Comments on: More on Chapter Titles

By: Amanda Brice

Amanda Brice — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:40:14 +0000

I love chapter titles but I fear I’m not clever enough to come up with them.

By: Carrie

Carrie — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:26:53 +0000

Haha, Patrick. Whereas I started to read The Princess Bride, got so bogged down in googling the info in the introduction to learn more that I never made it farther into the book!

I also like chapter titles but I’m not used to looking for them so I have to remind myself to read them!

By: Liza

Liza — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:35:32 +0000

I like chapter titles if they work with the book(like yours). Some books really are good with just a number at the top of each chapter.

By: Susan Adrian

Susan Adrian — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:27:39 +0000

Diana: Don't know if you've seen this, but if you haven't, you need to. http://www.boredstop.com/imgp/stufftoy7.jpg

By: Rhiannon

Rhiannon — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:20:34 +0000

Oh Diana – no need for more math references! They are much more boring than literary references (um, even if I don’t GET the literary references. The only books I remember reading/devouring in college were by Jared Diamond and William Cronon)

It was just a moment that actually touched upon MY college experience – having gone to a public university that focused on agriculture and technology and, as far as I know, doesn’t have any secret societies. And while it was just a title – I did spend an entire semester (and repeat that same damn course the following summer) focusing on just about nothing but calculus applications of Sin,Cos, and Tan. Absolutely none of which has been the least bit important in my engineering career. But I digress.

(Let this be a lesson dear children: Engineering degrees suck)

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:09:41 +0000

Somethings are just hard to tell if they are important to the story. My wife just read The Princess Bride but skipped over the introduction, not realizing it was part of the story.

I’ve heard that Robert Jordan’s graphic symbols at the beginning of every chapter are said to reveal something about the story and that there are people who study them.

Things like that I think are cool, though I never take the time to figure out myself.

By: JJ

JJ — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:14:58 +0000

I think some books call for chapter titles and some don’t, if that makes sense. Books start developing their own personalities the more I start writing them. The first draft of my novel had chapter titles that gave a little hint of what the chapter was about thematically (e.g. the first was called “The Girl in the Garret” which I felt was fairy-tale-ish and because my protagonist was hiding in the attic imagining stories and the second was called “Honour Thy Mother and Father” which referenced the religious undertones as well as said something about the familial relationships taking place in my book). However, after a huge rewrite in which the protagonist aged a few years, the chapter titles disappeared. I toyed with adding them, but the story just didn’t want them anymore.

As for the books I read, I will always read chapter titles if they’re there, but it makes no difference to me whether or not the author includes them. I will, however, always acknowledge a particularly brilliant title if I come across one.

By: Diana

Diana — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:40:10 +0000

thanks, Rhiannon! I’m clearly not paying enough attention to the math fans. It’s just Amy, you know. That’s not her bag…

By: Rhiannon

Rhiannon — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:37:16 +0000

I LOVED “Sin and Cosin” as a chapter title. I thought it was a great play on words, and it felt like a little throw of props to any mathmatical geeks in the reading audience!
After all of the literary references that go right over this engineer’s head, it was nice to have to read twice to realize that it was a trigonometry reference.