First chapters are hard. They're ones I always spend the most time worrying at. You're trying to do everything at once: establish character, set up the world, hook the reader, introduce the conflict, set the tone. No wonder so many go wrong.
Here are the mistakes I see most often — and have made myself.
Starting with weather
"It was a dark and stormy night" is a cliché for a reason. Starting with weather is almost always a sign that you don't know where to start. Weather is scene-setting, not story.
Your reader doesn't care what the weather is until they care about the character experiencing it. Start with a person doing something. The weather can come later.
Starting with a dream
Dreams are cheating. They let you write exciting, dramatic content that turns out to mean nothing. When readers discover the opening was a dream, they feel betrayed — everything they just invested in was fake.
There are exceptions (stories where dreams are genuinely meaningful to the plot), but for most manuscripts, the dream opening is a sign that the real story hasn't started yet.
Starting too early
Many first chapters are actually backstory. The writer starts at the "beginning" of events rather than the beginning of the story.
The story begins when something changes. When the status quo is disrupted. When the protagonist is forced to act. Everything before that is setup — and setup belongs later, woven into the narrative, not dumped at the front.
If your first chapter is your character's ordinary life before anything happens, you've started too early. Skip ahead. Open with the change.
There's always a little bit of me that thinks the first Harry Potter could have started at chapter 2. It ruins the surprise that he's a wizard. And I'm still not convinced it took a whole day for Hagrid to get Harry out of the cottage in Godric's Hollow, but I digress...
The info-dump introduction
"The Kingdom of Arvendel had stood for three thousand years, ever since the First King united the Seven Clans under the Banner of the Azure Sun..."
Readers don't need to know this. Not yet. Probably not ever in this form.
World information is only interesting when it's relevant to something the reader already cares about. First, make them care — about a character, a situation, a question. Then drip the world details in as needed.
Introducing too many characters
Chapter one introduces Sarah, her sister Jenny, their mother, Sarah's best friend Kira, Kira's boyfriend Marcus, Sarah's boss Derek, the mysterious stranger in the coffee shop, and a taxi driver who seems significant.
The reader's brain cannot hold all of this. They don't know who matters yet. They can't tell the difference between a protagonist and a walk-on.
Introduce characters when they become relevant to the story, not all at once. In chapter one, focus on your protagonist. Let other characters emerge as the narrative needs them.
Starting with action you haven't earned
The opposite problem from starting too early: opening with a battle, a chase, a crisis — before readers have any reason to care who wins.
Action without emotional stakes is just noise. We need to know whose life is in danger and why that matters before the danger becomes engaging.
A brief moment of characterisation — even a few paragraphs — can transform a confusing action opening into a gripping one. Give us a person to root for, then put them in peril.
Media in res beginnings - starting later with an exciting bit and then going, '6 months earlier...' - falls into this category too.
Telling readers what the story is about
'Little did Sarah know that this would be the day that changed everything.'
'She had no idea what fate had in store for her.'
'If only she had known then what she knows now...'
These are crutches. They're the writer telling the reader 'something important is coming' because they don't trust the story to show it.
Trust your story. If something important is happening, readers will feel it. You don't need to announce it.