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.

1. 10 Opening Line Strategies, illustrated with the top 100 opening lines of novels.
2. 4 Goals of Opening Chapters
3. 5 Ways Openings Go Wrong
4. 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
5. 4 Ways to Deal with Narrative Summary, Or How to Deal with Another Common Opening Chapter Mistake
6. Still trying to decide on the POV for your novel? 5 Questions About First Person POV
7. Round-up of Links for Opening Chapters
8. Prophetic Openings: Foreshadowing the Story’s Ending in it’s Beginning
9. Improve Your Weak Opening. No, you’re not revising yet, but read this one to see what to avoid.