Kristin Wolden Nitz

First chapters and last chapters are often among the hardest ones for any novelist.  You have to first pull the reader smoothly into your world with the first and ease them out in a satisfying way in the last.  It’s necessary to put in just enough information so that the readers know exactly what’s going on, but not so much that it weighs down the story.  Plus readers have a well-tuned sensor for when the author is providing important information for their benefit rather than following the flow of the story.   That’s why I do my best to make explanations seem like the very thoughts of my main character.   Did I achieve this in my revision to Chapter 1 of my YA mystery.  Well, maybe not all of it.  But that’s what critique groups are for.  They let me know what’s really on page.