Chapter 1... and its unregarded little sister

Much advice is given on the novel's first chapter. For instance, Hilary Masters teaches a whole class on it. His suggestion is that the novel should be contained in it -- the characters, the core conflict, the nuance of theme, and setup for the story's most important images. That's a lot of work for 7,500 or so words to manage, but I agree. Chapter 1 is a handshake. Readers' expectations are based on it. Unless your main character is a demolitions expert, it better be more than a few big booms.

Many agents will ask for your first 50 pages -- another reason to have a brilliant first chapter. You get rejected, you tinker with your letter and go over Chapter 1 again, and submit some more. Repeat.

But wait... 50 pages? Oh yes, there's that's second child; what did we call her? Oh, right of course -- Chapter 2. Lately I've been reading manuscripts where the second chapter falls through like a trap door. In this one little sample set, the issue seems to be with pacing. How the novel is paced depends on the story, but no matter the genre I want to take a breather and have the fabulous Chapter 1 put into perspective for me before the plot unfolds any more. I want to know that the story is big enough for the remaining 300 pages. In short, I want to know about character.

Speaking of Hilary Masters, he teaches a cookbook formula for pacing in his short story classes that applies here.

1) Scene,
2) summary,
3) scene.

Give us the action. Then tell us why it matters to the character whose POV encountered the action. Then give us a scene that shows us how the character tries to resolve the problem that arose in #1, based on what we learned about him/her in #2. A chapter can unfold along these lines, and so can a novel. If you handle the pacing well, the chapters will live together in one big happy family.