Novel Chapters or No Chapters...... Why?

Just an FYI, but named chapters have been out of fashion for a few decades. Not sure why.

 

I have not come across too many with captioned chapters, even from books
written 15-20 yrs ago. Seems it is more common in other books that are for
a younger audience. Reading primarily Adult level novels, they rarely will
caption their chapters beyond : Chapter 1/Chapter I, etc.
(Still haven't read a book with no chapters that is a complete novel.)

 

Yeah, I was actually reading an older book (published mid 1980s) with chapter titles this week. I can't remember reading any others for a LONG time.

I think I looked into it before, trying to get an explanation for why chapter titles fell out of favour. Can't remember if I found an explanation.

 

Perhaps it might be due to not wanting to come up with witty or clever little subtitles
for each of them. Not that they add anything to the overall story anyway. IDK?

 

I'm also a fan of chapter titles, as somebody else mentioned, as long as they're well done. The first chapter of LotR - The Two Towers is called "The Departure of Boromir", and does not literally mean what it says. What the reader thinks will happen (what was planned by the characters in The Fellowship of the Ring), does not. But the chapter title is perfectly relevant nonetheless.

Often I've seen chapter titles misused by authors. I could just read the "Contents" page and put the book back on the shelf without buying it. Talk about spoiler alert. Perhaps that's a reason?

And just a wild guess, but do you read a lot of stories in first-person present-tense? I feel as if chapter titles make the least sense if the whole idea is that the reader is put in the main character's shoes and it's all happening to them in real-time; everything that's unfolding is supposed to be akin to a waking dream, so to speak. You wouldn't know Boromir departed until, well, he'd departed, so what business would it have as a title at the start of the chapter?

 

I wonder if it was because they can be used for foreshadowing. You do see some truly terrible titles in older books, like they might as well have:

Chapter 1 - Don't Stop Reading!
Chapter 2 - The Exciting Bit Is Coming, Promise!
Chapter 3 - OMG INCITING INCIDENT DID YOU SEE IT?
Chapter 4 - Something Terrible Happens. Gasp!

 

Interesting.
I suppose instead of going that route with them, instead
just posing a random nonsensical thought with no relation
to the story would be better.

Chapter 6: I am out of coffee.

 

See, I like that!

One of my critique partners had her book published last year, and I was surprised the publisher kept her chapter titles in - but pleased, because they were hilarious. I think it fitted because her book was very drily humorous. Probably if the titles had been more 'serious' they would have been stripped out. (I forgot about this earlier when I said I hadn't seen chapter titles in ages...)

 

I used chapter titles for a very practical reason. I had 81 chapters, and I couldn't identify one chapter from another very early on. On the other hand "Chapter 20: A Storm at Sea" or " Chapter 41: Nightmare's End" and I knew exactly what was going on for editing. Having done that, and not knowing it was out of fashion, I left them in, and it hasn't hurt me at all. I think if I had not named them, I would not have inserted a table of contents either, which is kind of useless without some mnemonic as to what is going on. As @Tenderiser noted, the title gives the reader, who has already read the chapter, something to remember in order to go back there. It should not be a spoiler as to what happens in advance. I usually title them AFTER I write the chapter.

 

That is a lot of chapters.

 

(Psst: It wasn't me who said that.)

There's often a table of contents in an eBook and it references the chapter name: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. But it's not necessary when there are much more efficient ways to search a book using eReaders.

 

Chapter titles are wasted on me. I like discovery and the element of surprise, so if there are chapter titles I go out of my way not to read them.

 

I tend to add chapter titles for myself while I'm writing so I remember what happens where in the book. They go away after the writing process is done though.

 

Like everything else in the writing do/don't book, some people like chapter titles, some don't. I just finished reading a novel that was traditionally published here in Scotland last month ...with chapter titles. Just one-word titles, mind.

It used to be a fashion to give the chapter a number, followed by a lengthy phrase or two about what the chapter contains. "Chapter Three" - In which a new guy meets our heroine, they go to Spain, their luggage is lost and they are forced to sit in the airport for two weeks contemplating their freaky lives.... "Chapter Four" - In which their luggage is restored to them, but by that time their holiday is over and they are required to board the next plane back home, where they arrive feeling cheated, but are now in love....

You could probably not bother reading the book itself, but just read these wee synopses at the start of each chapter. Kind of an old-fashioned Cliff's Notes. A boon for students?

 

I was always a fan of titled chapters. Especially if the titles were clever and took the reader a while to get the meaning behind it. I thought the author was sooo smart if they did that.

However, since I've grown, chapter titles have become easy to predict chapters and their contents. Which sucks, since I've considered titles chapters a creative tool the author can utilize. I hope they come back in vogue just for cheap nostalgia value if nothing else.

 

There are chapter titles in fantasy books still. It's not in the majority of them, but it's certainly there and wouldn't strike a reader of that genre as too unusual. I don't see it elsewhere than I can recollect.

 

Yeah, that's the old-fashioned chapter synopsis thing, which was very common back a while, and which McCarthy also uses.

I've become quite interested in this topic, so I've been checking up on some of the books I have lying around. I just re-read my childhood copy of Treasure Island, and Stevenson uses chapter titles that 'give away' a lot of what will happen in the chapter (not that I remember this ruining my enjoyment of reading the story.) He has chapter titles like: "Council of War." And "How I Began My Sea Adventure." "The Black Spot Again."

In contrast, I picked up two books from contemporary authors whom I like a lot (and whom I have met at book festivals.) Margaret Elphinstone, an author based in Scotland, in her The Gathering Night: A Wilderness Adventure titles her chapters with the time and place. "First Night: River Mouth Camp." "Second Night: White Beach Camp." And so on. This doesn't give away any of the story, but helps to pinpoint each one in terms of time elapsed and new location.

Newfoundland author Wayne Johnston does something quite interesting. He has divided his historical novel Baltimore's Mansions into distinct chapters. Each chapter starts on a new page and uses drop letters at the beginning, but he neither numbers nor titles them.

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, Phillip Pullman's latest book, uses brief chapter titles such as "The Terrace Room," "The Acorn," etc, which don't give away the plot, but are pertinent to it. He also groups the named chapters into 'parts' which he also names. The two chapters above are from Part One, which he's titled "The Trout."

An excellent historical novel, written by Mary Doria Russell in 2011 about Doc Halliday and Wyatt Earp before they moved to Tombstone, entitled Doc: A Novel, uses titles for chapters as well as titles for the different 'parts' of the book. One part is called The Ante, and it contains only one chapter "Playing For Time. The second part is entitled "First Hand," and that contains three chapters,"The Deal," "Down Cards" and "Show Cards." And etc.

King Rat, by China Mieville, has numbered chapters, but named 'parts.' Part One: GLASS, Part Two: THE NEW CITY, Part Three: LESSONS IN RHYTHM AND HISTORY.

I just finished reading Bernard McLaverty's new book Midwinter Break, and the chapter numbers exist in the table of contents, but don't appear in the text. (At least on my Kindle version.)

It was also interesting to me to realise that some authors from long ago did NOT name their chapters ...at least not in every book. Jane Austen, for example, simply numbered her chapters. So numbering chapters without giving them titles is not a recent thing at all—which surprised me when I discovered this. I thought the simple numbered chapters were a recent thing.

I guess there isn't really any right or wrong way to do this.

 

It all comes down to who're you writing for.
I'm paging through all the YA fantasy books on my shelves and every last one has titled chapters. And so too most of the classic adventure stories I own, which of course were meant for a younger audience at the time. You set the mood with the chapter title. Perhaps it's mysterious, humorous, confusing, whatever. Younger readers need a more structured narrative and chapter headings help in that regard.

 

Wow, thank you all for checking! That's awesome! Kudos to @jannert for going the extra mile. I'm away from my books and can't check to see what my genre does. And I can't remember, because I tune out chapter titles incase there's a spoiler. For my WIP, the date and place will be my chapter headings, because the dates are relevant. For Tori's story, if I use anything but numbers it will probably be the name of the city where she is, since she's a touring musician.

 

Scathing discussion of the chapter titles in “Dragons of Autumn Twilight”

http://www.somethingawful.com/news/bargain-book-bin/

 

Then you can look at how David Wong does chapters, especially in This Book is Full of Spiders, where most of his chapter titles are a countdown to major events in the book. So he'd do "3 Hours Until the Aerial Bombing" and you know something big is coming up, but it might be 8 chapters away. Each chapter counts down to the event, then he starts over with another major event.

 

To be fair, the whole book seems awful, doesn't it? It's not the fault of the chapter titles. Yikes.

 

I read a book with two diverging timelines that used numbered chapters, but they alternated. Chapter One went forward from the starting moment, then Chapter I took us slightly backwards, explaining how we go there. Chapter Two goes further along the storyline, Chapter II reveals more of the backstory.

Of course, he didn't tell us this, so it's a little confusing until you catch the rhythm and labeling.

 

IDK, lol, it was the first fantasy novel I read in jr high. I ran like 10 D&D games based on it but never read it again