Engaging First Chapters: Atmosphere, part I
Arguably the most important thing your novel’s opening pages should do is establish an atmosphere. More than characters, pacing, or even plot, atmosphere signals to the reader not only what the story is about but how you want them to feel as they step into it.
Pinpointing Your Atmosphere
Before anything else, ask yourself: Why are you writing this book? What is so important to you that you’re willing to spend countless hours bringing this story to life? Your answer should be your guiding light, shaping every element of your writing—including atmosphere.
For example, when I was writing my most recent novel, I knew I wanted to write about grief, loss, and the journey of finding joy again. More than anything, I wanted readers to walk away from the book feeling held—loved, even. That meant crafting an atmosphere that was cozy and soft, but also deeply honest and intimate.
Ground Rules: Show, don’t tell!
I have one hard rule for the first pages of my novels:
Pretend your first chapter is the opening scene of a movie — readers cannot know anything that is not revealed via what they can see or hear.
I believe this makes opening pages stronger because by focusing on the visual and auditory elements of the novel’s atmosphere, you’re curating a sensory experience to evoke feeling in your readers, which will make the first chapters of your novel unforgettable.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This means that exposition and internal monologues should be minimal. If something can not be explained in one short sentence or less, explain it in chapter two or beyond.
Tips & Tricks for Curating a Vibe
Once you’ve decided how you want your readers to feel, it’s time to get intentional. Your four pillars of atmosphere are:
Imagery
Dialogue
Sensory Details
Word Choice & Sentence Structure
In this post we’ll focus on imagery and dialogue.
Imagery
An opening image doesn’t need to be intense or action-packed to be memorable, though that is one option. But it can also be a quiet moment in the home, told in a sweet and nostalgic way– think of the opening scenes of the coziest of Ghibli movies, which often pan over beautiful landscapes, or show characters doing something mundane but in a romanticized light.
The imagery of your opening scene should set the stage for the vibes of the entire book. If you’re writing a cozy book, give us a scene that makes us feel warm and safe– a crackling fire, a lush garden, tea steaming in a mug. If it’s a horror novel, put us on a dark street and give us a glimpse of a monster out of the corner of our eye.
One trick for a truly memorable opening image– pair together an image and a tone that we wouldn’t typically expect.
In the opening scene in my own project which I mentioned above, a cozy fantasy novel about grief, we see the main character entering a haunted house in the dead of night– but that house has warm light in the windows, and a kitchen with soup on the stove. I crafted the scene this way to tell the readers: yes, this is a ghost story, but it’s also one that says grief is love, and therefore grief is precious.
Dialogue
Dialogue is a great tool for both curating atmosphere and passing along information to the reader.
That said , your characters must talk like real people. When I say you can reveal story elements through dialogue, I don’t mean characters should say things like, “Hello, husband to whom I’ve been married to for ten years. I’m thinking about divorcing you.” Instead, try: “You’ve been promising to take me to Paris for ten years.”
The key to effective dialogue in opening pages is to reveal how characters feel about themselves, each other, and their place in the world—it is not for simply delivering exposition out loud.
Generally, but especially in these first pages, subtly is your best friend in crafting dialogue. Think about real-life conversations, and notice the space between what you say and what you mean. Make sure that gap exists for your characters too, and remember that in real-life people are not nearly as eloquent or intentional with our words as we want to be.
Photo: Apple TV+
Example: Severance
The opening scene of Severance is deliberately unsettling and immediately sets the tone for the show’s eerie, disorienting atmosphere.
It begins with a woman, Helly R., lying face-down on a large conference table in a sterile, windowless room. The lighting is dim, the walls are a dingy shade of green, and the furniture is cold and impersonal—evoking the aesthetic of a corporate office but with an uncanny, almost dystopian edge.
A disembodied male voice speaks to Helly over an intercom. He poses a series of cryptic, impersonal questions: “Who are you?” “Where are you?” Helly, clearly disoriented and increasingly frustrated, doesn’t know the answers. She struggles to orient herself, realizing she has no memory of how she got here.
Imagery: the sterile, overly designed corporate setting, the unnatural color palette, the impersonal and robotic nature of the questioning, and the unsettling contrast between the questioners’ calmness and Helly’s growing distress. Everything feels slightly off, signaling to the viewer that this is not a normal workplace and that something deeply wrong is happening beneath the surface. All of these elements contribute to the atmosphere by evoking a sense of unease and disorientation.
Dialogue: Two characters are speaking to each other, but for the most part each character’s piece of the conversation feels one-sided; they aren’t responding to each other’s questions, and one person is very clearly reading off a script; this furthers the uneasy atmosphere by reiterating the feeling of isolation, and giving us the impression that Helly’s humanity is being ignored and that there’s no opportunity for real connection.
This scene masterfully establishes the show’s central mystery—who is Helly, where is she, and what has been done to her?—while immersing the audience in the unsettling world of Lumon Industries from the very first moment.
Imagery and dialogue are atmospheric elements you can plot and plan for, and I hope this has been helpful in helping you think through how to use them to pack a punch and craft unforgettable opening pages.
In the next post, we’ll break down how to establish mood and tone on the line level, diving into tips and tricks for crafting atmospheric prose.
