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Chapter 20: Structuring a Longer Work of Fiction
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Heading off to a chapter name
You can number your chapters, give them titles, head them with the name of
the character whose viewpoint is contained, or include the time and place
of the action. Different systems suit different kinds of books, and the decision
of how to label the chapters is purely up to you.
Titling your chapters is a useful way of increasing narrative suspense by indicating
that something dramatic is about to happen. If you title a chapter ‘A
Firestorm’ or ‘Lightning Strikes’, you pique readers’ interest.
Think of those old-fashioned books that give a summary of what’s going
to happen at the start of each chapter, such as in the children’s novel
Winnie-the-Pooh:
Chapter 2 . . . in which Pooh goes visiting and gets into a tight place
—AA Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh, Methuen, 1926)
Another great example of a novel with chapter headings is Cormac McCarthy’s
Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (1985). The neutral tone of
the headings contrasts brilliantly with the amoral savagery of the text.
Giving each chapter a title can help you to focus on what the chapter is about
and allow you to spot when a chapter is too ‘bitty’ and made up of too many
strands.
Just for fun, give your chapters titles. These can be working titles you write as
you go, or you may prefer to come up with titles for each chapter after you
finish writing.
Thinking about chapter patterns
Organising your chapters into a pattern is useful. You may have a thematic
reason for the book including a certain number of chapters. Although this
isn’t strictly necessary, a pattern can give you a template to work within.
Also, readers are often unconsciously aware of symmetry within a story and
respond to it positively.
Here are some examples of chapter patterns in novels:
✓ Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (2006): Contains 108 chapters and is
divided into three sections of 36 chapters each. Gilbert chose the number
108 because the ‘rosary’ of beads used by Hindus is made up of that
number of beads. One hundred and eight is considered an auspicious
number because it divides into threes, and because the three digits 108
add up to nine, which is three times three. Gilbert also said that she was
36 years old when she wrote the book.