Two years ago I wrote a post here at Fantasy Author’s Handbook entitled:
BLOG POST DCXL
TOO MUCH INFORMATION IN YOUR CHAPTER STARTS
11:19 am PST, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021 CE
SAMMAMISH, WA
“Come ye, all Authors and Hear, for Wisdom shall be granted upon thee by the hand of the Not At All Mighty that thou might Hearest.”
—Lord Philus Athansusus, the 63rd Lord Viscount of the City of Citiphus in the Duchy of Blackriverwaterberg of the Kingdom of Forevermore, Part XVII, Chapter 24, paragraph 83 of the third volume of the Collected Writings of Lord Philus Athansusus, the 63rd Lord Viscount of the City of Citiphus in the Duchy of Blackriverwaterberg of the Kingdom of Forvermore (standard edition), published in the Year of the Publishing (Summer)
…in which, as I hope the absurdity of the title makes clear, I railed against the overly detailed, multi-component chapter start. That post, which you can read here, goes on to show examples from published books and breaks down the value of different components to a chapter start with an eye on deciding which, say, one or maybe two elements you might want to settle on.
This week, I’d like to concentrate on making a firmer case against chapter titles, maybe just because I’m seeing more of them lately, and more often than not, they suffer from one of four central maladies, which we’ll take one at time…
They add an element that slows your readers down as they transition from chapter to chapter.
This is what I belabored in the post from two years ago, so I’ll just drop a quick reminder here:
Every time you do anything to stop the flow of your narrative, you run the risk or forcing your readers out of it. And no matter what, you want your readers in the narrative.
Chapters are essential components to reader expectations of a novel—I’m absolutely not saying you should abandon chapters all together—but you want to drop the dramatic pause point at the end of Chapter 1 then get to the next beat at the beginning of Chapter 2 as soon as possible.
Are your chapter titles important enough to keep your readers in the transition state between chapters for that many seconds?
Most of the time, they are mini spoilers.
In that original post I cited this example:
I am a William Gibson fan, so I pulled out my copy of his 2003 science fiction novel Pattern Recognition. Here chapters begin with an Arabic numeral and a short title. For example
15.
SINGUARITY
And that’s all. That’s fine, though I should warn you to craft your chapter titles carefully so they don’t become spoilers, like:
Then I made up a fake example that was clearly a spoiler, but looking back I should have found a real example where I felt that was the case. It took me about twenty seconds of flipping through a book on a shelf right behind my desk to find one.
In Tom Swift and His Jetmarine, Chapter 4 is titled: “Submarine Blackout.”
The chapter begins with Tom waiting for his father (Tom Swift, Sr.) to drive over with him to where crews are working on Tom’s new submarine—or jetmarime. They have to wait for some work to be done before Tom can climb aboard and head out. Then the chapter ends—literally the last two paragraphs—with Tom blacking out.
This chapter title tells us someone’s going to blackout on the submarine, so we know that’s going to happen for eight of the nine pages of that chapter, in effect ruining the big dramatic ending.
I know, your work in progress isn’t a book written for kids in 1954—your chapter titles, like William Gibson’s, don’t spoil the ending of the chapter or otherwise prematurely telegraph an important plot point.
But… are you sure? Remember, you know what’s going to happen in that chapter and might be really excited about it. Can you resist the temptation to brag about it? Honesty, now… can you? And worse, will you even realize you’re doing it? Even one little spoiler like this can work on your readers’ patience, and why risk that? Especially because…
They can get really goofy, really fast.
Remember what I said a couple weeks ago about using older books for negative examples, and take a look at the contents page for the 1972 Ace (English) edition of Perry Rhodan #16, Secret Barrier X by W.W. Shols, and keep in mind that though the Perry Rhodan books were entertaining, lighter space opera books they were aimed at an adult audience and were not intended in any way as comedies or spoofs, or anything other than a long, ongoing series of science fiction novels for science fiction readers.
And yet…
1/ TIME WARP IN HELL
2 / OF SEALS & SORCERERS
3 / “WORSE THAN PIRATES”
4 / “THE POWER IN HIS EYES”
5 / RHODAN TO THE RESCUE
6 / ATTACK OF THE TREE-LIZARD
7 / THE CARATE VAMPIRE STRIKES
8 / JUNGLE WARFARE
I don’t know, ya’ll… does this read like “serious science fiction” to you?
And last, but not least, they are extremely difficult to maintain across a whole book.
How many chapters does your book have? Can you pull off the perfect chapter title for each and every one? Can you be sure that none of them are spoilers? That they’re not too long. That you aren’t repeating the same title? I’ve identified that in more than one book I’ve edited. And over the course of how many chapters they all match the tone you’re going for not just in that chapter but the book as a whole?
You might be able to answer “yes” to all those questions—and/or have an editor to help you—and if so, fantastic. There are books with chapter titles that are considered among the great classics, like, say, The Lord of the Rings.
So as always, proceed with caution, with eyes wide open, and with intent. And if you’re committed to the chapter title, keep ’em simple or make ’em sing!
—Philip Athans
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I agree on this whole-heartedly. I hate spoilers in chapter titles. I dispensed with them completely. I have a one-sentence summary of each chapter as I’m writing, just so I can find them quickly in Scrivener, but once I compile, they get removed.
I think your points are good. Goofy or spoilery chapter titles are often problematic. And if one chapter is always flowing into the next in such a way that there’s no time-lapse or need for a breather, then yes, I agree they can halt the flow.
For respectful counterpoint, there are some books where it’s done really well. For a very old example, Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. For more recent example, Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends. For a much more recent example, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus.
But I think chapter titles are worthwhile only when they add to the meaning or enhance the chapter or intrigue the reader, not when they’re obvious or pretentious.
“But I think chapter titles are worthwhile only when they add to the meaning or enhance the chapter or intrigue the reader, not when they’re obvious or pretentious.”
I agree completely!
🙂
Hi Philip,
what do you think of chapter titles named after characters, i.e. the character the chapter will be following?
Best regards
I’ve seen that fairly often and though there might be some rare cases where that might be helpful (say, if both POVs are in first person) if we can’t tell who the POV character is by the end of the first sentence or two of the chapter, you’re in trouble in any case. If you really feel you need that, it’s most likely a sign you need to think about how you lead into each chapter and address the writing itself instead of falling back on the kind of up-front explanation a chapter title indulges in.