Author: Brad Johnson

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By Steve Cernak, {grow} Community Member

With all the bad business news pounding us today, I wanted to bring you a virtual conference success story.

In early March 2020, the American Bar Association Antitrust Law Section was just over a month away from holding its flagship annual Spring Meeting.

The event that has drawn thousands of global antitrust and consumer protection professionals to Washington, D.C. for nearly 70 years, like swallows to Capistrano (lawyers to cherry blossoms, actually).

This was more than an “event.” It was a festival! For three and a half days, this was a major educational forum, an important networking and sales channel, and a beloved chance to connect with friends that was the DNA of our professional culture.

Oh yes … the event with a ticket price around $1,0000 essentially pays for the Section’s activities for the rest of the year!

But in early March 2020, the Section canceled our beloved in-person Spring Meeting. Just like every other basketball tournament, concert, and large gathering, the pandemic forced us to shut down.

We gave notice to our customers and speakers, as well as all the unaffiliated groups that had events scheduled around Spring, early enough for everyone to change plans. And nobody would have blamed the Section if it had just stopped there.  Everything was being canceled. Everything. After all, you can’t just take an in-person program in planning since last August and turn it into something virtual in a few weeks, right?

Or can you?

The miraculous pivot

The first thing we had to sort out was — SHOULD we pivot? Could we still offer value to our members at a time when so many people are suffering from a new set of problems in these unusual times?

After much debate, we forged ahead with a new “Virtual” Spring Meeting (VSM) would run over two weeks late in April — just 35 days away from our announcement. Then we got to work fulfilling that promise.

The team that had put together Spring Meetings for decades – and had been sweating the details on this one for months – quickly pivoted to a virtual model. They selected the panels that would be transitioned to virtual. The organizers and speakers of those panels confirmed their ability and willingness to change plans on the fly.

We repurposed the Section’s successful podcast, Our Curious Amalgam, for a couple of weeks as the home of VSM podcasts.  The Section’s YouTube page transitioned to become the home for videocasts and live streams. The social media team teased the coming content.

Because the live interaction of practitioners and enforcers is a crucial part of any Spring Meeting, the Section replaced it as much as possible with virtual receptions on the Remo platform. We scheduled about nine test-runs over two weeks to work out the bugs.

ABA Section staff worked tirelessly to make it all this happen. But many of the organizers and speakers were volunteers. They all had day jobs – that they were now doing at home – but their loyalty to the Section and the Spring Meeting was inspiring, and the only way we could have pulled this off so fast.

The results

We were astounded by the results.

We had well over 13,000 downloads (so far) of VSM programming, many times more than we expected. And even the virtual networking “cocktail receptions” were well received the lawyer, economists, and students who attended the meetings.

We were lawyers and volunteers, not event or IT professionals, so not everything was perfectly smooth. We faced scheduling problems, audio, and technical issues, and we forgot to turn the mic on during an introduction.

The receptions had a few glitches, often bizarre. Connection issues often were solved the usual IT way – log off and log back in! But we had a few odd unresolved ones, like the time I was virtually meeting with two other guests and they could only hear me, not each other. So I served as a human telephone for a few minutes.

But folks were generous and forgave the snafus. Like all of them, we were struggling to adapt to the new work realities.

I think the overwhelming impact of this conference was how much WORKED. The content was useful and engaging, like always. Viewers still saw debates among experts on the key issues of the day.  Reception attendees still bumped into practitioners and enforcers of all ages from around the globe. We attracted new attendees from around the globe who could not attend otherwise.

The economics of virtual … and being human

There was also one huge difference. The VSM was free to all. We viewed this overwhelming amount of content as the ABA’s gift to the global antitrust community during a stressful time.

Since the economics of virtual conferences like this is of vital interest to nearly everyone during this crisis, I should provide some more details of this important decision.

Obviously this is not an economic decision we could make forever. As I said this event funds our Section.

But we thought that the most compelling opportunity in this crisis was to build our brand and expand opportunities to those who have not attended our live events in the past. Yes, we were able to expose our audience to profitable publications available for purchase and of course paid membership opportunities. But we saw this as an opportunity to build community, create a meaningful connection, and be more human in a crisis.

Be. More. Human. Maybe that sounds familiar to fans of Mark Schaefer’s book Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins.

A virtual conference success story

In August 2019, Mark Schaefer spoke at our annual leadership planning event. We learned a lot from him but one question of his resonated most for me: How do you complete this statement, “Only the Antitrust Section _______”?  He challenged us:  “What’s something that the Section provides to its customers that nobody else can? The answer that I and others came up with was “Only the Antitrust Section can bring together the global antitrust community.”

Giving away the virtual event was our chance to seize that opportunity and live our mission like never before. We’re sure that seizing this opportunity in the short term will help further strengthen loyalty to the Section and drive membership and other sales in the long term. (A focus on the brand — Seems like I just read that in somebody’s free Pandemic Playbook!)

Our focus on community has always been evident at the Spring Meeting, with thousands of attendees from dozens of countries. Despite huge obstacles, we made sure we lived up to our promise again this year, against all odds.

When the community could not come to us, we went to the community, wherever they were, whatever their circumstances in a crisis. We brought our world together.

Steve Cernak is the Marketing Officer for the ABA Antitrust Law Section and an antitrust partner in the Detroit office of Bona Law, PC.  He has counseled marketers for more than 30 years, including more than 20 as part of the General Motors Legal Staff.

Illustration courtesy Unsplash.com

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For the writer, there’s nothing harder than writing the first chapter and final chapter of a book. It is here that all of your perfectionism rears its ugly head calling for a full halt to your progress.

I’ve written and rewritten my first chapter dozens of times, and I’m not alone. Most writers struggle to figure out how to start their novel, and it makes sense. Your first chapter can make or break your book: with readers, agents, and publishers.

So then how do you do it? How do you write a good first chapter? In this post, I’m going to walk you through the seven things you need to accomplish in your first chapter, and give you a checklist that you can use in your novel.

Why Does It Matter So Much that a First Chapter Be Good?

My dad recently finished a new book and wants to submit it to agents. So, dutiful son that I am, I helped him find a short list of agents on querytracker.com and talked him through their submission requirements.

Each of these literary agents’ submission requirements varied, but nearly all of them asked for the first few pages, anywhere between the first three chapters to the first ten pages.

Agents, who often get thousands of submissions per month, will tell you how much those first pages matter. 

If those first pages don’t hook them, if they don’t instantly capture their attention and make them want to read more, they’ll move on to the next submission.

That means if you want your book to be picked up by an agent and then a publisher, your first chapter needs to be good.

Which means this chapter has a lot of heavy lifting to do, story-wise.

And that leads to a big question: What exactly do writers need to accomplish in their first chapter?

What is your First Chapter Checklist? 

7 Steps to Write a Good First Chapter: Checklist

How do you write a good first chapter? If you touch each of these things, you’re sure to hook the reader and create a strong foundation for your book.

1. Set the scene through physical movement

Before you can get into the action and drama of a scene, the reader needs to know when and where they are. Publishers, agents, and readers alike don’t enjoy being thrown into the middle of a disorienting action scene. Instead, they prefer to let the scene build up to a climactic moment using the six elements of storytelling (see #6), beginning with a brief amount of exposition.

The best way to set the scene is not through description, which readers, agents, and publishers alike find off-putting in the first sentences of the first scene. It’s also not through dialogue, which leaves readers confused—“wait, who’s talking?”

Instead, begin with a character making some kind of physical action through the space that reveals the broader context of the scene.

2. Introduce the protagonist

Your protagonist is the lens through which you tell your story, so introduce them to the reader in the very first scene.

But it’s not enough for the reader to simply see the protagonist. We have to like with them enough to want to follow them for the rest of the story. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a protagonist who is flawed or even evil. It does mean we have to sympathize with them.

Here are seven tried-and-true ways to get your reader to sympathize with your characters. I recommend picking at least one to use in your first chapter, and three in your first few chapters.

The 7 Characteristics of Sympathetic Characters

1. Takes action. Show your protagonist being proactive. Show them making a hard choice when faced with a dilemma and taking action to get what they want. 
2. Treated unjustly. Show your character being bullied, persecuted, treated unfairly, or the victim of injustice. 
3. Shows competence. Readers are interested in people who are really good at things. Don’t hide your protagonist’s light under a bushel. Let it shine!
4. Has friends. We’re attracted to people who show that they already have other people who like them. Just by having a friend, it makes us more interested in someone. Show your protagonist is likeable by surrounding them with other interesting characters from the beginning.
5. Does a good deed. “Save the cat,” as Blake Snyder says. By helping someone in need, your protagonist establishes themselves as “the good guy,” despite any other negative qualities.
6. Has a quirk. Quirks are memorable things that let us create an instant visualization of someone, like Harry Potter’s scar on his forehead, Ron Weasley’s bright red hair, or Hermione’s frizzy hair. Quirks are especially important for side characters, but a simple quirk helps us quickly get to know a protagonist.
7. Secret vulnerability. Everyone has a secret, whether it’s a phobia like Bruce Wayne’s fear of bats, or Superman’s weakness toward kryptonite, or Inspector Gamache’s terror of heights. By letting the reader in on your protagonist’s secret vulnerability, you create a bond that can last the entire story.

You can use these seven characteristics of sympathetic characters at any point in your story for any character, even your villains. They are like candy for readers, and will always get results. 

However, these characteristics are most important to use in the first chapter when you need to quickly create a connection with your protagonist. In fact, you could argue that this is the whole goal of the first chapter.

3. Establish the Point of View (POV)

What is your story’s point of view? Are you going to choose third person limited, third person omniscient, first person, or some other POV?

Establish it in the first chapter and don’t change it!

Not sure? Read our ultimate point of view guide.

4. Set the genre 

Establish the type of story you’re writing from the beginning. From the first scene, your reader should know whether this is a science fiction story, a crime novel, a horror novel, or a love story.

5. Set the value scale

In the same way, establish the value scale that your novel will move on. There are traditionally six value scales in story, and each of these relates to a particular type of story.

• Life vs. Death: Action, Adventure
• Life vs. a Fate Worse than Death: Thriller, Horror, Mystery
• Love vs. Hate: Love Story, Romance
• Accomplishment vs. Failure: Performance, Sports
• Maturity vs. Naivete: Coming of Age
• Good vs. Evil: Temptation, Morality

Depending on which story type you’re telling, make sure your first scene is set on that scale.

For example, in a love story, make sure the story event occurring in the very first scene deals either with love or hate. Or in a coming of age story, set it in a moment of great immaturity.

6. Set the stakes

Once your value scale is set, create some kind of movement, ideally moving to either the very bottom or very top of that scale.

For example, in an action story, have a moment where your protagonist is almost sure to die.

Or in a love story, begin in a place of complete hatred between the principle characters.

By setting the stakes early, you let the reader know what to expect (and how you’re going to play with those expectations). 

7. Follow the 6 Elements of Storytelling

Every successful scene, act, and story has six elements that make it work. They are:

• Exposition
• Inciting Incident
• Rising Action/Progressive Complications
• Dilemma
• Climax
• Denouement

The most important of these six is the dilemma, when a character is faced with a difficult choice between two equally good or equally bad options. 

This dilemma is what causes the movement of the scene along your value scale and what creates the essential drama.

All that’s to say, make sure your first chapter has each of these, but especially the dilemma!

What About Books With Prologues?

For books that have a prologue, they may not achieve all of these things below in the first chapter.

They might be set in a different location or time period from the main story. They might introduce a different character than your protagonist, or introduce the protagonist but at a different time in their life. They might be written in a different point of view than the rest of the story (but remember to be consistent throughout your book once the story starts!).

That said, the prologue should still introduce the reader to the journey ahead, and these seven elements. are effective ways to do that. Consider using each of them as you can.

The Essentials of a Good First Chapter

Don’t be a perfectionist with your first chapter, especially if you’re writing a first draft.

First drafts are hard. First drafts of first chapters are really hard.

Don’t try to write a publishable, award-winning, NY Times-bestselling first chapter the first time you sit down to work on your new story.

Instead, just do the work.

Set the scene with action.

Introduce your protagonist in a sympathetic way so your readers can fall in love with them.

Set the genre and value scale.

Hit each of the six elements.

If you do that, you’ll have a strong first chapter that you can make even better in revision.

Good luck and happy writing!

Does your first chapter meet all of these steps to writing a first chapter? Let us know in the comments.

The post How to Write a Good First Chapter: A Checklist appeared first on The Write Practice.