Keep the Pressure On

The device of using exciting action in a prologue is well-known by thriller writers. A murder, or similar dramatic event, lures a book browser into the novel and hopefully hooks him by the chapter’s end. One vital objective for the writer is accomplished: the reader turns the page to the next chapter. 

Less understood is the need to keep that thrum of excitement going in the next few chapters. You see, the reader also knows the drill. Oh, so the prologue was good. Let’s see if I like the rest of the book. This is where an inexperienced writer often falls short. Chapter 1 maunders on about the sage advice Miriam’s aunt gave her at the impressionable age of eight, or how skilled Tom is in dominating office repartee. After the exciting initial jolt, the reader’s attention starts to wander—to the other fiction titles on the bookshelf. Yes, you do get an emotional lift from an exciting prologue, but your job of reeling the reader in is not over. You need to make the reader turn the page to Chapter 2 and probably Chapter 3. Each time a reader sees a blank space at the end of a page, it represents an opportunity for them to give up on the book.

There is another consideration for those writers who will submit the manuscript to a literary agent and/or editor at a publishing house. They commonly request that a 25- to 50-page sample accompany the submission. So that’s usually all of the novel they read before making the decision to reject it. You need not only an exciting first chapter. You need 50 exciting pages.

While the beginning third of a book does need to establish your characters, you don’t have to front-load background material the first time a major character appears. In the first chapters, don’t be organic—i.e., focused on character building. Be strategic. You have 100 or so pages to build as much character as you like. 

First make the reader interested in what a character does. Then, once we’re interested, we’ll want to know more about why a character does those things. Once you reach page 50, drop in that nice back story about the aunt. By that time we’re pretty sure we want Miriam to pull us through all the background in the book. 

Exercise: Keep varying your approach. After a paragraph of description about your protagonist, have him do something interesting. While he’s pushing the plot forward, sprinkle in other background details. After the plot action is finished—and the reader is catching her breath—drop in more background. You can get a lot of character work done along the way to the next plot advance.

“Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don't write them down.” —W. B. Kinsella

Copyright @ 2026, John Paine