McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Chapter Titles yes or no?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on July 06, 2009, 02:27:22 PM --- 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.
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That in and of itself is lazy. If the voices are distinct enough, you won;t need more than a sentence or two to know.
--- Quote ---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.
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With all due respect to Robert Jordan, all his character voices sound pretty much exactly the same to me, so I don't think this disproves my point.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: neurovore on July 06, 2009, 03:49:40 PM ---That in and of itself is lazy. If the voices are distinct enough, you won;t need more than a sentence or two to know.
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Its not about how long it takes to pick it up from the voice, its the fact that the reader will spend a sentence or two not knowing. Now for some styles thats fine, or even beneficial, but for others it take away when a simple thing like a chapter title can give your reader a heads up so that they are thinking in the correct context, or can adjust for a sudden change in poltline/location/character/etc. This can be especially important if the chapters tend to end on cliffhangers, and then switch to another subplot. Without some sort of transition, the change can be jarring to the reader. Its much like the transitions in movies: sometimes a simple fade-to-black is enough, but other times you need that little bit of text in the corner that says "Calcutta, 23:50 hours" And while yes, any such information could be conveyed in text, sometimes it can be better to get it across in a more direct manner and move on. I see where your point is coming from, but I think it may be due in part to a more specific stylistic expectation.
--- Quote ---With all due respect to Robert Jordan, all his character voices sound pretty much exactly the same to me, so I don't think this disproves my point.
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I dont disagree completely, though some of that I attribute to 3rd person POV in general (and the rest to simply having too many extraneous characters)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus on July 06, 2009, 09:42:12 PM ---Its not about how long it takes to pick it up from the voice, its the fact that the reader will spend a sentence or two not knowing.
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Readers who have a problem with that really to my mind fall into the 'wanting to be spoon-fed everything" category, and I prefer my entertainment to actually engage my brain.
--- Quote ---This can be especially important if the chapters tend to end on cliffhangers, and then switch to another subplot. Without some sort of transition, the change can be jarring to the reader.
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Jarring is not inherently bad. Sometimes it is exactly the effect the author wants.
Starbeam:
--- Quote from: Quantus on July 06, 2009, 09:42:12 PM ---Its not about how long it takes to pick it up from the voice, its the fact that the reader will spend a sentence or two not knowing. Now for some styles thats fine, or even beneficial, but for others it take away when a simple thing like a chapter title can give your reader a heads up so that they are thinking in the correct context, or can adjust for a sudden change in poltline/location/character/etc. This can be especially important if the chapters tend to end on cliffhangers, and then switch to another subplot. Without some sort of transition, the change can be jarring to the reader. Its much like the transitions in movies: sometimes a simple fade-to-black is enough, but other times you need that little bit of text in the corner that says "Calcutta, 23:50 hours" And while yes, any such information could be conveyed in text, sometimes it can be better to get it across in a more direct manner and move on. I see where your point is coming from, but I think it may be due in part to a more specific stylistic expectation.
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Isn't that kind of the point of ending on a cliffhanger? Keep people reading, and best way to do that is to switch POV. With Jordan, I don't think I realized the symbols were for different characters until I was several books into the series. I had more trouble when he switched from one POV to another only paragraphs from each other with no kind of break.
The change in POV might be somewhat jarring, but when you get to a new chapter or a space break, it's easy enough to guess that it'll either be a POV change or a time change.
I've more often found that chapter titles can be a bit jarring themselves; they pull me out of the story when I notice them, and I prefer to just go from one sentence to the next.
On a side note, Star Wars is probably the best movie/novel comparison I've come across, where the changes of POV in the novels matches the editing in the movies.
thausgt:
--- Quote from: neurovore on July 06, 2009, 11:41:25 PM ---Readers who have a problem with that really to my mind fall into the 'wanting to be spoon-fed everything" category, and I prefer my entertainment to actually engage my brain.
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I agree, with one addition: I approve of situations where the confusion is a deliberate choice on the part of the author in service to the story, and disapprove of situations where the confusion is lack of skill on the author's part and/or it does not serve the story.
For example, consider Niven & Barnes' "The Barsoom Project", in which the murderer gets a few lines and made significant changes to the plot in an early chapter; the authors included that scene to explain what happened later as well as in service to the story (the context of the murderer's actions caught the hero's attention; "That's not supposed to happen in this Game!") without revealing who the murderer was until an appropriate point in the story.
--- Quote from: neurovore on July 06, 2009, 11:41:25 PM ---Jarring is not inherently bad. Sometimes it is exactly the effect the author wants.
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Exactly I agree, and that is precisely why I personally take issue with the "technique" when it's actually bad writing. Another example is in Alfred Bester's "The Computer Connection", when the story switches from first-person-narration to third-person halfway thrugh the book, then back again. The story flow is not only not interrupted, but enhanced by both transitions. This would be a mark of a lesser writer and a soon-to-be-fired editor, but because it serves the story, the technique works.
Truth to tell, I can't have an educated opinion on Jordan's work, as I never managed to get past the first book. And my tendency to forget "bad" writing means that I can't remember any other examples to illustrate what I mean by that. So it goes...
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