on Fiction University:

If readers get lost in your first scene, they’ll never get to the second.

The opening scene of my novel, The Shifter, features a girl getting caught stealing eggs out from under a sleeping chicken. It’s a fun scene, I enjoyed writing it, and most of all—it helped sell the novel.

Somewhere along the lines, my critique partners and I started referring to strong opening scenes as “chicken scenes.”

As in:

“I’m still working on my chicken scene.”

“I thought of the perfect chicken scene yesterday.”

“I can’t get this book written until I find my chicken scene.”

It’s weird how these things develop, but it’s been useful shorthand to describe the goal of an opening scene. It works because it does what a good opening scene needs to do.

Get readers on board with the story in a positive way.

Here’s how to ground your readers in your opening scene and make them want to keep reading.

Oh, and you don’t have to follow these in this order, I just like the way this flows from a scene-building standpoint. Mix it up as needed: