McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Chapter Titles yes or no?
RangerSG:
--- Quote from: NothingWicked on June 20, 2009, 07:46:18 PM ---An interesting twist I've encountered on Chapter Titles is having a quote precede a chapter rather than a title. In books like "This Alien Shore" they add a depth and flavor to the novel's world as well as add a commentary on, rather than spoiler for, the following chapter. They also seem to create a universal undercurrent to the themes of the novel as a whole.
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Brandon Sanderson does the same thing in his Mistborn series. So does Steven Erikson frequently in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I like it. But I don't know if I'd want to do something like that unless I was writing a history-style work.
comprex:
--- Quote from: RangerSG on June 22, 2009, 07:13:30 PM ---Brandon Sanderson does the same thing in his Mistborn series. So does Steven Erikson frequently in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. I like it. But I don't know if I'd want to do something like that unless I was writing a history-style work.
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It's pretty common for period fiction. What was I just reading that had it? Oh yes, Boris Akunin's ‘The Winter Queen’.
(Which is a pretty decent read in itself: imagine young, very young 007 set in czarist Russia with a nod to Dumas)
Benchleyfan:
I recently started reading the Alex Rider series that makes good use of Chapter Titles. The first book is called "Stormbreaker" and written by Anthony Horowitz. Think Jr. James Bond type if he didn't volunteer, but was more or less blackmailed into working for Queen and Country. Good stuff. :)
Quantus:
--- Quote from: neurovore on May 26, 2009, 04:33:27 PM ---Which to my way of thinking is a prop for lazy writing; if you're good at distinct voices, you really shouldn't need that.
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Not really. Its mostly a reference, so that the reader can get into the proper frame imediately, rather than having to read even a few sentences to get their bearings, so to speak. A really good example of this is the Wheel of Time, where there was a unique icon at the beginning of each chapter that told you which character/group/subplot that chapter was focused on. It gave nothing away, and it may have been obvious anyway after the first few sentences, but it was still helpful as a reader.
There are several ways Ive seen Chapter information given well. Chapter titles can work if done right (as others have said, they can give too much away if done wrong). Another route I have often enjoyed is when authors start a chapter with a world quote; they can be ballad lyrics, proverbs, philosophical saying etc, but they are from within the story world, and often add depth to the story and world as a whole. Their relevance to the specific chapter can be secondary, though Ive seen a few that do it well, being relevant, but only in hindsight.
One of my favorite chapter devices, used well in Ender's Game, is to give a short bit from a non-standard POV. In Ender's game (written in first person) this was a short bit of dialogue from the antagonists. It was entirely dialouge, and the first half of the book you were just trying to identify the speakers. But it gave you a short glimpse of the Teachers reactions to whatever was going on, and was a very effective outlet to convey little bits of information that the Reader needed, but the MC needed to be ignorant of.
horsehearted:
I didn't realize there were chapter titles in the HP series until the 5th book. So even if you do have them in, some of us are SO focused on the story that we won't see them.
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