aren't taking the hint, no, that is not how it works. 

If you do want to get anywhere, you have to raise some questions. What's are the antagonists planning? Will they make it out alive? Will he make it to the safety before the bomb goes off. These are the kind of questions that makes your readers hunger for answers.