Something hard to dispute about Stephen King and all the many, many books he’s written over numerous decades now is that the guy sure as hell knows how to start a story. It’s almost to a fault, because he’s clearly got a remarkable imagination, and then enough commitment as a writer to see various ideas through to the end, even if a bunch of those initially intriguing stories of his ultimately don’t conclude all that well.
That is to say that it’s harder to say Stephen King knows how to end a story than start one. He’s got his good endings too, but bad endings and good endings alike aren’t super important here. What does matter, right now, is going over some of the greatest beginnings of the legendary writer’s career, by highlighting the very best Stephen King opening chapters. As a disclaimer, those books without chapters or with unconventional structures and chapters might not appear here, even if they do technically start well (see Misery, Carrie, and definitely Cujo).
10
’11/22/63′ (2011)
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Image via Scribner</figure>
Lots of great Stephen King opening chapters work in ways that ensure their stories overall get to hit the ground running, though it’s a little different with 11/22/63, with its very first chapter lasting only a few pages and doing a lot to set things up thematically and emotionally. On the surface, it’s about a teacher looking over an essay and being moved by it, even though, as he narrates in the first-person, he’s not a particularly sentimental person usually.
If you’ve read beyond, you’ll know this is almost like a warning about how emotional 11/22/63 is going to be, with more of an emphasis on that to a greater extent than most Stephen King books. There is also an introduction to a supporting character and his struggles that do become important once time travel enters into the plot of 11/22/63, so it’s certainly not the case that this opening is unimportant to the narrative to come or anything.
9
‘The Shining’ (1977)
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Image via Doubleday</figure>
Oops, one more book that doesn’t exactly begin explosively, but it still sets the groundwork expertly, here’s The Shining, which really sets out who Jack Torrance is while being a bit of an exposition dump about the Overlook Hotel. Actually, not really a dump. It’s all exposition about the layout of the hotel and some of its history, but it’s well-written, and that stuff is instantly interesting, in any event.
This is one of those Stephen King books most people seem to like from start to finish… so this is really just a great opening chapter to a wholly great book.
You’re definitely thankful for it once it comes time for the real horror of The Shining to come into focus, and it is primarily a work of slow-burn horror, so the build-up and initial unease is vital. This is one of those Stephen King books most people seem to like from start to finish (and including the ending, unlike a lot of iconic Stephen King books… unless you’re Stanley Kubrick), so this is really just a great opening chapter to a wholly great book, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Obviously.
8
‘Under the Dome’ (2009)
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Image via Charles Scribner's Sons</figure>
At the start of Under the Dome, you get introduced to two characters who very much aren’t important to the rest of the novel, unlike what happened in the openings of the two previously-mentioned books. Actually, there are three characters, if you count the unnamed woodchuck, and then as for the two humans, one of them is also named Chuck.
What happens to the woodchuck, Chuck, and Claudie is important to the overall book, though, because they’re all early victims of the dome suddenly coming down over the town of Chester’s Mill, with the remaining 1000+ pages being about those who didn’t die in the initial event. It sets the tone well, and gets things going right away, all the while instantly establishing the large amount of death and destruction you’re in for should you keep on reading.
7
‘Mr. Mercedes’ (2014)
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Image via Hodder & Stoughton</figure>
The opening of Mr. Mercedes and the next two books mentioned just below are all great for similar reasons, because they’re focused on establishing truly cruel villains as serious threats, and Stephen King has just about always been great at writing villains. The titular character in Mr. Mercedes is initially known by that because of the crime he commits, which is detailed quite uncompromisingly at the start of this novel.
Basically, he uses a stolen Mercedes-Benz to drive through a crowd of struggling people seeking work at a job fair, and it’s a crime that goes unsolved for a while, haunting Detective Bill Hodges after he’s retired, which makes his retirement short-lived, in effect, since he continues trying to solve this one major loose end from his career in the police. Stakes are there right away, and it’s a very fast-paced and surprising opening chapter that allows Mr. Mercedes to continue unfolding at a good pace, and then it’s far from the only surprising thing that happens in the book, too.
6
‘The Dead Zone’ (1979)
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Image via Viking Press</figure>
You get both the hero and main villain of The Dead Zone introduced within the same opening chapter of The Dead Zone, with a focus on two separate events that happened back in the 1950s. Johnny Smith, the book’s protagonist, has an accident as a child that leads to him having the powers that he does for the remainder/bulk of the book, and then Greg Stillson, introduced as a door-to-door Bible salesman, cruelly kicks a dog to death while trying to sell Bibles.
They’re two very different characters, obviously, and the chapter is jarring, but they are fated to cross paths eventually, and there’s a good deal of suspense that comes about throughout the rest of The Dead Zone with you, as the reader, waiting for that path-crossing to happen. A lot is established here, and both halves of this opening stretch of the book go a remarkable way to getting you invested very fast.
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‘Needful Things’ (1991)
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Image via Viking</figure>
Needful Things begins with a shop of the same name opening in the town of Castle Rock, which happens to be where Cujo and part of The Dead Zone were set. The actual opening happens after the prologue, but it’s that prologue that does introduce you to the store anyway, and quite directly, with the narration addressing you as though you were a customer coming into Needful Things for the first time.
And then this opening also works as an introduction of sorts for Leland Gaunt and some of his sales tactics, which is fitting because he is the central antagonist, and so much of Needful Things involves him selling to – and then manipulating – the people of Castle Rock. You’re thrown into things to some extent here, but also a bit gentler than was the case in Under the Dome, with this opening of Needful Things riding a line between that first chapter of Under the Dome and the more slow-burn/ominous opening chapter of The Shining.
4
‘The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower’ (2004)
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher- Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher / Michael R. Whelan
- Image by Michael Whelan
- Image by Michael Whelan
- Image by Michael Whelan
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher / Michael R. Whelan
Image by Michael Whelan
Image by Michael Whelan
Image by Michael Whelan- Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
- Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher / Michael R. Whelan
- Image by Michael Whelan
- Image by Michael Whelan
- Image by Michael Whelan
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher
Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher / Michael R. Whelan
Image by Michael Whelan
Image by Michael Whelan
Image by Michael WhelanThere is one other book in The Dark Tower series that has a better opening than the seventh and final main entry, but truthfully, each of the seven main books in this series starts well. The first novel does have the most iconic opening line, without a doubt (“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed”), but an opening chapter is clearly much more than its opening line.
Without ruining too much about the final book in this series, The Dark Tower VII does start explosively, and in a way that very much readies you for increased stakes and the added potential for bad things to happen to endearing characters. It feels like it could’ve worked as the climax for book , Song of Susannah, but still, placed where it is, it makes for an amazing opening chapter to an overall pretty incredible book.
3
‘The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition’ (1990)
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Image via Doubleday Books</figure>
Having two versions of The Stand does complicate things a little bit when you’re talking about the book’s opening and/or closing chapters, since the uncut version published in 1990 has both a different opening and final chapter to the original, published in 1978. For the record, though, the second chapter in the 1990 version is the first one in the 1978 version, and it still works as a pretty great opening.
There’s a car crash in that second chapter that gets a deadly superflu spreading for real, but the opening chapter in the 1990 version details a hectic fleeing from the place where the superflu was developed, but without the person (with his family) doing the fleeing realizing he’s already infected. It’s a little more humanization for the earliest victims of the superflu, and that detail – alongside some extra chapters in the first third of the book about other unfortunate people – makes the 1990 version an even better read than the groundbreaking original published version of The Stand.
2
‘IT’ (1986)
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Image via Viking Press</figure>
Since IT is a very long book, IT happens to have very long chapters, with 23 chapters found within five different parts of the book (and the book itself is over 1100 pages long), plus some interludes and an epilogue. So, a lot happens in the first chapter, “After the Flood (1957),” which is itself divided into four parts, and each of those parts is kind of like the length of an ordinary chapter in an ordinary book.
But yeah, IT is no ordinary book, and it’s also about four times longer than an ordinary book, so having one chapter be four times the length of a more standard chapter checks out. It establishes Derry and the central/titular antagonist of the book incredibly well, and there is an alarmingly violent death focused on during this particular chapter, and so for obvious reasons, it sticks in one’s mind and really effectively establishes the stakes going forward.
1
‘The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three’ (1987)
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Image via Donald M. Grant, Publisher</figure>
The opening scene of The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three is to The Dark Tower what “The Chinese Restaurant” episode is to Seinfeld. That sounds like an insane comparison, yes, and maybe it is, but it’s fitting when the opening to this book is also insane. And it’s also fitting because Seinfeld was interesting prior to the 11th episode of its second season, but it’s that episode where everything clicks, and if you’re watching the series for the first time, you go, “Oh, now I get why people call this genius.”
There’s this confidence with that episode fully realizing the potential of the series, and same with the opening chapter (or prologue, if you want to get technical) of The Drawing of the Three. The Gunslinger, book , is more than solid and worthwhile, like the first 15 episodes of Seinfeld, but Roland’s battle with a “lobstrosity” (and the consequences such a fight has for the remainder of the propulsive The Drawing of the Three, and even the whole series going forward) is next-level stuff. It’s where The Dark Tower becomes great, and if The Gunslinger itself is something of an ominous prologue for the whole series, then the grisly beginning of The Drawing of the Three is like the first proper chapter of the remaining six-entry-long “book.”
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