You can see in any good novel a definite beggining, middle and ending. Some wattpad books skip right over this, let's start at the basics.

The beggining of a novel should enlighten your reader on the situation or environment the novel is based in, introduce us to main characters, build on crucial plot points, and plant the seed to big events that will come later in the book.

I see some books on Wattpad throw in a chapter at the very start titled "Backstory" and discuss nothing about the elves and faries in their books except in that one paragraph, this is the exact opposite of what you should be doing to start your book and is an ammature mistake. Nobody likes reading a chunk of text and people will close your book before the second chapter.

The beggining of a book can make or break a book that is why it is soo crucial, the beggining decides whether the reader will put your book down or continue reading, this is why to write a good book your beginning must be interesting.

A technique that world famous writers like Paul Jennings use is to have the opening sentence be exciting or the opening scene be a car chase, a robbing, or something that holds a lot of suspense, make sure that your opening sentence grabs your readers by the leg and doesn't let them go just make sure it is tied in to the story, don't write a romantic comedy and have the first line be, "he stood over his victims bloody face hands raised shirt smeared with blood."

An example of a good opening to a novel is in James Dashner's "The Maze Runner." In the very first scene the main character is stuck in an ever rising box, he can't remember his name and he's desperately trying to escape, he doesn't know what's waiting for him and he's in fear of his life. Contrast this to a story that starts off with "Hi, my name is Thomas, l've lived in the maze for three years now and it sucks!" In the first example the reader is instantly hooked into the book, you as the reader are thrown into a situation that is shocking and you can't help but turn the page and find out what happens next, in the first example it also lets you learn more about the maze as Thomas is just as clueless as you about the maze and the glade and has to be taught everything. This is a great way to set up a book, you can see example's of outsiders being the main character in books like Harry Potter and Red Rising.

If a main character knows nothing about how your novels mysterious world works then he has to learn everything. ie: Harry Potter must learn about the magic world because he's been living with muggles his whole life, Thomas has to find out about the maze because he can't remember anything.

Having main characters being clueless to their suroundings is great because they have to be told everything meaning, the reader learns everything through character interactions, this can strengthen a characters personality or set the tone. In The Maze Runner, The Gladers are very secretive and this makes the place even more eerie.

A note to take from the Maze Runner is to not tell your readers everything right from the start, this can make a book lose it's suspense and you don't want that, especially in a horror book.

To conclude. Don't write a backstory that involves none of your main characters and is just a chunk of text, make sure that your first scene/sentence is eye-grabbing, don't give your readers an opportunity to put your book down, don't tell your reader everything straight away, A little suspense goes a long way and don't have your beginning be just one chapter, the maze runner has a 100 page beginning so don't be dettered, if it's interesting people will read it. But, if you take one thing from this page it's don't write an Authors note at the very start of the book no one cares about your life, they care about the book you've written so don't bore them with that because Author's notes are extremely boring.

Stay tuned for my next chapter it'll be on the topic of "inciting incidents"