If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, you’ll be starting at midnight tonight or first thing in the morning. You’ll be opening your story with a great scene, right?
Here are resources for those first lines, opening chapters of your novel.
- 10 Opening Line Strategies, illustrated with the top 100 opening lines of novels.
- 4 Goals of Opening Chapters
- 5 Ways Openings Go Wrong
- Backstory’s Emotional Weight, or Where Do I Put the Emotional Backstory if It Doesn’t Belong in the First Chapter–Which it Doesn’t
- 4 Ways to Deal with Narrative Summary, Or How to Deal with Another Common Opening Chapter Mistake
- Still trying to decide on the POV for your novel? 5 Questions About First Person POV
- Round-up of Links for Opening Chapters
- Prophetic Openings: Foreshadowing the Story’s Ending in it’s Beginning
- Improve Your Weak Opening. No, you’re not revising yet, but read this one to see what to avoid.
2 responses to “9 Tips on Opening Lines & Opening Chapters of Your NaNoWriMo Novel”
Mrs. Pattison, I love your tips… and I think a fun topic for your next one would be the story structure example in the nursury rhyme “Jack and Jill”!
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