Examine each of your memoir’s chapter openings—the first sentence and the first few paragraphs. Ask yourself:
- Will each opening intrigue readers?
- Charm them?
- Tickle their fancy?
- Does it hold their interest so they’ll keep reading?
You
want your readers to respond positively to your memoir’s chapter openings because
that will keep them reading.
You
can make your chapter beginnings captivating in several ways.
You
can start a chapter with an emotional experience, allowing readers to get
inside your skin, your heart, your mind. It can include conflict. For example, here’s
the beginning of Chapter 1 from my most recent memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir:
My husband, Dave, burst through the front door of our Seattle home and, with a boyish grin and outstretched arms, announced, “We’re moving to Lomalinda! I’m going to teach there!”
A few seconds passed before I could wheeze in enough air to speak. “Where is Lomalinda?”
“Colombia, South America!”
I collapsed to the floor.
I’d always expected we’d live a normal, predictable, all-American life but, without warning, my husband declared he had other ideas. . . .
Or
you can start a chapter with intrigue, suspense. Here’s another example from my memoir:
In those days, all flights to Colombia left from Miami so, on July 19, 1976, our little family set out driving from Seattle, stopping in Dallas for pre-field orientation. Between Dallas and Miami, the Wycliffe office contacted us: The Bogotá guest house had been bombed.
Bombed? Who would blow up a mission agency? And why?
Consider
starting a chapter with action:
Before dawn on Tuesday, August 17, 1976, the alarm clock jarred us into consciousness. Shivering, we pulled on layers of clothes and stuffed barf bags into pockets. Downstairs in the office, we and the Rushes assembled baggage, seventeen pieces.
A van-like taxicab hummed outside the open office door, its red taillights aglow. We piled in and set out. Soon hints of daylight peeked through a haze. Bogotá’s streets already bustled with cars, pedestrians, donkey carts, and buses belching noxious fumes. Our taxi driver zigged and zagged around snarled traffic. We clung to door handles and bumped against each other.
The driver brought us to a halt on a block lined with one-story buildings, soot-covered, grim. Decaying fruit and vegetables littered street and sidewalk, along with shreds of yellowed newspapers, bloody spittle, cigarette butts, and more. I forced my eyes to focus instead on our cabby, who darted through a filthy door.
A pack of men spied us. They wore woolen garments, torn and frayed. Hair tangled, matted. Teeth missing. Faces and hands smudged with the gray that clung to doors and walls and air. One of them sauntered toward our taxi, stooped, and peered at us, his nose nearly touching the window. He snarled what was, I guessed, an obscenity, tottered sideways, turned, and shuffled away. (Please, God, Don't Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir)
Another way to start a chapter is by describing a scene so readers feel they're with you in your story:
November turned to December. Back home, Seattle would be a place of swollen clouds and rain, and frost once in a while. People would be wearing rain boots and raincoats and stocking caps and gloves. Family and friends would have recently gathered for Thanksgiving, a squally season when tempests stirred up wild seas and sent ferry boats bobbing and careening, when windstorms downed trees throughout the Puget Sound region, caused widespread power outages, left half-baked turkeys and pumpkin pies in cold ovens, and drew people together around fireplaces in homes perfumed by wood smoke.
But Lomalinda was into the dry season with clean cerulean skies and hardly a wisp of a cloud. Daytime temperatures rose to over a hundred degrees in the shade—cruel, withering. The green scent of rainy season had given way to the spicy fragrance of sun-dried grasses. Immense stretches of emerald disappeared, leaving grasslands stiff and simmering under unrelenting sun.
Muddy paths and single-lane tracks turned rock-hard and, with use, changed to dust. Yards and airstrips and open fields turned to dust, too. From sunrise to sundown, a strong wind blew across the llanos, a gift from God because it offered a little relief from the heat. On the other hand, we had to use rocks and paperweights and other heavy objects to keep papers from blowing away. Dust blew through slatted windows and into homes and offices and settled on our counters and furniture and in cracks and crannies and on our necks and in our armpits and up our noses. (Please, God, Don't Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir)
Matilda Butler offers the following tips:
Another way "Make
a list that includes just the first sentence of each of your chapters. . . .
Critique each of these using these considerations:
- Does the opening sentence place the reader immediately into the scene? This is not a time for a warm-up set of words.
- Does the opening sentence of each chapter move the story forward? (Even a chapter of backstory moves the story forward by providing necessary history for the characters.)
- Does the opening sentence foreshadow what is to come in a way that intrigues the reader?
How
well-written is each first sentence? Once you are satisfied with your openings,
add the rest of each paragraph to your list.
- Look at how the remainder of each paragraph is used to enrich its first sentence.
- Is your wording clear? Does it bring the reader along or alienate the reader or, even worse, bore the reader?” (Memoir Writing Prompt: A Running Start with Each Chapter)
If
you struggle with how to begin your chapters, consider the following excellent
advice:
“If
you still feel stuck at every new chapter,
don’t
think about chapters at all.
Write
continuously until you finish the first draft,
then
you can go back
and
divide what you’ve written into chapters
(and
make changes as needed).
Remember:
good books are not written,
they
are rewritten.”
(“How to Start a Chapter,” Clippings.me Editorial Team)
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