Your first three chapters may be the place to look if your book isn’t working.
You’ve torn apart the middle. Maybe you’ve tried four or five different endings, and you’re not sure where the problem is. In my years of working with writers, I’ve discovered that often the problem is in one place they aren’t thinking to look.
So, if you’re struggling with your book right now, this may be just the key you need to turn it around.
Imagine you’re driving somewhere you’ve never been before. You’re using the GPS. A couple hours into the trip, you realize you’re going the wrong way, so you adjust. You try a different road and then another, and then you take a detour, and then you backtrack.
You’re doing everything right, but somehow you still can’t get where you’re trying to go.
Finally, you pull over to figure out what happened, and you discover something really weird. The GPS had the wrong starting location. Instead of starting you off where you actually were when you began, it used a different starting location and ended up sending you to a completely different place.
Your First Three Chapters May Be Where the Problem Started
I’ve found that stories can work in a similar way.
Maybe you’re convinced that the ending is the problem, or your middle feels boring and you’re not sure how to fix it. And these are real problems. They happen in many books.
But after years of working with writers, I’ve noticed something. The place where a novel shows its problems often isn’t where those problems actually started.
One of the first places I look is the opening three chapters.
Not every problem starts there, of course, but a lot of them do because the opening is where you teach the reader and yourself what story you’re trying to tell. If it’s off, you could be fighting yourself and your story the whole rest of the book.
I’m going to give you four ways to test your opening so you can find out if it’s sending the story in the right or the wrong direction.
And if you’d like to work through those tests as you read, I’ve put together a free worksheet you can download.
Your First Three Chapters Tell Us What Kind of Trip We’re On
Let’s go back to that road trip for a minute because your opening does something very similar. It hands both you and your reader a map for the journey you’re about to take.
And that map tells us some very important things.
Number one, what kind of trip are we on?
And I don’t mean whether you’re writing a romance or a mystery or a fantasy. This isn’t about genre necessarily. I mean, what story does your opening teach us that we’re about to follow?
Imagine you start writing a novel about a woman who desperately wants to win back the man she loves. So, that’s how you build the opening. The early chapters focus on him. She thinks about what went wrong between them, and she makes plans to get him back.
Everything tells the reader this is the journey. We’re going to find out whether she can repair this relationship or not.
Your First Three Chapters May Point Toward the Story You Planned
But then something interesting happens as you write.
The scenes that start coming alive for you aren’t about the romance. Let’s say your character takes a temporary job in another town while she’s trying to get her life back together, and she becomes involved in saving a struggling local business. She starts making decisions without asking what her ex would think. She develops friendships and begins building a life that wasn’t part of your original plan.
Little by little, the story starts becoming less about whether she can get her old life back with this guy and more about whether she actually wants that life anymore.
But you’re not seeing that yet.
In your head, you’re still writing this romance you thought you were writing when you launched this book on page one. So, you keep pulling the story back toward the ex. You add scenes to strengthen their relationship or bring them back together.
Or you might worry that all this other material is distracting from the “real story.” Maybe you even cut some of the scenes out that were giving the book energy.
And now you’re fighting the story.
Leave Room for the Story That Emerges
Your opening map says this trip is about getting the boyfriend back. But the story you’re actually writing has started to ask, “What if going back is the wrong destination?”
That doesn’t mean the romance has to disappear. It still may matter a great deal to your main character, and she may still spend part of the book, at least, believing that getting him back is what she wants.
But once you understand the larger journey, that this is more about her becoming more herself, then you can go back to the beginning and make sure the opening leaves room for the story that actually emerges.
Maybe in the beginning we can see a little more clearly that the life she had with him wasn’t really as great as she was trying to make it sound. Or maybe there are small signs that she has been shaping her choices around what he wanted when she wasn’t really all that happy about that.
You don’t have to give away where she’s going to end up. You just want the beginning to contain the seeds of the journey she’s actually going to take.
That way, the opening of the story and the rest of the story travel on the same map instead of being two different stories.
Here’s the test for your book: If someone read only your first three chapters, what story would they believe they were about to follow?
Then look at the book you’re actually writing. Is that still the same trip? Or somewhere along the way, did your story reveal that it had taken a different road while your beginning stayed behind?
Your First Three Chapters Tell Us What We’re Emotionally Packing For
The second thing the beginning tells us is what we’re emotionally packing for.
In other words, what is this story teaching us to care about?
Readers don’t keep turning pages just because they understand what your character wants. We keep reading because we understand why getting it matters so much to them.
That emotional reason is what I call the character’s heart hook. I have another video where I go much deeper into this and what it is, so I’ll link to that here if you haven’t seen it: [WATCH THE HEART HOOK VIDEO].
For now, think of the heart hook as the emotional need or want or wound underneath the character’s choices. It’s the thing that makes us feel the stakes for this character instead of simply understanding them on the surface.
Let’s go back to our woman who thinks that she wants her boyfriend back.
Suppose your opening shows us the breakup, shows us how miserable she is afterward, and makes it very clear that she wants to repair this relationship.
Your First Three Chapters May Be Teaching Us to Care About the Wrong Thing
We understand that goal, but if that’s all you give us, we may assume that what we’re emotionally supposed to care about is simply: Will these two people get back together?
Then the story starts taking that different road we just talked about. She goes to this other town, she builds friendships, she finds work that matters to her, and then she begins making decisions for herself.
Suddenly, the emotional center of the book is much bigger than whether this particular man comes back.
Maybe what she’s really wrestling with here is the belief that being chosen by someone else is what makes her life valuable.
You don’t have to know all of that when you write Chapter 1. A lot of us discover it by actually writing the book. But once you do discover it, eventually you want to go back and look at your beginning.
Are there seeds of that deeper emotional story there?
Your First Three Chapters Can Plant the Seeds of the Deeper Story
Maybe after the breakup, what hurts her most isn’t simply that she lost him, but we notice how quickly she interprets his leaving as proof that there’s something wrong with her.
She probably has a habit of letting other people decide what she should want.
Then she takes this temporary job at the small hotel, let’s say. At first, it’s just a place to earn some money while she figures out how to get her old life back.
But little by little, things change.
Maybe the owner starts trusting her, or a regular guest asks for her because she always treats this guest with respect. Or a coworker depends on her, and she starts making decisions on her own and discovering that she’s actually good at things she never gave herself credit for.
If you’re writing scenes that are taking you in this other direction, then you have to pay attention to that.
Because if you set the beginning up right, when she begins building this new life, the reader doesn’t feel as though the book suddenly changed routes on this trip. Instead, we realize, “Oh, this is what we’ve actually been watching her struggle with all along.”
So, here’s your second test.
Look at your first three chapters and ask, “What are you teaching the reader to care about emotionally?”
Then look at the strongest emotional moments in the rest of your novel. Are they paying off that same emotional investment that you taught us to care about in the beginning?
Or did your story uncover something more important along the way that your beginning never taught us to care about?
If so, that’s what you want to fix.
Your First Three Chapters Tell Us What Kind of Trouble We’re Headed Into
The third thing your beginning tells us is what kind of trouble we’re headed into.
Trouble.
Every story makes us suspect certain kinds of problems.
So, if you’re reading a romance, for example, you’re going to expect trouble in the relationship. If you’re reading a mystery, you’re going to expect a crime and secrets and suspects and danger. And if you’re reading science fiction, you may expect trouble from technology or another world or aliens or something humanity doesn’t fully understand yet.
Your opening starts teaching the reader: This is the kind of trouble we’re going to be dealing with.
But this isn’t just about genre. It’s about the kind of trouble that’s going to create pressure on your main character.
And pressure is critical to a story if you want readers to have a hard time putting your book down.
Your First Three Chapters May Set Up the Wrong Kind of Pressure
Let’s go back to our main character who wants her boyfriend back.
Maybe when you first start writing, you think the main trouble is relationship-based. So, let’s say in this case it’s another woman. Our character’s ex has started seeing someone else.
You build the opening around that. Their breakup, he’s with somebody else now, your character compares herself to this woman, and she worries that she’s been replaced. Maybe she even starts thinking about how she can compete with her.
The reader thinks, “Okay, I get the trouble. It’s about the relationship, and she wants him back, and this other woman is standing in the way.”
But then, as you keep writing, something else starts happening.
Maybe the scenes with the other woman don’t have much energy, or you’re not really caring about them, but the scenes at the motel do.
Maybe your character is suddenly given more responsibility than she thinks she can handle, or a coworker challenges her to stop asking everybody else what she should do and just take charge.
Your First Three Chapters Should Prepare Us for the Trouble That Matters
Then, just when she’s beginning to feel settled, maybe her ex calls and wants her back.
Now she has a real choice to make.
Does she keep arranging her life around the person she used to be and the future she thought she wanted? Or does she start making decisions based on the person she’s becoming?
Those situations may look completely different on the surface, but they’re all creating the same kind of trouble. They’re putting pressure on her independence. They’re making it harder for her to keep living according to everyone else’s expectations.
And suddenly, that’s where the story has energy.
You can feel it when you’re working on it.
But if you still believe you’re writing the romance you planned at the beginning, you may completely misread what’s happening.
You might think, “Well, I’ve got to put more relationship trouble in here.” So, you bring the other woman back, or you add another jealousy scene, or you manufacture some misunderstanding between the couple because you’re trying to create more pressure in the story you thought you were writing.
Your First Three Chapters Can Help You Recognize Where the Energy Is
When those additions don’t work because that’s not the journey your main character is on, that is your clue.
Your main character took another road.
So, the old kind of trouble doesn’t work anymore. There’s no energy in it.
Meanwhile, the scenes that are naturally creating the right kind of pressure are already sitting right there in your book. You just have to recognize them and realize what’s actually happening.
Then all you have to do is adjust your beginning because the beginning should contain some early evidence of the kind of pressure that will actually matter later.
Here’s your third test.
Look at your first three chapters and ask, “What kind of trouble are you teaching the reader to expect?”
Then look at the scenes later in your book that carry the most pressure, that are the hardest for your main character. What are those scenes actually forcing your character to deal with?
Is that the same kind of trouble your beginning prepared us for?
Or are you still creating conflict for the story you thought you were writing while the real story is putting pressure somewhere else?
Your First Three Chapters Tell Us What Question the Story Must Answer
The fourth thing your beginning tells us is what question this story ultimately must answer.
Every story raises a main question that we expect to be resolved by the end. A mystery might ask, “Who committed the murder?” A romance might ask, “Will these two people end up together?”
And the beginning of your book starts teaching the reader what that question is going to be.
Let’s go back to our woman who wants her boyfriend back.
If those first three chapters are built entirely around the breakup, the other woman, and her attempts to repair the relationship, the reader is probably waiting for an answer to this question:
Will she get him back?
That’s what your beginning has taught us to wait for.
But now look at what actually emerged in the story.
She’s working at this hotel. She’s becoming more independent. She’s building relationships and discovering that she may want a completely different life.
And when her ex finally says he wants her back, the question that matters most isn’t “Will she get him back?”
She already can.
Your First Three Chapters Need to Raise the Question Your Ending Answers
Now we’re waiting to find out: Will she go back to being small so she can fit into the life she thought she wanted, or choose this new life she’s beginning to build for herself?
Will she say yes to independence?
That’s a very different question.
And if you don’t recognize that your story has changed, you may keep trying to answer the old question all the way through the ending.
This is one reason an ending can feel wrong, even when there’s nothing obviously wrong with the ending itself.
The book answers a question. It’s just answering the wrong one.
Once you understand what your story has actually become, go back to those first three chapters and make sure they begin raising the question the rest of the book is going to explore.
The seeds of that question need to be there.
So, here’s your fourth test.
Go back to your first three chapters and finish this sentence:
By the end of this book, I expect to find out whether __________.
Then look at the story you actually wrote.
Is that the question your book ultimately answers? Or did a more important question emerge along the way while your beginning is still asking us to wait for the old one?
Your First Three Chapters Should Point Toward the Story You’re Actually Writing
So, your mission of the week, if you choose to accept it, is to go back to the first three chapters of your book and choose one of the four things we talked about today.
Ask yourself what kind of trip we’re on. What are we emotionally packing for? What kind of trouble are we headed into? And what question must this story eventually answer?
Pick the one that maybe made you squirm a little when we talked about it, and then compare what your beginning is setting up with the story you’re actually writing now.
Are they still on the same road?
If they are, great.
But if the story has taken a different path while your beginning stayed behind, do yourself a favor. Don’t fight the story that emerged.
Sometimes we start writing with the idea of what a book is. And then somewhere along the way, the story reveals that it wants to be something deeper or just different.
And that’s not a problem. A lot of writing is discovery.
The problem comes up when we keep trying to force the story back onto the road we planned just because that was the road we started on.
Let Your First Three Chapters Follow Where the Story Has Gone
Pay attention to where the energy is.
Where are the scenes that feel alive? Where are the ones you really like rereading?
Trust that the story is showing you what it wants to be.
Then, once you understand the story you’re actually writing, go back to the opening chapters and ask, “What needs to change here?”
The beginning should point toward the story that’s emerging.
* * *
Do you know what happens next in your story?
Before you brainstorm 20 random scenes, you might need to see where your story’s actually taken you.
That’s why I created Map to Storyland. It’s a playful visual mapping system that helps you find the path through your story when things get confusing or boring
If you’re tired of guessing what happens next, use Map to Storyland to find your way back into the story.
If you want help actually working through the hard parts of your book, come join us in Writer’s Brain Studio. We dig into story structure, what happens next, and the places where your story may be getting stuck. In our live group classes, you can bring your own book in and get personal help with what you’re working on. You don’t have to do this alone—join us today!
Featured image by Magnific.