Chapter Titles

[Fenris]

Amazon.com has revealed the titles of three chapters (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0439784549/qid=1117483554/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-2403983-3275969?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) in the next Harry Potter book. Which has me thinking about the fact that Rowling uses chapter titles.

This is fairly unusual, I think: most modern fiction writers just have numbered chapters, if even that, and don't bother with a table of contents.

Do you like chapter titling? When there is a table of contents (as in the Harry Potter books) do you ever read it to check for spoilers?

[Scott Beeler]

I think chapter titles can serve to pique the reader's curiosity and raise their interest. Good authors can do it without giving away spoilers. Having titles instead of just numbers is not something which strongly affects my reading experience, but it can be neat. One of my favorite users of chapter titles is SF author Ken MacLeod, for such novels as The Star Fraction (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0765301563/ref=sib_rdr_toc/104-1515927-2524732?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S007#reader-page), The Stone Canal (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0812568648/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc/104-1515927-2524732?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S009#reader-page), Cosmonaut Keep (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0765340739/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc/104-1515927-2524732?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00C#reader-link), and Newton's Wake (http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/076534422X/ref=sib_dp_pop_toc/104-1515927-2524732?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00B#reader-page).

[Fenris]

It can certainly arouse interest. (And thank you for the MacLeod links!)

Thinking it over, oddly enough, I use chapter titles mostly in looking back- if I want to find a scene or a character moment in a book I've read before, it's a lot easier if the chapters are titled, since that makes it so much simpler to track the plot.

[Jonathan Bogart]

Amazon.com has revealed the titles of three chapters (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0439784549/qid=1117483554/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-2403983-3275969?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) in the next Harry Potter book. Which has me thinking about the fact that Rowling uses chapter titles.

This is fairly unusual, I think: most modern fiction writers just have numbered chapters, if even that, and don't bother with a table of contents.
Isn't this much more a convention of children's fiction than a conscious artistic choice by Rowling? It's a rare "young readers" book that doesn't have chapter titles. And, as you note, a rare "novel for grownups" that has them.

The only time I really notice chapter titles is when they're awful puns or similarly corny. The old L. Frank Baum Oz books had long, alliterative chapter titles "Plasticene Perils of a Pulchritudinous Princess," and the like. But I generally have a bad habit of never looking at titles; my eyes go straight to the big blocks of text.

[Fenris]

Isn't this much more a convention of children's fiction than a conscious artistic choice by Rowling? It's a rare "young readers" book that doesn't have chapter titles. And, as you note, a rare "novel for grownups" that has them.

Hm. That's very true. But why?


The only time I really notice chapter titles is when they're awful puns or similarly corny. The old L. Frank Baum Oz books had long, alliterative chapter titles "Plasticene Perils of a Pulchritudinous Princess," and the like. But I generally have a bad habit of never looking at titles; my eyes go straight to the big blocks of text.

Well, the big blocks of text are what you're there to read, after all. And titles usually seem to be more meaningful after I've read a chapter than before.

[berk]

I love the old fashioned, long-winded chapter titles in books like Don Quixote, where they tell you everything that happens in the chapter without really giving away the good stuff; you know, stuff like,

Chapter 3.
In which we learn how cleverly Don Quijote decided to have himself dubbed a knight.

Chapter 18.
What happened to Don Quijote in the castle (or house) of the Knight of the Green Overcoat, along with other odd and unusual things.

Dickens used to do this too, at least in his earlier novels, like Nicholas Nickleby.

Another good one is the Chinese novel, The Story of the Stone, or A Dream of Red Mansions, in which the titles all exhibit a dyadic structure (a pattern followed in several of the other Chinese novels I've read as well, Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, etc):

Chapter 24.
The Drunken Diamond shows nobility of character in handling his money;
and the Quiet-voiced Girl provides material for fantasy by losing her handkerchief.

Chapter 39.
An inventive old countrywoman tells a tale of somewhat questionable veracity;
And an impressionalble young listener insists on getting to the bottom of the matter.

Jerome K Jerome's chapter descriptions in Three Men In A Boat are some of my favourites. They're cleverly designed so that the humour can be fully appreciated only after you read the chpater itself and find out what he was talking about in the title:

Chapter 2.
Plans discussed - Pleasures of 'camping out', on fine nights - Ditto, wet nights - Compromise decided on - Montmorency, first impressions of - Fears lest he is too good for this world, fears subsequently dismissed as groundless - Meeting adjourned.

(Not a chapter title, but P.G.Wodehouse did something similar on at least one occasion I can recall in the title of one of his Ukridge stories. Jonathan Bogart probably knows the one I'm thinking; I remember bursting out laughing when I read the last line of the story).

A also like the more modern stlye of terse, evocative chapter titles. Ian Fleming used to come up with some good ones in his Bond novels.