Chapter Titles in Fiction—Love, Loathe, or Ignore?
Most of the books I read are on Kindle, and the Kindle book often defaults to opening at Chapter One. As such, I don’t see the Table of Contents to know whether there are chapter titles or not (although I suspect not).
It’s therefore a surprise when I do see chapter titles.
As it happens, I saw this question on Twitter this week. Most of the respondents seemed to like chapter titles … but they were also authors who used chapter titles. I’m not convinced that was an unbiased sample.
Personally, I’m not a fan.
Why not? Because too often, the chapter titles feel like they are telling me what’s going to be in the next chapter.
Here’s an example (from the Twitter thread I read):
While there are a couple of clever chapter titles, some are too obvious and “telling” what’s going to happen. It almost looks like a copy of their beat sheet (a tool some writers use in planning their novel). I can see that being useful for authors.
I’m not so sure it’s great for readers.
I can see this being useful in children’s fiction, especially for parents or teachers who are reading aloud to children. Having a “spoiler” chapter title give the reader an idea of what is coming so they can choose to stop reading at an appropriate time.
As an adult, it feels childish. After all, why read the book if I can get the essence of the story by reading the Table of Contents?
I know some authors use chapter titles when writing, both to remind them what they’ve already written and to act as a prompt for what should happen in the next scene or chapter. But they typically get deleted during editing.
It’s hard to come up with good chapter titles. If they’re not needed, why bother? Why not spend that time and creative effort on polishing the writing instead?
