A dramatic opening to a story is important to hooking a reader’s interest:
It was the day my grandmother exploded. (The Crow Road, Iain Banks.)
Yet maintaining a reader’s interest throughout a story is just as important, and as breaks from reading usually occur at chapter endings, it is wise to ensure the next chapter’s opening serves to reignite a reader’s interest. This can be easier said than done, given the story is in motion and must work within the narrative’s limits. It may not be possible to open the chapter on a dramatic or intriguing line, as there may be narratively important but less interesting details that a reader needs to know first (such as scene setting). Skipping over these details in pursuit of arriving at a great line will likely create a jarring reading experience. A better alternative is to briefly tell the reader what has taken place between the last chapter and the current scene. Generally, showing is better than telling, but here telling is being used in an effective way known as ‘narrative signposting.’
At the beginning of chapter 5 in Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, we get this narrative signpost:
Jack Crawford, fifty-three, reads in a wing chair by a low lamp in the bedroom of his home. He faces two double beds, both raised on blocks to hospital height. One is his own; in the other lies his wife, Bella. Crawford can hear her breathing through her mouth. It has been two days since she last could stir or speak to him.
Quickly followed by this line, which serves to grab our attention:
She misses a breath.
The initial narrative signpost allows Harris to quickly get the reader up to speed without taking too long (as would be the case with showing the set-up scene). The second line then moves the story into being shown at a more dramatic and interesting moment.
Of course, there will often be times when nothing dramatic is occurring or will occur. In these instances, exploiting a foreboding atmosphere can work well to engage a reader’s interest.
For the next two weeks they would ride by night, they would make no fire. They had struck the shoes from their horses and filled the nailholes in with clay and those who still had tobacco used their pouches to spit in and they slept in caves and on bare stone. They rode their horses through the tracks of their dismounting and they buried their stool like cats and they barely spoke at all. Crossing those barren gravel reefs in the night they seemed remote and without substance. Like a patrol condemned to ride out some ancient curse. A thing surmised from the blackness by the creak of leather and the chink of metal. (Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy)
In this quoted chapter opening, the protagonists are simply journeying onward, but their need for stealth implies danger, phrases such as ‘barren gravel reefs’ describe a harsh and unforgiving environment, whilst similes like ‘a patrol condemned to ride out some ancient curse’, while rather abstract, evoke a foreboding atmosphere. The effect on the reader is a desire to read on.
So when writing chapter openings, an author should ask themselves: does this opening hook a reader into wanting to know more? If not, then use narrative signposting to quickly arrive at a more interesting scene, or utilise an evocative atmosphere to maintain the reader’s interest.