You should know by now all the things you need to do in order to hook an agent into reading beyond the first five pages.  If you don’t, I’d highly recommend doing some more research.  The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman would be a good start and I haven’t even read it yet.  But sometimes it just might be easier to describe what an agent doesn’t want to see in the first chapter.  Why?  Because what they want to see can be limitless but the list of things that make them cringe is substantially shorter, albeit still rather lengthy.

Writer’s Digest snagged quotes from reputable literary agents (including Kristin Nelson and the agents at the Larson-Pomada Literary Agency) to divulge what makes them twitch and what they really could live without in the first chapter of any book.  Because, really, if the first chapter irks them, they’re probably not going to be inclined to read any more.  Of course, I’m going to tell you what I think on what they think.  You want to read what they think?  Just click the link.  It’s a short article.  I swear.

Prologues

Really, I never understood the purpose of these.  Or epilogues.  if it’s important, shouldn’t it be included somewhere in the story?  If it’s being used as nothing more than an info-dump in order to prepare the reader for the story ahead, aren’t you underestimating your readers just a little bit?  I was always a fan of beginning the story at the beginning, wherever that may be.

I know prologues can come in all sorts of styles, from the tease to the dump to the irrelevant information until you get to page 392 but regardless of what they are, I just don’t get their purpose and why authors would choose to have them.  Take the prologues in the Twilight series books.  They’re nothing more than a snippet tease of what comes later in the book.  Why?  Is it to make sure the reader turns to page one or reads until that little bit makes sense?  I just don’t understand.  Just give me the story, ok?

Description

Don’t get me wrong, I like description but lets keep it down to what’s necessary.  And only once, please.  Keep the grocery lists for the store and keep repetition to a minimum.  Once is enough.  I’ll give you twice but three strikes and you’re out.  No need to beat the reader over the head with how a character looks.  I’m nearing the end of a book now where I swear the author missed the chapter (along with many others) on description.  Apparently everyone’s good looking and, even in the mtos dire of circumstances, the MC recounts details of what a person looks like and what they’re wearing, regardless of its relevance to the story.

Agent Kristin’s comment about the strange man brings up another good point that I came across in that same story.  Aside from the fact that I didn’t know I had picked up a romance book, I came across a similar scene in it.  The MC brings a cat home only to find once she removes its collar is turns into a man that’s the epitome of bodily perfection and he’s lying naked and unconscious on her floor.  i know I would think ‘OMG intruder!  Kill it!’ but she’s thinking ‘Nice ass, should I touch it?’  WTF?  Really?  Realism is always a plus, you know.

Voice and Point of View

Choose a point of view that your readers will want to relate to and will be willing to invest time in.  Whatever you do, don’t kill off that point of view that your readers invested so much said time in.  They’ll get cranky.  And make the voice realistic to the character but not too realistic.  As a reader I don’t want to read about the guy brushing his teeth.  Fast forward to the part where he finds out one of his fillings is a bomb.

Action

What I segue I made with that one, huh?  Start where the story starts, not where the character’s life starts.  It’s all about keeping it relevant.  Let the story set up the scenery and build on the character.  I don’t want to hear what the character is like, especially if I’m going to get that same information that’s shaped by the actions of the story.  That latter part is where I’d much rather get it.  That’s not to say things need to explode on page one but make something happen.  Anything that’ll make the reader want to read chapter two and beyond.  If they’re bored after the first paragraph, that’s never a good sign.

Cliches and False Beginnings

Avoid cliches like the plague.  Har har.  Nah, I don’t really mean that.  Use cliches if you want but you’d better be prepared for the work they’re going to need in order to not read like a cliche.  Cliches are easy to use and are really nothing more than an easy way out for the author.  To really utilize a cliche is the hard part because if you’re readily able to fall back on a cliche, chances are you’re not willing to put the work into cloaking it.

And whatever you do, don’t dupe your readers.  Case in point, I read a series of four comic books only to get to the end and read that none of it ever happened because the MC was a showboat.  Now I knew from the third comic that the MC was unreliable and I’d considered him unreliable for my own sanity (it’s a branch off of my favorite movie, it’s taint) but to actually have that information confirmed, that’d I’d invested all this time into this story only to be told, ‘nope, didn’t really happen’ really pissed me off.  And that’s with the knowledge that the MC couldn’t be trusted.  Imagine if I didn’t have it.  I can’t get that time back and, unfortunately, you can’t sue for lost time.  Can you?

Don’t cope out and make the ending a dream or a gross exaggeration in order to make it easier on everyone or because you don’t feel like writing your MC out of a sticky situation.  There’s no point in being a writer if that’s all you’re going to do.

Characters and Backstory

Like I said before, let me read about the character as the action of the story shapes him or her.  Don’t info-dump on me the character’s life story, especially if it’s not really relevant to what I’m reading.  Doubly especially if you’re beating me over the head with it.  I’ll just get annoyed.  If the death of the character’s cat at age ten serves a purpose in the story, then tell me.  Otherwise, I don’t care.  It’s more words that I don’t need to read that’ll only serve to stall me from getting to the end.

Let your story shape your characters, not the other way around.  And while all characters have a past, let it flow out naturally.  Just like what Rachelle Gardner said, getting to know a character in a story is like getting to know a person in real life.  You don’t have people coming up to you and unloading their life story on you five minutes after you meet them.  And if you do, what are your reactions?  Honestly.  Why should your novel be any different?