How do you label your chapters?

[BiggusBeardus]

The title says it all. I've seen a number of different ways authors title their chapters and I'm curious about how you do it.

If you do something other than what I listed, please comment and share.

 

[ThinkerX]

The rule is - 'one POV, one chapter.' So, the Book Title, followed by the Chapter number plus the name of that POV character.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I super suck at chapter titles. No problem with naming stories, but chapters elude me. So, numbers only for us.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I do chapter titles that tend toward cryptic teasers related to the chapter but not necessarily what happens in the chapter. Some refer to characters. Whatever. Sling Swing, Wasting Whiskey is one of my favorite titles from Eve of Snows. Why? The character breaks a whiskey bottle over a guy's head and then hangs him with his sling... not a proper hanging, mind you, but effective. Wind Break on the Rise refers to an army on the horizon. Most of the time, I have good fun with titles, but I also get lazy at times.

 

[Finchbearer]

So far I’ve mixed it up a bit. One story that is set in two different time periods for example, I’ve started each chapter with that place and the year date. Others are just numbered and others are named.

 

[The Dark One]

Chapter titles are an art form for me and I occasionally agonise over getting them right - but mostly they leap off the page at me.

A little like DDN, I take a short phrase from the chapter and that's the title. The first three chapters in my WIP are:

Unrealistic and Pointless Dreams
Another Solschenizyn Day
The First of Her Secret Desires

 

[Finchbearer]

Another Solschenizyn Day - what does this mean?

 

[The Dark One]

Another Solschenizyn Day - what does this mean?

Solschenizyn was a dissident Russian author whose most famous book was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - set in a Siberian Gulag. All his writing seems to be set in the cold and dark - hence the relevant para from my WIP.


It was another Solschenizyn day, despite the global warming. The sky was its usual slate grey with a cold sniff of rain as I strolled up to the library doors, feeling a deep sense of immanence. Somehow, this was going to be an interesting day.

 

[Finchbearer]

Solschenizyn was a dissident Russian author whose most famous book was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - set in a Siberian Gulag. All his writing seems to be set in the cold and dark - hence the relevant para from my WIP.


It was another Solschenizyn day, despite the global warming. The sky was its usual slate grey with a cold sniff of rain as I strolled up to the library doors, feeling a deep sense of immanence. Somehow, this was going to be an interesting day.

How do you feel that not everyone will know that reference?

 

[Prince of Spires]

I go with something that represents the chapter. It's either a location, or something that happens in the chapter, or a character name. I do sometimes wonder why I bother, since chapter names are pretty much irrelevant and I could get away with just a number. But it is what it is. I think having the title grounds me in the chapter, which is worth something...

No problem with naming stories

Can I send you my current WiP? I'm in dire need of a title, and I can't come up with anything...

 

[The Dark One]

How do you feel that not everyone will know that reference?

It probably dates me a little. Solschenizyn was huge in the 70s and 80s.

It's a fairly literary novel (partly set in a library) and there is a little bit of an educative aspect to any literature.

But not everyone will get every reference anyway. I'm okay with that.

 

[Mad Swede]

My chapters are numbered and nothing else. I also have several POVs per chapter, at the insistence of my editor who thinks it gives a better story flow.

 

[Mad Swede]

It probably dates me a little. Solschenizyn was huge in the 70s and 80s.

It's a fairly literary novel (partly set in a library) and there is a little bit of an educative aspect to any literature.

But not everyone will get every reference anyway. I'm okay with that.

I agree, I don't worry too much if someone doesn't get all the references in my books.

That said, I'm arrogant enough to expect any half-way well-read reader in western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and NZ to know who Solschenizyn was. If I can work my way through his works despite my severe dyslexia then I expect everyone else to at least make an attempt to read widely.

 

[Finchbearer]

That said, I'm arrogant enough to expect any half-way well-read reader in western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and NZ to know who Solschenizyn was. If I can work my way through his works despite my severe dyslexia then I expect everyone else to at least make an attempt to read widely.

Well, I did not know who Solschenizyn was…obviously I’m an idiot…

 

[Mad Swede]

Well, I did not know who Solschenizyn was…obviously I’m an idiot…

I didn't call you an idiot. I wrote that I expected you to know who he was, which isn't the same thing. His bravery in writing and publishing The Gulag Archipelago in what was then the USSR has never really been fully acknowledged in the west, despite the fact that he'd already won the Nobel Prize for Litterature. And now, of course, you know a bit about him...

 

[Finchbearer]

I’m more of the opinion that I don’t know everything and that’s okay, it doesn’t make me, or anyone else who doesn’t know the plethora of Russian literature ignorant or not well-read enough. If I read a book and learn something along the way, which is the case most of the time, great, but being arrogant enough to assume that people should know something isn’t particularly helpful.

 

[Mad Swede]

I’m more of the opinion that I don’t know everything and that’s okay, it doesn’t make me, or anyone else who doesn’t know the plethora of Russian literature ignorant or not well-read enough. If I read a book and learn something along the way, which is the case most of the time, great, but being arrogant enough to assume that people should know something isn’t particularly helpful.

And now we're getting into an interesting discussion. What do we expect our readers to know?

There's what you might call the conventions of fantasy stories, things like dragons, elves and goblins. We all seem to know what they are despite them not being real, and in many ways we as authors expect our readers to know what they are without being told. Is that unhelpful? Probably not.

But what, then, about major authors? I'd suggest that we can and should expect our readers to know who the really big authors are. And Solzhenitsyn was certainly one of them, one of the greatest Russian writers of the twentieth century and for many Russians (and some critics) one of the greatest Russian authors of them all. Assuming our readers don't know is for me dumbing down, especially when I'm assuming that they can handle complex story arcs and deep characterisation. It's even more a case of dumbing down if the author concerned died in modern times - Solzhenitsyn died in 2008 and his death was front page news all over the world.

And now I will be a little controversial and suggest that if we as authors want to be serious about our writing, and more especially if we want to be taken seriously as authors, then we should know who the major authors are and we should have read many if not most of them. My editor is a lot harder than that, she expects an author who wants to be taken seriously to be able to name at least the last ten winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature, at least the last ten winners of the Booker Prize and to have read at least one book or text by each of them.

Does that sound hard? Maybe. I thought my editor was asking a lot, but if you've read works by Harold Pinter, Doris Lessing, VS Naipaul, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, AS Byatt, Hilary Mantel, Roddy Doyle, Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro you're half way there. And thinking about it I realised what she meant. How else do we learn the art of writing? I will never reach those heady literary heights, but I can be inspired by what I read.

 

[Ban]

I disagree here. Reading a lot makes you a better reader, not necessarily a better writer. The best MMA fighters are not the ones who watch the most events, but the ones who go to the gym and get sparring. Some of the best fighters don't care for viewing the sport at all. I feel the same is the case for writing. It's hard not to learn a thing or two from reading, but you can read the full bibliographies of every literary titan on earth and still suck at actually putting pen to paper. They're separate matters with highly limited overlap.

 

[Devor]

I disagree here. Reading a lot makes you a better reader, not necessarily a better writer. The best MMA fighters are not the ones who watch the most events, but the ones who go to the gym and get sparring. Some of the best fighters don't care for viewing the sport at all. I feel the same is the case for writing. It's hard not to learn a thing or two from reading, but you can read the full bibliographies of every literary titan on earth and still suck at actually putting pen to paper. They're separate matters with highly limited overlap.

I kind of agree... but any class on writing is going to assign a few books to read, and keeping up with the ever-changing literary world is going to require a few more. An experienced MMA fighter may come to hate watching bouts, but they're still going to have a coach who puts together clips from those bouts of their opponent's moves for them to study.

I would say there's a skill to learning from what you read, which starts with finding the right books to read in the first place. I don't think it takes reading that many books, but it does take reading some.

I've always been skeptical of the blanket advice to just read, read, read, with no guidelines or support, like it's a magical solution and every person who's read enough books can now be a writer.

 

[Ban]

That's a fair caveat. You won't become a capable writer without reading any qualitative works, but I do believe there are strongly diminishing returns in terms of how it will improve your writing after a couple of dozen of such works (arbitrary number). I don't think it matters whatsoever if one knows such and such author, unless cultural capital, not writing accumen is the goal. What matters is that one has a degree of familiarity with writing that has withstood the test of time.