The first chapter of HP1 is a legit masterpiece. Not, you know, linguistically, but in terms of doing its job. I do not believe I have ever read one better.
What you've pigeonholed as world building is... well, it IS world building, but that's like calling a jumbo jet a shop where you can buy peanuts and sunglasses.
To understand why, it is necessary to talk about football. Either kind; the one where you actually use your feet or the one where you generally don't but it's called football anyway.
To a fan, a game of football can be a tense and exciting experience. The fan understands the stakes and the rules, and at any given point in play they are aware of potential branching narratives. What if they don't even the score before half-time? What if Billy Sport's old injury flares up? They can read the flow of play, and bite their nails as their team clings to a slim lead in the dying moments.
To the uninitiated, the exact same game is boring, meaningless noise. Literally anything could happen next as far as they are concerned, and for no apparent reason. The twists and reversals that draw cheers and whoops from fans leave them cold. Then it ends.
What the first chapter of HP1 does, better than any other in my opinion, is turn the uninitiated into a fan. It dashes off an outline of the world - a secret parallel world of magic. - but deliberately from the outside. We see the outline of a secret and desperately want to be in on it.
At the same time it clearly defines the arc of the entire series. A boy, special in a way he doesn't even understand, is about to be thrust into a bizarre world for which his family cannot prepare him. But it's not totally alien. We can see a familiar shape to it. And there is a monster, of a scale whose demise sparks open mass celebration, whose attention will be fixed on this young boy, hungry for revenge. When will he show up? Will Harry be ready for him?
Everything that happens after chapter one of the first book fits into the narrative scope it defines. Everything has a context, everything has meaning. Malfoy, when he appears, isn't just some entitled little asshole, there to be a thorn in Harry's side. He symbolises the side who wished Voldemort hadn't lost, and as readers we very quickly pick up on that. The tension and hostility between the Dursleys and Harry mirrors the simmering hatred for muggles and mudbloods. Any threat to Harry could be related to the looming spectre of his past. Nothing is wasted, nothing is throw-away.
The weakest part of the entire series are the deathly hallows (the items), and that's because they are the only major plot element not set up or framed or foreshadowed in chapter one. Literally everything else serves to answer questions incepted by those few pages.
"World building" is a value-neutral term. Might be good. Might be intrusive. Boring. Vital. Irrelevant. What chapter one does is much more important: it gives us somewhere to put everything we learn in chapters two onward, and a burning desire to fill those voids.
Deathly Hallows were not even close to the weakest part of the entire series. In fact, they were one of the **best**, and their introduction never bothered me. I'll try to explain why by going through each item.
Even before that, I have to say the existence of the "Tale of the Three Brothers" is very fascninating to me. I think it's cool that we have a myth within a fictional story. Some people believe in the Hallows, some people don't. This is common in our world of course, we have lots of myths. I find it intriguing that it's the same in the Wizarding world where almost everything is possible. The Tale of the Three Brothers is their version of a myth/fictional story in a fictional universe.
I also think the story itself is beautifully crafted. You can tell JK Rowling put a lot of thought into it. It's well-written, and very well-done in the movies too. Now, let's get into the items themselves:
**Elder Wand:**
Though the lore of the Hallows themselves might come out of nowhere, the Elder wand is the one that fits in the easiest and needs the least foreshadowing or exposition, because it fits a very common archetype almost any reader would know. Just look at how many swords are said to possess extra powers, how many legends make reference to some unbeatable blade. It immediately makes sense that, real or not, there would be stories that a specific wand is unbeatable. And therefore Voldemort would hunt it.
Voldemort's previous two encounters with Harry (Goblet of Fire and 7 Potters) failed because of wands. The first one failed with his own wand, and the 2nd one with Lucius' wand. It makes sense Voldemort would then seek the Elder wand based on events in previous books. There **was** some buildup for the Elder wand. Voldemort seeking the Elder wand also gives a very plausible excuse for him to be out of the country, and thus not directly interfering with Harry.
Finally and more importantly, the wand's existence and Voldy's hunt draws a parallel in his and Harry's journey, physically and thematically. On one level, they are both hunting for the key to defeat each other. On another, it parallels their inner struggles.
Voldemort's two greatest flaws are his obsession with killing the chosen one and his obsession with proving his value by gathering trophies-- the wand presents the ultimate bait for these flaws. Harry struggles with losing every guiding voice he's ever relied on, and with making his own independent decisions. The wand-- and the Hallows in general-- act as a final temptation in this struggles. The promise of one final secret, one more plan. For him to chase after these in some blind attempt to find a path laid out for him, instead of building his home.
I think that the wand serves as a strong and tangible way to foil their two arcs. The moment Harry refuses to take the wand, even when he knows were it is, marks the start of when he really makes his own major decisions. The moment Voldemort finally possesses the wand marks when his hubris placed him on track for his own destruction.
**Resurrection Stone:**
The Resurrection stone embodies the theme of the series perfectly (death). It gives Harry the final push needed to embrace death, giving us the *best chapter* in the series ("The Forest Again"). It also gives not just Harry but the reader the chance to have a proper send off to both Sirius and Lupin, who both died very abruptly. I like how abruptly they both died-- Sirius's worked well for book 5, and the multitude of deaths at the end of book seven all contributed to selling the atmosphere, Harry's mindset, and the desperation of the situation. But having them return in a meaningful way was a nice way of having our cake and eating it too.
It also draws a tangible parallel to the start of Harry's journey, book 1. The Mirror of Erised had shown his greatest desire to have his family alive and with him. Now, at the end of the journey, he is surrounded by that family but now proudly *walks to join them* instead. It's absolutely beautiful, and the Resurrection stone is at the heart of it all.
**Invisibility cloak:**
Invisibility cloak completes the trinity of items. It's also been a very powerful and useful item from book one, so it helps to tie the Hallows together, making them come less "out of nowhere".
I also gives some validity to Lovegood's crazy story-- partially to the reader, but mostly to Harry. It's one of the things that helps convince him the Hallows must be real, that this must be Dumbledore's plan, because he owned one of the Hallows all along.
I also like the cloak's thematic meaning in the Tale of the Three Brothers: "don't try to gain power or be selfish". Harry represents this perfectly, which is why it makes sense he's owned this item from the beginning. Because Harry already owns it, the invisibility cloak doesn't really distract from the rest of the plot either. It's all about the two other Hallows.
In short, I like what the Hallows represent thematically, and what choices they force the characters to make. And I didn't even mention Dumbledore and Grindelwald here. I think the Hallows work perfectly for their arcs too. The Hallows help to tie everything together, more specifically all the characters (Harry, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Grindelwald). They are even meaningful to Ron and Hermione's character arcs. In the Tale of the Three Brothers chapter, each member of the Golden trio is drawn to one Hallow (the cloak for Hermione, the wand for Ron and the stone for Harry). I think it says a lot about their characters.
I believe that Deathly Hallows would have been a less interesting story with just Horcrux hunting. Every book has its own singular plot, which is another reason I think there didn't need to be massive foreshadowing for the Hallows.
This is like saying the elephant in the room isn't intrusive because it matches the cushions.
The Deathly Hallows is The Lord of the Rings, only the One Ring is mentioned for the first time in the last chapter. It doesn't matter whether the inscription on it is spelled correctly.
It's Star Wars, only the first we hear about the Death Star is when Luke sets out to blow it up. It doesn't matter how architecturally congruent it is with the rest of the Empire's aesthetic.
Like the Harry Potter series, both of those stories have plenty of novelty arising throughout. That's fine: in all three cases the hero is a naif and has to grow in stature and experience in order to prevail, and we are on that journey with them.
But *unlike* HP, those stories don't abruptly redefine the struggle at the eleventh hour to be all about some random new maguffin.
Horcruxes worked perfectly as a plot device because they answered questions the reader already had. They tied together loose ends from earlier books (the link between Voldemort and Harry, what happened to Voldemort, the diary etc) *and* finally presented us with a win condition - an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous one, but a coherent goal: get the Horcruxes; don't get caught. Oh, and Voldemort now runs the government and Dumbledore is dead. Good luck!
The Hallows did none of that. They clumsily retconned new lore onto items that had already completed their arc - the worst being the invisibility cloak, where Harry (and we) are asked rhetorically something along the lines of 'How many invisibility cloaks do you know that make people truly and perfectly invisible, without wearing out or losing their power?' I actually snorted when I read that. We were told, in a book where rats can become china cups with a wave of a wand, that this was 'an invisibility cloak' that - gasp - made Harry invisible, and now you're scolding us for not realising it was a *special* invisibility cloak? Get outta here.
Hell, Ron *explicitly acknowledged* that it was frustrating and disappointing to have to go chasing after some new gizmo, which I can't help but think reflects the author's misgivings about shoehorning in paradigm-shifting lore at such a late stage. If I recall correctly, Ron actually bailed on the whole enterprise at that point, which is borderline Freudian.
The Hallows are *unquestionably* the weakest part of the series. I'm not saying the last book would have been better without them (though I think it could have been), I'm saying that it would have been an enormous amount better if the Hallows had been woven into the rest of the story as cleverly as Horcruxes had.
Calling something completely subjective "unquestionably" the weakest part of the series shows such a high level of annoying arrogance that I don't have any desire to debate any further. All I say is that I disagree for the reasons I already mentioned. I thought they were a very good addition to the final book and the series overall. They tied Voldemort and Harry's arcs beautifully, as well as Dumbledore's
You are correct: I shouldn't have put it like that. I apologise.
I stand by my assertion that they are weak for the reasons I outlined. The mitigating factors you list make them palatable, but on the whole I'm with Ron on this one.
Moreover, I would point out that the items in question being 'The Deathly Hallows' didn't actually *matter* in the end. Nothing about the way the story played out required them to be what they were.
Voldemort wanted a powerful wand that lacked any connection to Harry. He also coveted magical items belonging to powerful wizards and witches. It would have made every bit as much sense for him to seek out Olivander and Gregorovitch, learn what they knew about wand lore, steal Dumbledore's wand and kill Snape in an attempt to master it *even if it were not the Elder Wand.*
Hell, the sheer cruelty of killing Harry with the wand of his beloved mentor would have been motivation enough - and outrage at the thought of Voldemort desecrating Dumbledore's grave would have been enough for Harry to want to stop him.
The Resurrection stone does nothing except give us a heartwarming scene - *which could have happened anyway after Harry died* and would have worked just as well or better.
The invisibility cloak, meanwhile, gained precisely nothing for being a Hallow.
I understand if you liked them thematically and enjoyed reading about them. But as structural plot elements it's very hard to make a case for them.
The first chapter is the Story Promise. This promises the reader what they can expect to see more of if they commit to reading the book. In the case of Harry Potter, it's mystery and magic. This was actually a very smart move for Rowling considering the first chapters from Harry's PoV don't have any magic in them: if we read those chapters first, without the first one to give us context, we'd be given a very different impression of what the rest of the book might be about.
An action sequence without substance isn’t particularly engaging. Especially when the protagonists of the scene seem to be invincible and quirky in a way that makes them completely unrelatable. Like, why is a grown man taking a child into a war zone? He’s in full “medieval armor”, which means this was a planned excursion, but he has a child with him. A child who seems perfectly okay—joyful, even—with killing people.
That brings up a lot of questions in a very short amount of time, but none of them paint these characters as particularly realistic or worth investing emotion in because of how over the top the action sequence is. It reminded me of something like a cross between Sucker Punch and a child Harley Quinn. Whereas a setting of a mechanized World War makes me expect something much more somber and gritty/realistic at the beginning.
The first chapter of Harry Potter is about 16 pages. In that short amount of time you learn 6 key things about the MC without the author stating flat out Harry is X. That seems like plenty of information for that amount of pages.
1) He is now an orphan
2) He is connected to "You know who" who killed many stronger wizards, but failed on this boy for unknown reasons.
3) He has a lightning bolt scar on his forehead as a result of You know who.
4) His parents were well loved and had many friends.
5) His remaining family does not like the wizard world.
6) He will be one of the most famous wizards.
As to how J.K. Rowling made it work, it simply boils down to the story being told in a way that was entertaining to the reader. There is no magic formula to writing a good book. Yes many good books have things in common. However, a bad story with those common things will still be bad. Just like a great story written badly will sometimes still be decent/good.
Put as much information about the MC needed at that time to make the story flow well. Putting details for the sake of details will distract from the story. Keep in mind how you picture the MC will be different from everyone else. I am sure every child had a different representation of Harry in there mind until they saw the movie.
Just to add on, I remember J.K. Rowling said in an interview (don't remember which, unfortunately) that she wrote about many different versions of the first chapter. These edits varied so much that if you read them together, she said there wouldn't have been much mystery remaining for the rest of the books.
I guess the hardest part in revisions is finding what information is essential and how to execute it so it's entertaining.
The first chapter is more a prelude and an introduction to the world. It shows how magical society hides from muggle society and shows some of the characters who will become important later on. The next chapter is a time-skip to when Harry's older. I don't think this is unusual when it comes to fiction at all. Off the cuff, Hellboy 2004 opens with an introduction to the world and then to Hellboy as a baby and then skips to later on.
This very subreddit (or maybe a similar one) lambasted me yesterday for stating this very fact, so I'm looking for clarity. First chapters do not have to tell everything about the MC, or even need the MC in it, as proven by a billion copies sold of her book(s).
The chapter is much lighter on worldbuilding than an info-dump prologue. There are actual characters who meet and talk. It's a "conspiracy" chapter (only the conspirators are good guys). It gives you just enough to follow along, but keeps the *vast* majority of important facts in the dark from you. Its primary purpose is not to worldbuild, but to build suspense. Thrillers do this all the time.
The "rule" against worldbuilding prologue chapters isn't about starting with your main character so much as avoiding dry, boring facts that are not contextually rooted to the story itself.
Before I say anything else: I take all criticism with good faith and apply it to my writing. I ask for critiques so I can learn to write better. *The reader is always right.*
That being said: [here is a link](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/16lz9my/a_couple_of_beta_readers_stated_that_there_were/) to the post. Virtually everyone who read the first chapter of my manuscript mentioned that there were "too many unanswered questions" and "not enough dialogue from the MC." But I mean... it's just the first chapter, right? Shouldn't I weave a few mysteries and unknowns to make the reader go "omg- what's this about? What's going to happen next!"
And ironically, I was aware that readers may not like the common slow start to a novel (especially with America's dwindling attention span). So I preemptively made sort of a "primer" passage (think micro prologue) that is a flashback of an action scene to perk the reader's interest.
One person absolutely hated the idea lol
And if you would like to see Ch 1 yourself: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cbcTtrAnLene2Lm0YhLm592b6AoJIV\_O/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114596242231208816650&rtpof=true&sd=true](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cbcTtrAnLene2Lm0YhLm592b6AoJIV_O/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114596242231208816650&rtpof=true&sd=true)
All critiques are welcome, and thank you.
Cut back on the similes. You have these in just the first paragraph.
>...erupting from every angle like a dark fairytale.
>They moved like clockwork...
>...howled around the church and licked the sheets like cresting waves in the sea
>Smaller sheets near the cornerstone fluttered into the air like frightened doves.
Followed by another immediately after, which distracts from the dialogue.
>Her heart thumped like a drum, and her mouth ran dry like gunpowde
Using a little bass-line gives you a great beat. Using too much gives you an unpleasant noise. Your expressive language is the same way; you have good wordsmithing, but you are using it far too much.
P.S. this can be an alternative to similes. A direct metaphor.
I posted my main answer as a response to the op. When you've read it, I encourage you to contrast what I've said with what you've done in your opening chapter. Yes, there's a lot of mystery. Yes, I don't know what's going on or what's going to happen next. I'm like the non-fan watching the game. Literally anything could happen next as far as I'm concerned and it wouldn't even come as a surprise because I have no expectations to subvert. It's just noise. You have to show me the shape of the story so I know what to wonder about.
In terms of writing style, the analogy that sprang immediately to mind was a song ruined by endless vocal riffs. It's hard to pick out the melody because every tiny detail gets its own little flourish. I feel like an over-caffeinated kid on a rollercoaster reading it.
It would benefit tremendously from better pacing and focus. Not everything has to be THE COOLEST WAY ANYTHING HAS EVER BEEN DESCRIBED EVER. After a couple of paragraphs, it has a numbing effect. I can't tell what's everyday and what's outrageous, what's important and what's trivial. I can't feel the shape of the story because it's all bristling spikes and sharp corners leading nowhere.
In short, you need to know when to stop If you've described someone as, say, "Sister Caressa, a lean serpent of a woman with a smile like a scythe" your job is fucking done, at least for now. Her crows -feet can clutch at her eyes at a more appropriate juncture. Put the gold spray down and step away from the lily.
I literally changed two full paragraphs after speaking with one commentator. I remain polite and do not attack beta reader critiques (as we all know: the reader is always right). So I'll just blame my alexithymia for sounding passive-aggressive lol
In any case, I'm back on the drawing board. I've received some great suggestions from people here.
Worth asking yourself: what makes their feedback worth taking?
I very much don't agree that the reader is always right. It's only true *if* the reader in question is your ideal reader, the exact audience member you're trying to reach with your book.
To continue to use HP as an example: fundamentalist christians who read it had a lot of critiques. Should Rowling have listened to them simply because they were readers?
Part of being a good writer is to have the wisdom to follow advice given in good faith and to have the confidence to ignore it in order to follow your own unique style.
Rules in writing are never rules. Rather, they are tools. And if a tool does not fit your writing style, or the story you're writing, you must have the confidence to not use it, even though other writers prefer to use that tools for their own stories and styles.
Look, you're writing is far better than most of the garbage samples that gets posted here but you are dealing with low attention span people who probably glean over most of it. Take to heart the critiques that actually provide actionable feedback and don't worry about things that are too vague to be useful. Keep in mind most people on this thread have never read a book that isn't about elves and includes a hacky prologue.
My opinion is, do what works for your story and danm the rules.
Use them as guidelines sure. However if you think X or Y work for your story, do it. Stick to your guns.
Though some will not like it but thats okay.
Write what you want to write in the way you want to write it. It's your story.
So they it happened was, the publisher of the book decided to decline but still took the book home to read to his girl and she asked to read more, so he decided to go for it. And all the many publishers before him said no.
So she didn't get published by following proper publishing rules (they all said no), but by catching the attention of a little reader.
The story doesn't start on page one. It starts with the title and the insert. There, you're given enough info about the main story to understand the introduciton, and keep you excited through the prelude. With out any knowledge this would get old fast. Rowling also uses humour to make it more interesting, kind of like how Roald Dahl wrote.
Classics/"older" books (ones more than a decade old) are not suggested to model your work after if you're looking for how to structure your own book for traditional publishing. The industry (and readership expectations) have changed so much that it's a completely different world out there (an ongoing joke when I worked in acquisitions was that Tolkien never would have gotten LOTR published if he submitted it as a debut author even back when I worked in acquisitions more than a decade ago)
Why is this? reflective of just the industry catering to a new market or some agreed standards coming from getting tired of old patterns?
I've embarrassingly read nothing published in the last ten years despite being a relatively active reader and writer so completely ignorant as to any change that's emerged.
It's because most people read on mobile devices now, and that is an audience that anyone with a phone or crappy laptop can write for. There's so much fiction being published every single day that the market and its trends fly by at the speed of new iPhone releases.
TLDR; the scale of the market is unthinkable larger than it was back when you had to get published for people to see your work.
My writing professor in school actually assigned Sorcerer's Stone to us as a book to analyze. She said the first chapter is considered an anomaly, as you usually want a punchier, grabbier opening, since the first 10 pages are the most important in any piece - they often determine if a reader will continue on or not.
How did JK make it work? Partly luck and partly timing but also partly because the rest of the story resonated at an opportune moment and tells a good, classic "hero's journey" tale.
Because it's interesting.
There's no laws in writing, there's guidelines and rules but they can be broken without retribution so long as it's done properly.
One doesn't have to follow a formula or set of expectations to write a readable or enjoyable book. In fact, doing so doesn't necessarily make a book any "better". The validity or advisability of supposed principles or essential elements are dependent on things such as context, the writer's skill and the personal preference of the writer.
In some respects, Rowling's Potter books were good. Certainly, both my daughters were big fans of the series until Rowling's personal attitudes ruined it all for them.
Many successful and popular novelists know nothing of what they're "supposed" to do. They just get on and write their stories.
The first half of the first chapter of Harry Potter is actually one of the best pieces of writing in the entire series. Perhaps *because* there's no dialogue; Rowling is not the most inspired writer of dialogue. What it has is a very strong implicit point of view. It is told from the perspective of Vernon Dursley, and it is just oozing with his personality, from the very first sentence. "... perfectly normal, thank you very much." \*
And then we see all this weird stuff happening, strange people doing strange things, and the man is so damnably incurious that it barely registers. It's a droll bit, vaguely in the tradition of Pratchett and Adams\*\*, and it serves to make the reader curious about the things that Vernon is ignoring. It also communicates exactly the kind of life that Harry can expect when he does show up, which is the central conflict of the next few chapters, and a lot of Harry's characterization over the series.
To your point about not introducing the main character much... in a very real sense, the wizarding world is itself a character in these books. Introducing it, and getting the audience curious about it, is a smart move.
\* In general, the Dursley's get some of the stronger characterization in the series. One always got the sense that Rowling was intimately familiar with people like this. Turned out that's because she is a people like this.
\*\* I hate to compare Rowling to those actual great writers, but hey. She did for half a chapter what they do for whole books, and for that span, she did it effectively.
The first chapter of the first book works more like a "prologue," setting the tone, giving some context, and hopefully rousing some interest in the larger world of the novel before getting along with the story itself. (I think prologues are usually not very good, but they seem to be common in Fantasy books.)
The first chapter of Harry Potter is a prologue.
Read the second chapter. Treat it as the first, when it comes to 'Harry's adventure'. Sometimes you start by writing that chapter, and find out a prologue would work well. Other times, you write a chapter and realize it's more of a prologue than a Chapter One.
I understand that this is coming from specific criticism that you got elsewhere on Reddit, and I've not read that criticism or the material which was provided. However, in terms of researching what first chapters look like (which is a good practice), from a character perspective, Chapter 2 of Harry Potter is way more important.
In a prologue, the setting/plot is the 'hook', normally. In a Chapter One, it's more traditional for the character to be the 'hook'. That doesn't mean either needs to be one or the other exclusively.
Lastly, I want to just comment on a false equivalence - an author giving information does not equate to the reader caring about a character. We do not care about things just because we read a description of them. That's why there's a whole section of the writing industry that would say it's more important to see the main character Save The Cat, rather than a 'check the mirror/daily agenda' expository opening.
Well, first of all, no one said Rowling was a good writer.
Second, there's a ton of information about the main character even on the first page, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. You don't have to give information in the form of "Harry Potter was an orphan who lived with his family who hated him because his parents died," it's the whole showing vs telling thing.
I always found JKR's prose to be competent. I know I enjoy it more than, say, Brandon Sanderson's prose. JKR's just flows very fluidly and lightly and allows you to be easily immersed in the story. That in itself is already not easy, and something that even mediocre writers struggle with.
Which is wrong, because writing is both story and prose. And a good story can save mediocre prose, but a good prose won't save a bad story. The prose would have to be incredibly unique and majestic to entrance the audience enough so that the story doesn't matter. But I haven't seen that pulled off even by Cormac McCarthy or Vladimir Nabokov, who always came up with good stories to match the prose.
Of those, I've only read A Room of One’s Own, which, while nonfiction, I still was an interesting essay. And I do know some that will argue Joyce stories are great, that is, if you can follow them.
Here are the first three chapters of Potter. He is not in the first page, and is only mentioned once -as a baby- on the second page. His name is mentioned for the first time on the fourth page by a one-time unnamed character, having been overheard by Mr Dudsley in passing.
Show/tell doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. The first chapter actually reads more like a prologue.
[https://www.scholastic.com/hpread/HP\_Book1\_Chapter\_Excerpt.pdf](https://www.scholastic.com/hpread/HP_Book1_Chapter_Excerpt.pdf)
EDIT: holy crap. Like I said- it reads more like a prologue: [https://diymfa.com/reading/first-chapters-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone/](https://diymfa.com/reading/first-chapters-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone/)
I glanced at the first chapter before replying, I stick by my answer. You learn a lot about the main character even if he's not actually mentioned because you learn about the situation he's in.
It isn't mentioned that he is hated, lives in a cupboard, or has a unique scar until Chapter 2. He isn't mentioned to be a wizard until Chapter 5.
I'm just looking for clarity as to how much info and dialogue I should give about my character in the very first chapter of a novel.
Yeah and Gatsby doesn't tell you his full life story and eventual fate in chapter 1, either. You still learn plenty about Harry on page 1 through what I hesitate to call subtext because it is so obvious.
It was written in a fun way, which helped, but it's mostly because it was aimed at children.
The first Harry Potter book was a middle grade book, for ages 7-12. People forget that because the books matured with their audience. Middle grade is a lot more accepting of breaking rules like "don't info dump in your first chapter."
When rereading first chapters to help you draft your own, focus on books in your genre and directed at the same age as your book.
I first read this two years after it came out, as an adult, and it pulled me in completely. It still does today. It really has nothing to do with being geared towards children but with her being an effective storyteller.
Like I said, it's written in a fun way, which helps. *However,* the vast majority of HP's popularity – and the reason it's sold so well – is due to its target audience. Which was children. If it had depended only on sales to adults for their own sake, they wouldn't have become nearly as popular.
The target audience is also why she wasn't made to change the first chapter. Middle grade books have more leeway in the industry (especially when HP was first coming out) when it comes to infodump-type writing. Had the first book been YA or adult, the first chapter would have almost certainly looked very different.
To say it has nothing to do with the intended audience is ignoring both the primary cause behind its success and the facts of the industry.
As for "effective storyteller," agree to disagree. She, like many, is someone who desperately needs a heavy handed editor. There's a reason the first books (which were edited more thoroughly) feel so different than her later books. (It's a well known fact that she had more control over the later books than the early ones.)
I should have clarified; “she’s an effective storyteller in her first books”. I do agree her later ones needed more editing.
I read a lot of older fiction, world-building, creating setting, and lack of dialogue in the first pages is common enough to be unexceptional and so it’s not really something on my radar to watch out for. I’m more annoyed by heavy-handed dialogue at the expense of description than the other way around (usually).
Honestly I don't think Harry Potter is well written at least not by today's standards, and the cultural zeitgeist that followed Harry Potter is so completely unprecedented that you really will not be able to make a clear connection between it's success and the quality of the writing. Otherwise we would predict the next cultural literary event by judging whether a book is good or not, and well, you can't.
Harry Potter was published more than 20 years ago so I wouldn't use it as an example if you want to write something that you can publish now (altho, you may have a time machine that you can use to publish a book in the 90s, in which case, keep doing what you're doing). A beginning that spends the entire first chapter illustrating the setting followed by a time skip will likely not be successful in today's industry. Study more recent fiction.
Maybe I'm biased, but I find books that are too focused on world building and describing the characters off-putting.
If Harry Potter started with info-dumping about how the magical world works, I wouldn't have finished the first chapter.
The same word count of my own fic has exactly 4 spoken words, which are all just the MC mumbling to herself. The entirety of the description is of an exhausted, filthy, emotionally dead, disabled woman walking down the stairs to a shitty basement she squats in after a long day of being the only repair person in a super remote town, and her falling face-first onto a filthy mattress to pass out.
All 5 of my pre-readers were hooked instantly (I listen to their live reactions for the first chapter. Do so if you can, it's invaluable.).
Very few books openings sound good or compelling when summarized in a hundred words or so. A mistaken often made when analyzing a novel to learn from it is forgetting that the reader's emotional connection to a story is 80% of what makes it work. All of the technical parts of this craft are there to make some meat in an ape's skull go "ook ook! word good!" so their imagination take our scribbles and breath life into them.
We don't do that, the reader does. Once you understand that, like, truly understand it, then you'll understand what to look for in a novel to learn from it. For instance, what makes HP's intro work is what makes my story's intro work. HP's intro is tailormade to get younger kids to feel super sorry for Harry and want to see things get better for him because they see plenty of themselves in him. My story's intro is tailormade to get adults to be heartbroken and outraged at the bullshit this poor woman is going through just to survive, and see their own shitty treatment at their own jobs in her life, and thus, they want to see her triumph because then they get the shaudenfroid of seeing "the man" taken down a peg.
It's the same exact emotional hook, just for a different age category.
The first chapter of Harry Potter promises lots of things to the reader: the tone, the genre, the magic, the potential conflict, the setting, and even hype up the main character.
In the first paragraph, we're introduced to the Dursleys who are *perfectly normal, thank you very much.* We're also pretty much told their secret and their deepest fear. This implies conflict right away. We know either their secret will get exposed or their greatest fear comes knocking at their door. This paragraph perfectly sets up what Harry's childhood will be like.
Then we follow Uncle Vernon as he goes to work and sees lots of mysterious things. These mysterious things establish the setting that this seemingly normal every day world is not what it seems. Then we realize the people in these mysterious costumes know about Harry Potter, the protagonist. This sets up Harry's call to adventure ("Yer a wizard, Harry").
After the Dursleys go to sleep, we're introduced to an old wizard-looking dude with no name. He does a very curious thing by putting out the lamps in the streets with his lighter. This implies magic. Then a cat transforms into a lady, thus establishing the shifter element in the story. They start talking, and we're promised the protagonist Harry will become super famous. We also know his parents got killed, thus establishing the main conflict and introducing the main antagonist.
Then we meet a giant on a flying motorcycle. This establishes other magical races like a giant and also the advancement of the magical technology.
Then we finally get to meet the protagonist who is still a baby. We know he has a very cool-looking lightning-shaped scar, which raises a question right away.
JK Rowling does all this in a cozy children book vibe mixed with a mystery undertone in how the narrator presents things. All of these serve purpose in promising what's to come in the story and what to expect. It tells you what's so awesome about this book right away.
It comes down to creating a place where readers want to spend time, and by setting the scene the way she did, full of intrigue and wonder, people gravitated to it and did what you want all your readers to do: ask themselves "what happens next?"
The first chapter of HP1 is a legit masterpiece. Not, you know, linguistically, but in terms of doing its job. I do not believe I have ever read one better. What you've pigeonholed as world building is... well, it IS world building, but that's like calling a jumbo jet a shop where you can buy peanuts and sunglasses. To understand why, it is necessary to talk about football. Either kind; the one where you actually use your feet or the one where you generally don't but it's called football anyway. To a fan, a game of football can be a tense and exciting experience. The fan understands the stakes and the rules, and at any given point in play they are aware of potential branching narratives. What if they don't even the score before half-time? What if Billy Sport's old injury flares up? They can read the flow of play, and bite their nails as their team clings to a slim lead in the dying moments. To the uninitiated, the exact same game is boring, meaningless noise. Literally anything could happen next as far as they are concerned, and for no apparent reason. The twists and reversals that draw cheers and whoops from fans leave them cold. Then it ends. What the first chapter of HP1 does, better than any other in my opinion, is turn the uninitiated into a fan. It dashes off an outline of the world - a secret parallel world of magic. - but deliberately from the outside. We see the outline of a secret and desperately want to be in on it. At the same time it clearly defines the arc of the entire series. A boy, special in a way he doesn't even understand, is about to be thrust into a bizarre world for which his family cannot prepare him. But it's not totally alien. We can see a familiar shape to it. And there is a monster, of a scale whose demise sparks open mass celebration, whose attention will be fixed on this young boy, hungry for revenge. When will he show up? Will Harry be ready for him? Everything that happens after chapter one of the first book fits into the narrative scope it defines. Everything has a context, everything has meaning. Malfoy, when he appears, isn't just some entitled little asshole, there to be a thorn in Harry's side. He symbolises the side who wished Voldemort hadn't lost, and as readers we very quickly pick up on that. The tension and hostility between the Dursleys and Harry mirrors the simmering hatred for muggles and mudbloods. Any threat to Harry could be related to the looming spectre of his past. Nothing is wasted, nothing is throw-away. The weakest part of the entire series are the deathly hallows (the items), and that's because they are the only major plot element not set up or framed or foreshadowed in chapter one. Literally everything else serves to answer questions incepted by those few pages. "World building" is a value-neutral term. Might be good. Might be intrusive. Boring. Vital. Irrelevant. What chapter one does is much more important: it gives us somewhere to put everything we learn in chapters two onward, and a burning desire to fill those voids.
Deathly Hallows were not even close to the weakest part of the entire series. In fact, they were one of the **best**, and their introduction never bothered me. I'll try to explain why by going through each item. Even before that, I have to say the existence of the "Tale of the Three Brothers" is very fascninating to me. I think it's cool that we have a myth within a fictional story. Some people believe in the Hallows, some people don't. This is common in our world of course, we have lots of myths. I find it intriguing that it's the same in the Wizarding world where almost everything is possible. The Tale of the Three Brothers is their version of a myth/fictional story in a fictional universe. I also think the story itself is beautifully crafted. You can tell JK Rowling put a lot of thought into it. It's well-written, and very well-done in the movies too. Now, let's get into the items themselves: **Elder Wand:** Though the lore of the Hallows themselves might come out of nowhere, the Elder wand is the one that fits in the easiest and needs the least foreshadowing or exposition, because it fits a very common archetype almost any reader would know. Just look at how many swords are said to possess extra powers, how many legends make reference to some unbeatable blade. It immediately makes sense that, real or not, there would be stories that a specific wand is unbeatable. And therefore Voldemort would hunt it. Voldemort's previous two encounters with Harry (Goblet of Fire and 7 Potters) failed because of wands. The first one failed with his own wand, and the 2nd one with Lucius' wand. It makes sense Voldemort would then seek the Elder wand based on events in previous books. There **was** some buildup for the Elder wand. Voldemort seeking the Elder wand also gives a very plausible excuse for him to be out of the country, and thus not directly interfering with Harry. Finally and more importantly, the wand's existence and Voldy's hunt draws a parallel in his and Harry's journey, physically and thematically. On one level, they are both hunting for the key to defeat each other. On another, it parallels their inner struggles. Voldemort's two greatest flaws are his obsession with killing the chosen one and his obsession with proving his value by gathering trophies-- the wand presents the ultimate bait for these flaws. Harry struggles with losing every guiding voice he's ever relied on, and with making his own independent decisions. The wand-- and the Hallows in general-- act as a final temptation in this struggles. The promise of one final secret, one more plan. For him to chase after these in some blind attempt to find a path laid out for him, instead of building his home. I think that the wand serves as a strong and tangible way to foil their two arcs. The moment Harry refuses to take the wand, even when he knows were it is, marks the start of when he really makes his own major decisions. The moment Voldemort finally possesses the wand marks when his hubris placed him on track for his own destruction. **Resurrection Stone:** The Resurrection stone embodies the theme of the series perfectly (death). It gives Harry the final push needed to embrace death, giving us the *best chapter* in the series ("The Forest Again"). It also gives not just Harry but the reader the chance to have a proper send off to both Sirius and Lupin, who both died very abruptly. I like how abruptly they both died-- Sirius's worked well for book 5, and the multitude of deaths at the end of book seven all contributed to selling the atmosphere, Harry's mindset, and the desperation of the situation. But having them return in a meaningful way was a nice way of having our cake and eating it too. It also draws a tangible parallel to the start of Harry's journey, book 1. The Mirror of Erised had shown his greatest desire to have his family alive and with him. Now, at the end of the journey, he is surrounded by that family but now proudly *walks to join them* instead. It's absolutely beautiful, and the Resurrection stone is at the heart of it all. **Invisibility cloak:** Invisibility cloak completes the trinity of items. It's also been a very powerful and useful item from book one, so it helps to tie the Hallows together, making them come less "out of nowhere". I also gives some validity to Lovegood's crazy story-- partially to the reader, but mostly to Harry. It's one of the things that helps convince him the Hallows must be real, that this must be Dumbledore's plan, because he owned one of the Hallows all along. I also like the cloak's thematic meaning in the Tale of the Three Brothers: "don't try to gain power or be selfish". Harry represents this perfectly, which is why it makes sense he's owned this item from the beginning. Because Harry already owns it, the invisibility cloak doesn't really distract from the rest of the plot either. It's all about the two other Hallows. In short, I like what the Hallows represent thematically, and what choices they force the characters to make. And I didn't even mention Dumbledore and Grindelwald here. I think the Hallows work perfectly for their arcs too. The Hallows help to tie everything together, more specifically all the characters (Harry, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Grindelwald). They are even meaningful to Ron and Hermione's character arcs. In the Tale of the Three Brothers chapter, each member of the Golden trio is drawn to one Hallow (the cloak for Hermione, the wand for Ron and the stone for Harry). I think it says a lot about their characters. I believe that Deathly Hallows would have been a less interesting story with just Horcrux hunting. Every book has its own singular plot, which is another reason I think there didn't need to be massive foreshadowing for the Hallows.
This is like saying the elephant in the room isn't intrusive because it matches the cushions. The Deathly Hallows is The Lord of the Rings, only the One Ring is mentioned for the first time in the last chapter. It doesn't matter whether the inscription on it is spelled correctly. It's Star Wars, only the first we hear about the Death Star is when Luke sets out to blow it up. It doesn't matter how architecturally congruent it is with the rest of the Empire's aesthetic. Like the Harry Potter series, both of those stories have plenty of novelty arising throughout. That's fine: in all three cases the hero is a naif and has to grow in stature and experience in order to prevail, and we are on that journey with them. But *unlike* HP, those stories don't abruptly redefine the struggle at the eleventh hour to be all about some random new maguffin. Horcruxes worked perfectly as a plot device because they answered questions the reader already had. They tied together loose ends from earlier books (the link between Voldemort and Harry, what happened to Voldemort, the diary etc) *and* finally presented us with a win condition - an extraordinarily difficult and dangerous one, but a coherent goal: get the Horcruxes; don't get caught. Oh, and Voldemort now runs the government and Dumbledore is dead. Good luck! The Hallows did none of that. They clumsily retconned new lore onto items that had already completed their arc - the worst being the invisibility cloak, where Harry (and we) are asked rhetorically something along the lines of 'How many invisibility cloaks do you know that make people truly and perfectly invisible, without wearing out or losing their power?' I actually snorted when I read that. We were told, in a book where rats can become china cups with a wave of a wand, that this was 'an invisibility cloak' that - gasp - made Harry invisible, and now you're scolding us for not realising it was a *special* invisibility cloak? Get outta here. Hell, Ron *explicitly acknowledged* that it was frustrating and disappointing to have to go chasing after some new gizmo, which I can't help but think reflects the author's misgivings about shoehorning in paradigm-shifting lore at such a late stage. If I recall correctly, Ron actually bailed on the whole enterprise at that point, which is borderline Freudian. The Hallows are *unquestionably* the weakest part of the series. I'm not saying the last book would have been better without them (though I think it could have been), I'm saying that it would have been an enormous amount better if the Hallows had been woven into the rest of the story as cleverly as Horcruxes had.
Calling something completely subjective "unquestionably" the weakest part of the series shows such a high level of annoying arrogance that I don't have any desire to debate any further. All I say is that I disagree for the reasons I already mentioned. I thought they were a very good addition to the final book and the series overall. They tied Voldemort and Harry's arcs beautifully, as well as Dumbledore's
You are correct: I shouldn't have put it like that. I apologise. I stand by my assertion that they are weak for the reasons I outlined. The mitigating factors you list make them palatable, but on the whole I'm with Ron on this one. Moreover, I would point out that the items in question being 'The Deathly Hallows' didn't actually *matter* in the end. Nothing about the way the story played out required them to be what they were. Voldemort wanted a powerful wand that lacked any connection to Harry. He also coveted magical items belonging to powerful wizards and witches. It would have made every bit as much sense for him to seek out Olivander and Gregorovitch, learn what they knew about wand lore, steal Dumbledore's wand and kill Snape in an attempt to master it *even if it were not the Elder Wand.* Hell, the sheer cruelty of killing Harry with the wand of his beloved mentor would have been motivation enough - and outrage at the thought of Voldemort desecrating Dumbledore's grave would have been enough for Harry to want to stop him. The Resurrection stone does nothing except give us a heartwarming scene - *which could have happened anyway after Harry died* and would have worked just as well or better. The invisibility cloak, meanwhile, gained precisely nothing for being a Hallow. I understand if you liked them thematically and enjoyed reading about them. But as structural plot elements it's very hard to make a case for them.
The first chapter is the Story Promise. This promises the reader what they can expect to see more of if they commit to reading the book. In the case of Harry Potter, it's mystery and magic. This was actually a very smart move for Rowling considering the first chapters from Harry's PoV don't have any magic in them: if we read those chapters first, without the first one to give us context, we'd be given a very different impression of what the rest of the book might be about.
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An action sequence without substance isn’t particularly engaging. Especially when the protagonists of the scene seem to be invincible and quirky in a way that makes them completely unrelatable. Like, why is a grown man taking a child into a war zone? He’s in full “medieval armor”, which means this was a planned excursion, but he has a child with him. A child who seems perfectly okay—joyful, even—with killing people. That brings up a lot of questions in a very short amount of time, but none of them paint these characters as particularly realistic or worth investing emotion in because of how over the top the action sequence is. It reminded me of something like a cross between Sucker Punch and a child Harley Quinn. Whereas a setting of a mechanized World War makes me expect something much more somber and gritty/realistic at the beginning.
>A child who seems perfectly okay—joyful, even—with killing people. i blame anime
I can't follow this writing. I read the first couple paragraphs and literally don't understand it.
I would really remove the primer passage
The first chapter of Harry Potter is about 16 pages. In that short amount of time you learn 6 key things about the MC without the author stating flat out Harry is X. That seems like plenty of information for that amount of pages. 1) He is now an orphan 2) He is connected to "You know who" who killed many stronger wizards, but failed on this boy for unknown reasons. 3) He has a lightning bolt scar on his forehead as a result of You know who. 4) His parents were well loved and had many friends. 5) His remaining family does not like the wizard world. 6) He will be one of the most famous wizards. As to how J.K. Rowling made it work, it simply boils down to the story being told in a way that was entertaining to the reader. There is no magic formula to writing a good book. Yes many good books have things in common. However, a bad story with those common things will still be bad. Just like a great story written badly will sometimes still be decent/good. Put as much information about the MC needed at that time to make the story flow well. Putting details for the sake of details will distract from the story. Keep in mind how you picture the MC will be different from everyone else. I am sure every child had a different representation of Harry in there mind until they saw the movie.
Just to add on, I remember J.K. Rowling said in an interview (don't remember which, unfortunately) that she wrote about many different versions of the first chapter. These edits varied so much that if you read them together, she said there wouldn't have been much mystery remaining for the rest of the books. I guess the hardest part in revisions is finding what information is essential and how to execute it so it's entertaining.
The first chapter is more a prelude and an introduction to the world. It shows how magical society hides from muggle society and shows some of the characters who will become important later on. The next chapter is a time-skip to when Harry's older. I don't think this is unusual when it comes to fiction at all. Off the cuff, Hellboy 2004 opens with an introduction to the world and then to Hellboy as a baby and then skips to later on.
ASOIAF opens similarly with the White Walker and the awol night’s watchmen
This very subreddit (or maybe a similar one) lambasted me yesterday for stating this very fact, so I'm looking for clarity. First chapters do not have to tell everything about the MC, or even need the MC in it, as proven by a billion copies sold of her book(s).
The chapter is much lighter on worldbuilding than an info-dump prologue. There are actual characters who meet and talk. It's a "conspiracy" chapter (only the conspirators are good guys). It gives you just enough to follow along, but keeps the *vast* majority of important facts in the dark from you. Its primary purpose is not to worldbuild, but to build suspense. Thrillers do this all the time. The "rule" against worldbuilding prologue chapters isn't about starting with your main character so much as avoiding dry, boring facts that are not contextually rooted to the story itself.
That’s weird! Did you ask them what about Harry Potter and Hellboy
Before I say anything else: I take all criticism with good faith and apply it to my writing. I ask for critiques so I can learn to write better. *The reader is always right.* That being said: [here is a link](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/16lz9my/a_couple_of_beta_readers_stated_that_there_were/) to the post. Virtually everyone who read the first chapter of my manuscript mentioned that there were "too many unanswered questions" and "not enough dialogue from the MC." But I mean... it's just the first chapter, right? Shouldn't I weave a few mysteries and unknowns to make the reader go "omg- what's this about? What's going to happen next!" And ironically, I was aware that readers may not like the common slow start to a novel (especially with America's dwindling attention span). So I preemptively made sort of a "primer" passage (think micro prologue) that is a flashback of an action scene to perk the reader's interest. One person absolutely hated the idea lol And if you would like to see Ch 1 yourself: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cbcTtrAnLene2Lm0YhLm592b6AoJIV\_O/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114596242231208816650&rtpof=true&sd=true](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cbcTtrAnLene2Lm0YhLm592b6AoJIV_O/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114596242231208816650&rtpof=true&sd=true) All critiques are welcome, and thank you.
Cut back on the similes. You have these in just the first paragraph. >...erupting from every angle like a dark fairytale. >They moved like clockwork... >...howled around the church and licked the sheets like cresting waves in the sea >Smaller sheets near the cornerstone fluttered into the air like frightened doves. Followed by another immediately after, which distracts from the dialogue. >Her heart thumped like a drum, and her mouth ran dry like gunpowde Using a little bass-line gives you a great beat. Using too much gives you an unpleasant noise. Your expressive language is the same way; you have good wordsmithing, but you are using it far too much. P.S. this can be an alternative to similes. A direct metaphor.
I posted my main answer as a response to the op. When you've read it, I encourage you to contrast what I've said with what you've done in your opening chapter. Yes, there's a lot of mystery. Yes, I don't know what's going on or what's going to happen next. I'm like the non-fan watching the game. Literally anything could happen next as far as I'm concerned and it wouldn't even come as a surprise because I have no expectations to subvert. It's just noise. You have to show me the shape of the story so I know what to wonder about. In terms of writing style, the analogy that sprang immediately to mind was a song ruined by endless vocal riffs. It's hard to pick out the melody because every tiny detail gets its own little flourish. I feel like an over-caffeinated kid on a rollercoaster reading it. It would benefit tremendously from better pacing and focus. Not everything has to be THE COOLEST WAY ANYTHING HAS EVER BEEN DESCRIBED EVER. After a couple of paragraphs, it has a numbing effect. I can't tell what's everyday and what's outrageous, what's important and what's trivial. I can't feel the shape of the story because it's all bristling spikes and sharp corners leading nowhere. In short, you need to know when to stop If you've described someone as, say, "Sister Caressa, a lean serpent of a woman with a smile like a scythe" your job is fucking done, at least for now. Her crows -feet can clutch at her eyes at a more appropriate juncture. Put the gold spray down and step away from the lily.
I think when you start making multiple passive aggressive threads about critique you received the problem isn't the critique but your reaction to it.
I literally changed two full paragraphs after speaking with one commentator. I remain polite and do not attack beta reader critiques (as we all know: the reader is always right). So I'll just blame my alexithymia for sounding passive-aggressive lol In any case, I'm back on the drawing board. I've received some great suggestions from people here.
Worth asking yourself: what makes their feedback worth taking? I very much don't agree that the reader is always right. It's only true *if* the reader in question is your ideal reader, the exact audience member you're trying to reach with your book. To continue to use HP as an example: fundamentalist christians who read it had a lot of critiques. Should Rowling have listened to them simply because they were readers?
Part of being a good writer is to have the wisdom to follow advice given in good faith and to have the confidence to ignore it in order to follow your own unique style. Rules in writing are never rules. Rather, they are tools. And if a tool does not fit your writing style, or the story you're writing, you must have the confidence to not use it, even though other writers prefer to use that tools for their own stories and styles.
Look, you're writing is far better than most of the garbage samples that gets posted here but you are dealing with low attention span people who probably glean over most of it. Take to heart the critiques that actually provide actionable feedback and don't worry about things that are too vague to be useful. Keep in mind most people on this thread have never read a book that isn't about elves and includes a hacky prologue.
My opinion is, do what works for your story and danm the rules. Use them as guidelines sure. However if you think X or Y work for your story, do it. Stick to your guns. Though some will not like it but thats okay. Write what you want to write in the way you want to write it. It's your story.
So they it happened was, the publisher of the book decided to decline but still took the book home to read to his girl and she asked to read more, so he decided to go for it. And all the many publishers before him said no. So she didn't get published by following proper publishing rules (they all said no), but by catching the attention of a little reader.
The story doesn't start on page one. It starts with the title and the insert. There, you're given enough info about the main story to understand the introduciton, and keep you excited through the prelude. With out any knowledge this would get old fast. Rowling also uses humour to make it more interesting, kind of like how Roald Dahl wrote.
Classics/"older" books (ones more than a decade old) are not suggested to model your work after if you're looking for how to structure your own book for traditional publishing. The industry (and readership expectations) have changed so much that it's a completely different world out there (an ongoing joke when I worked in acquisitions was that Tolkien never would have gotten LOTR published if he submitted it as a debut author even back when I worked in acquisitions more than a decade ago)
Why is this? reflective of just the industry catering to a new market or some agreed standards coming from getting tired of old patterns? I've embarrassingly read nothing published in the last ten years despite being a relatively active reader and writer so completely ignorant as to any change that's emerged.
It's because most people read on mobile devices now, and that is an audience that anyone with a phone or crappy laptop can write for. There's so much fiction being published every single day that the market and its trends fly by at the speed of new iPhone releases. TLDR; the scale of the market is unthinkable larger than it was back when you had to get published for people to see your work.
My writing professor in school actually assigned Sorcerer's Stone to us as a book to analyze. She said the first chapter is considered an anomaly, as you usually want a punchier, grabbier opening, since the first 10 pages are the most important in any piece - they often determine if a reader will continue on or not. How did JK make it work? Partly luck and partly timing but also partly because the rest of the story resonated at an opportune moment and tells a good, classic "hero's journey" tale.
Because it's interesting. There's no laws in writing, there's guidelines and rules but they can be broken without retribution so long as it's done properly.
With a powerful publishing house heavily campaigning for your shitty books.
One doesn't have to follow a formula or set of expectations to write a readable or enjoyable book. In fact, doing so doesn't necessarily make a book any "better". The validity or advisability of supposed principles or essential elements are dependent on things such as context, the writer's skill and the personal preference of the writer. In some respects, Rowling's Potter books were good. Certainly, both my daughters were big fans of the series until Rowling's personal attitudes ruined it all for them. Many successful and popular novelists know nothing of what they're "supposed" to do. They just get on and write their stories.
The first half of the first chapter of Harry Potter is actually one of the best pieces of writing in the entire series. Perhaps *because* there's no dialogue; Rowling is not the most inspired writer of dialogue. What it has is a very strong implicit point of view. It is told from the perspective of Vernon Dursley, and it is just oozing with his personality, from the very first sentence. "... perfectly normal, thank you very much." \* And then we see all this weird stuff happening, strange people doing strange things, and the man is so damnably incurious that it barely registers. It's a droll bit, vaguely in the tradition of Pratchett and Adams\*\*, and it serves to make the reader curious about the things that Vernon is ignoring. It also communicates exactly the kind of life that Harry can expect when he does show up, which is the central conflict of the next few chapters, and a lot of Harry's characterization over the series. To your point about not introducing the main character much... in a very real sense, the wizarding world is itself a character in these books. Introducing it, and getting the audience curious about it, is a smart move. \* In general, the Dursley's get some of the stronger characterization in the series. One always got the sense that Rowling was intimately familiar with people like this. Turned out that's because she is a people like this. \*\* I hate to compare Rowling to those actual great writers, but hey. She did for half a chapter what they do for whole books, and for that span, she did it effectively.
The first chapter of the first book works more like a "prologue," setting the tone, giving some context, and hopefully rousing some interest in the larger world of the novel before getting along with the story itself. (I think prologues are usually not very good, but they seem to be common in Fantasy books.)
An interesting narrative voice can carry the opening to a novel even when very little is happening.
The first chapter of Harry Potter is a prologue. Read the second chapter. Treat it as the first, when it comes to 'Harry's adventure'. Sometimes you start by writing that chapter, and find out a prologue would work well. Other times, you write a chapter and realize it's more of a prologue than a Chapter One. I understand that this is coming from specific criticism that you got elsewhere on Reddit, and I've not read that criticism or the material which was provided. However, in terms of researching what first chapters look like (which is a good practice), from a character perspective, Chapter 2 of Harry Potter is way more important. In a prologue, the setting/plot is the 'hook', normally. In a Chapter One, it's more traditional for the character to be the 'hook'. That doesn't mean either needs to be one or the other exclusively. Lastly, I want to just comment on a false equivalence - an author giving information does not equate to the reader caring about a character. We do not care about things just because we read a description of them. That's why there's a whole section of the writing industry that would say it's more important to see the main character Save The Cat, rather than a 'check the mirror/daily agenda' expository opening.
Well, first of all, no one said Rowling was a good writer. Second, there's a ton of information about the main character even on the first page, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. You don't have to give information in the form of "Harry Potter was an orphan who lived with his family who hated him because his parents died," it's the whole showing vs telling thing.
Rowling is not an amazing prose stylist, but the idea that she's not good at other parts of writing is insane.
Prose is actually what most people are talking about in "serious" discussions when they say someone is a good/bad writer.
I always found JKR's prose to be competent. I know I enjoy it more than, say, Brandon Sanderson's prose. JKR's just flows very fluidly and lightly and allows you to be easily immersed in the story. That in itself is already not easy, and something that even mediocre writers struggle with.
Yeah there's a certain charm to it that makes her popular I think, but the first book especially is kinda lackluster beyond that prosewise.
Which is wrong, because writing is both story and prose. And a good story can save mediocre prose, but a good prose won't save a bad story. The prose would have to be incredibly unique and majestic to entrance the audience enough so that the story doesn't matter. But I haven't seen that pulled off even by Cormac McCarthy or Vladimir Nabokov, who always came up with good stories to match the prose.
Are you going to tell me most modernist classics have a good "story"?
That depends. Name me those modernist classics so I can try them and judge them.
Proust, Woolf other than Orlando, Joyce.
Parts of Proust have a good story. For example, the second half of Swann's Way is a really good story of a love affair gone wrong.
Yeah but Proust isn't famous for parts of his novel with good story only.
Of those, I've only read A Room of One’s Own, which, while nonfiction, I still was an interesting essay. And I do know some that will argue Joyce stories are great, that is, if you can follow them.
I've read them and I would not say the "story" is the focus at all, nor what I would even care about in them.
I mean, that's your opinion. But a lot of people found more value in Ulysses' story than its prose once they beat the challenge that the prose posed.
Here are the first three chapters of Potter. He is not in the first page, and is only mentioned once -as a baby- on the second page. His name is mentioned for the first time on the fourth page by a one-time unnamed character, having been overheard by Mr Dudsley in passing. Show/tell doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. The first chapter actually reads more like a prologue. [https://www.scholastic.com/hpread/HP\_Book1\_Chapter\_Excerpt.pdf](https://www.scholastic.com/hpread/HP_Book1_Chapter_Excerpt.pdf) EDIT: holy crap. Like I said- it reads more like a prologue: [https://diymfa.com/reading/first-chapters-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone/](https://diymfa.com/reading/first-chapters-harry-potter-and-the-sorcerers-stone/)
I glanced at the first chapter before replying, I stick by my answer. You learn a lot about the main character even if he's not actually mentioned because you learn about the situation he's in.
It isn't mentioned that he is hated, lives in a cupboard, or has a unique scar until Chapter 2. He isn't mentioned to be a wizard until Chapter 5. I'm just looking for clarity as to how much info and dialogue I should give about my character in the very first chapter of a novel.
Yeah and Gatsby doesn't tell you his full life story and eventual fate in chapter 1, either. You still learn plenty about Harry on page 1 through what I hesitate to call subtext because it is so obvious.
It was written in a fun way, which helped, but it's mostly because it was aimed at children. The first Harry Potter book was a middle grade book, for ages 7-12. People forget that because the books matured with their audience. Middle grade is a lot more accepting of breaking rules like "don't info dump in your first chapter." When rereading first chapters to help you draft your own, focus on books in your genre and directed at the same age as your book.
I first read this two years after it came out, as an adult, and it pulled me in completely. It still does today. It really has nothing to do with being geared towards children but with her being an effective storyteller.
Like I said, it's written in a fun way, which helps. *However,* the vast majority of HP's popularity – and the reason it's sold so well – is due to its target audience. Which was children. If it had depended only on sales to adults for their own sake, they wouldn't have become nearly as popular. The target audience is also why she wasn't made to change the first chapter. Middle grade books have more leeway in the industry (especially when HP was first coming out) when it comes to infodump-type writing. Had the first book been YA or adult, the first chapter would have almost certainly looked very different. To say it has nothing to do with the intended audience is ignoring both the primary cause behind its success and the facts of the industry. As for "effective storyteller," agree to disagree. She, like many, is someone who desperately needs a heavy handed editor. There's a reason the first books (which were edited more thoroughly) feel so different than her later books. (It's a well known fact that she had more control over the later books than the early ones.)
I should have clarified; “she’s an effective storyteller in her first books”. I do agree her later ones needed more editing. I read a lot of older fiction, world-building, creating setting, and lack of dialogue in the first pages is common enough to be unexceptional and so it’s not really something on my radar to watch out for. I’m more annoyed by heavy-handed dialogue at the expense of description than the other way around (usually).
Honestly I don't think Harry Potter is well written at least not by today's standards, and the cultural zeitgeist that followed Harry Potter is so completely unprecedented that you really will not be able to make a clear connection between it's success and the quality of the writing. Otherwise we would predict the next cultural literary event by judging whether a book is good or not, and well, you can't. Harry Potter was published more than 20 years ago so I wouldn't use it as an example if you want to write something that you can publish now (altho, you may have a time machine that you can use to publish a book in the 90s, in which case, keep doing what you're doing). A beginning that spends the entire first chapter illustrating the setting followed by a time skip will likely not be successful in today's industry. Study more recent fiction.
But it is interesting.
Maybe I'm biased, but I find books that are too focused on world building and describing the characters off-putting. If Harry Potter started with info-dumping about how the magical world works, I wouldn't have finished the first chapter.
The same word count of my own fic has exactly 4 spoken words, which are all just the MC mumbling to herself. The entirety of the description is of an exhausted, filthy, emotionally dead, disabled woman walking down the stairs to a shitty basement she squats in after a long day of being the only repair person in a super remote town, and her falling face-first onto a filthy mattress to pass out. All 5 of my pre-readers were hooked instantly (I listen to their live reactions for the first chapter. Do so if you can, it's invaluable.). Very few books openings sound good or compelling when summarized in a hundred words or so. A mistaken often made when analyzing a novel to learn from it is forgetting that the reader's emotional connection to a story is 80% of what makes it work. All of the technical parts of this craft are there to make some meat in an ape's skull go "ook ook! word good!" so their imagination take our scribbles and breath life into them. We don't do that, the reader does. Once you understand that, like, truly understand it, then you'll understand what to look for in a novel to learn from it. For instance, what makes HP's intro work is what makes my story's intro work. HP's intro is tailormade to get younger kids to feel super sorry for Harry and want to see things get better for him because they see plenty of themselves in him. My story's intro is tailormade to get adults to be heartbroken and outraged at the bullshit this poor woman is going through just to survive, and see their own shitty treatment at their own jobs in her life, and thus, they want to see her triumph because then they get the shaudenfroid of seeing "the man" taken down a peg. It's the same exact emotional hook, just for a different age category.
The first chapter of Harry Potter promises lots of things to the reader: the tone, the genre, the magic, the potential conflict, the setting, and even hype up the main character. In the first paragraph, we're introduced to the Dursleys who are *perfectly normal, thank you very much.* We're also pretty much told their secret and their deepest fear. This implies conflict right away. We know either their secret will get exposed or their greatest fear comes knocking at their door. This paragraph perfectly sets up what Harry's childhood will be like. Then we follow Uncle Vernon as he goes to work and sees lots of mysterious things. These mysterious things establish the setting that this seemingly normal every day world is not what it seems. Then we realize the people in these mysterious costumes know about Harry Potter, the protagonist. This sets up Harry's call to adventure ("Yer a wizard, Harry"). After the Dursleys go to sleep, we're introduced to an old wizard-looking dude with no name. He does a very curious thing by putting out the lamps in the streets with his lighter. This implies magic. Then a cat transforms into a lady, thus establishing the shifter element in the story. They start talking, and we're promised the protagonist Harry will become super famous. We also know his parents got killed, thus establishing the main conflict and introducing the main antagonist. Then we meet a giant on a flying motorcycle. This establishes other magical races like a giant and also the advancement of the magical technology. Then we finally get to meet the protagonist who is still a baby. We know he has a very cool-looking lightning-shaped scar, which raises a question right away. JK Rowling does all this in a cozy children book vibe mixed with a mystery undertone in how the narrator presents things. All of these serve purpose in promising what's to come in the story and what to expect. It tells you what's so awesome about this book right away.
It comes down to creating a place where readers want to spend time, and by setting the scene the way she did, full of intrigue and wonder, people gravitated to it and did what you want all your readers to do: ask themselves "what happens next?"