Craft Chat Titling your Chapters: Yay or Nay?

[RedSquiggle]

When is it worth it to title chapters?

Currently, my SFF thriller project does not have chapter titles. I'm not opposed to adding them, but am unsure if it will make any difference in the hunt for publishing or the reading experience.

 

[Aethalope]

I write SFF and use chapter titles for three separate reasons, although they don't really relate to publishing as such.

First, I write in Scrivener, and having the chapter titles in the binder window simplifies navigation.

Second, when I was running a work through a weekly critique group, they said that they appreciated chapter titles because it was a reminder of the story itself as well as a hint of what was to come.

Third, I currently have an ongoing work on royalroad. I don't do ads or shoutout swaps, so the 'latest chapter' list is my only way to get new readers. Interesting chapter titles tend to pull in more eyes.

Otherwise, I think that having chapter titles helps me stay focused on what each chapter is about....a sort of mini story perhaps.

 

[RK Wallis]

i use them for one of the same reasons as @Aethalope - I use Scrivener. Not sure if I'll keep these ones. I've played with them and without them on previous books. I'd say I'm on the fence What do your comp title authors do?

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

I use chapter titles as subheadings in my word document so I can easily navigate from one to the other (when editing out of order) using "navigation view". However, the answer to your question is it's totally up to you and your story. It won't affect publication chances. The one situation, though, that it really helps is when you have multiple POVs. If different characters control different chapters, it helps to have the chapters headed with the narrator-character's name. Plus it's fun for the reader to know "oh, I'm back with Inan" or whoever it is. (Or for me to skip Ducrathi chapters in GOT because I hated the violence.)

 

[Sedayne]

I don't know if it's a matter of personal preference or if there is any psychology behind it, but I love chapter titles as both a reader and a writer.

 

[Bloo]

I also like chapter titles - reading and especially writing them. Yet the way I do it might be an authorial conceit (even though Sedayne liked my Chapter-8 title ). Mine mean something only after you're deep into the chapter. Then it's like, "Oh, I get it." I don't mean them to be spoilers, and don't like it when others write them like that.

Like Trampoline Hannah said, some writers use character names as chapter titles so we know who's head we're in. This is a very popular approach in Romance, where the reader expects to hear the thoughts of both MCs.

Cormac McCarthy goes bananas with his chapter titles. He strings together paragraph-long sentence fragments that summarize what's coming. I've not read anything else like it, and pretty sure he's the only writer who can pull it off.

 

[Sarit]

I'm quite lazy on chapter titles. If I had to think of them it would be the death of me because I'd agonise over them like each chapter title was a title to a separate novel. So I stay clear of that and just number them. Problem is I have no road map and forget what I put in which chapter...so eventually I have to write a legend of sort to briefly explain in one sentence what I did in each chapter.

 

[RedSquiggle]

I also like chapter titles - reading and especially writing them. Yet the way I do it might be an authorial conceit (even though Sedayne liked my Chapter-8 title ). Mine mean something only after you're deep into the chapter. Then it's like, "Oh, I get it." I don't mean them to be spoilers, and don't like it when others write them like that.

Like Trampoline Hannah said, some writers use character names as chapter titles so we know who's head we're in. This is a very popular approach in Romance, where the reader expects to hear the thoughts of both MCs.

Cormac McCarthy goes bananas with his chapter titles. He strings together paragraph-long sentence fragments that summarize what's coming. I've not read anything else like it, and pretty sure he's the only writer who can pull it off.

"Mine mean something only after you're deep into the chapter. Then it's like, "Oh, I get it." I don't mean them to be spoilers, and don't like it when others write them like that."

This is what I ended up doing yesterday! Great minds think alike. I drew from a reference or theme from the end of the chapter. I enjoyed it. It also let me know a couple of my chapters weren't up to snuff. I was like, "I should be able to put something punchy here," but then the chapter wasn't punchy. So those chapters go bye-bye and I'm replacing one scene with a better one.