Do you label your chapters?

[Rinelle Grey]

I know I've probably asked this before Daniel, but how did you do the awesome chapter graphics? They look great. Every time I tried to make one with a transparent background, it turned out badly pixelated.

[Daniel]

Jun 25, 2015 19:14:03 GMT -5 Rinelle Grey said:

I know I've probably asked this before Daniel, but how did you do the awesome chapter graphics? They look great. Every time I tried to make one with a transparent background, it turned out badly pixelated.

Thanks, Rinelle! It has taken some trial and error. I traced the paw print graphic from a photo of an actual wolf paw print. I put the photo on a layer and traced over it by hand at a fairly high zoom level. I learned a few tricks along the way:

* Create the graphic at a much higher image size than you need. At least double. If your image will be 100 pixels square, start with a min of 200.
* Trace using the pencil tool in "normal" mode with an opacity of 100%. The feathering you get from a brush just gets in the way during the trace.
* After you do the outline trace, fill with the bucket. This is where you'll be glad you used the pencil tool.
* Clean up (or soften) the edges with the brush and eraser. To reduce the feathering effects from both, use a small brush size and work at high zoom. Before I start the cleanup process, I add a white background layer and a black background layer that sit above the photo and below the trace layer. I turn these layers on and off while I work to find stray pixels.
* When I'm done, I turn off the photo and background layers and save to transparent gif.

In the case of the paw print, I didn't go quite high enough in resolution for print. My wife brought the image into Corel Draw and auto-traced it, turning it into a vector graphic. She did the original drawing for the Vaetra Chronicles, so that one started as vector. All of my other chapter images have been bitmaps.

[scdaffron]

Jun 26, 2015 8:40:30 GMT -5 Daniel said:

* Trace using the pencil tool in "normal" mode with an opacity of 100%. The feathering you get from a brush just gets in the way during the trace.

It occurs to me that if you'd used the pen tool in Photoshop, it would have been a vector in the first place. Maybe next time 

That's why I always start with a vector in Corel if I can. Photoshop can import an EPS files at any size you want and then you can resize it and export it as a PNG with a transparent background.

This is the chapter graphic on my books (screen shot from the PDF).

[Daniel]

Jun 26, 2015 8:55:12 GMT -5 scdaffron said:

It occurs to me that if you'd used the pen tool in Photoshop, it would have been a vector in the first place. Maybe next time 

It is a measure of my Photoshop ignorance that I had no idea I could use the pen tool to create a vector layer until now. I was under the impression that Photoshop was strictly a bitmap editing program and that it had to rasterize vectors upon import. Live and learn.

[vrabinec]

Jun 26, 2015 9:07:58 GMT -5 Daniel said:

Jun 26, 2015 8:55:12 GMT -5 scdaffron said:

It occurs to me that if you'd used the pen tool in Photoshop, it would have been a vector in the first place. Maybe next time 

It is a measure of my Photoshop ignorance that I had no idea I could use the pen tool to create a vector layer until now. I was under the impression that Photoshop was strictly a bitmap editing program and that it had to rasterize vectors upon import. Live and learn.

"Rasterize", huh? I learned a new word today.

[Deleted]

Do you chap mean titties?

I love chapter titles. Then again, my chapters can be anything between 5,000 and 12,500 words long. For me it's kind of a theme, and I hope the reader has some tingling of anticipation.

These are the chapter titles of Bonds of Hate, the first book in my Epic Fantasy series.

Chapter 1: Lord Governors of the Northern Marches
Chapter 2: The Ways of the House of Tanahkos
Chapter 3: The Prisoner of Lorseth Castle
Chapter 4: The Devil's Crown
Chapter 5: The Dragon Flies Again
Chapter 6: Clansmen of Anaxantis
Chapter 7: Medicine for the Heart
Chapter 8: Hope in Times of Trouble
Chapter 9: The Road to Soranza
Chapter 10: Friends in Low Places
Chapter 11: The Lioness's Cub
Chapter 12: Fall of the Eagle
Chapter 13: A Traitor in our Midst
Chapter 14: All for Landemere
Chapter 15: Poison in a Pretty Cup
Chapter 16: Empty Promises and Idle Threats
Chapter 17: Ably Performed Deceptions
Chapter 18: A Luxury Denied to Kings
Chapter 19: Burning Questions
Chapter 20: Where the Black Monsters Dwell
Chapter 21: Warlord


It's actually fun coming up with them.



(From Book VII)

[Rinelle Grey]

Thanks Daniel and Susan. I shall (get my sister to) try this for my next book.

That's awesome about tracing a wolf print Daniel, you should mention that fact somewhere, I bet your fans would be interested.

[lou]

I am horrible at titles, so coming up with 30 more makes me break out into hives. I think some of you could make some money over at fiverr, your titles are so good. Hire yourselves out to title for hopeless people like me!

[Tony Donadio]

I'm a strong proponent of titling chapters. I couldn't imagine trying to write a novel without them.

I think the main reason for that has to do with my approach to writing. I look at it as a laying out a progression of events, each integrated by an idea or development that accomplishes something specific in the storytelling process, and that taken together form the main plotline. So I use coming up with chapter titles as part of the process of developing the story itself -- basically by naming elements of the outline to help give the story a structure. (As illustration, I have the chapter outline for the book I'm currently writing online here.)

If I have a theme or idea that holds together a section, then naming and summarizing it in the form of a title helps keep me focused on what it's trying to accomplish. (If I don't have one, then I take that as a signal that my outline isn't complete yet. In that case I need to stop and outline what needs to happen then, and what development in the story underlies it.) If I go too far off course or onto a tangent, the title and the idea / development behind it helps to pull my focus back in -- or to realize that I need to modify the outline to include a new development and a new title. I find it very helpful to keep my writing on track.

I'm finding that the main disadvantage of my approach is that it can sometimes be constraining in advancing the story. Having an "idea" that tries to tie together each chapter makes the story feel more solid to me, but it isn't always convenient when you've got a loose plot thread that doesn't really fit anywhere but is still needed to move the story forward. So I sometimes have to add scenes that don't fully fit the title, although the main thrust of the chapter still does.

Like Dr. M, I name my scenes as well. I found that I couldn't keep track of what was happening in various parts of the story without them, especially when I decided to move scenes within or between chapters. I'm even experimenting right now with leaving the scene names in the chapters to serve as scene break markers to see how that works.

[Rinelle Grey]

I often name scenes as I write, but they're not the sort of things I'd use as chapter titles later! They're more descriptive and spoilerish, but do help me find where I'm up to or look at the overall structure of the story. Then I delete them once I'm done editing!

[scdaffron]

Jun 26, 2015 22:08:57 GMT -5 Rinelle Grey said:

I often name scenes as I write, but they're not the sort of things I'd use as chapter titles later! They're more descriptive and spoilerish, but do help me find where I'm up to or look at the overall structure of the story. Then I delete them once I'm done editing!

HA, me too! In Scrivener, one of the scene titles in book 6 is "Scary shit." Later, another one is "More scary shit."

Needless to say, they won't end up as chapter titles

[Alan Petersen]

This thread made me go back to check out my chapter titles and I just realized I named two chapters the same. I just noticed this now, two years later. Yikes.

Thanks! I can now go fix that.

[Deleted]

Jun 28, 2015 16:29:46 GMT -5 Alan Petersen said:

This thread made me go back to check out my chapter titles and I just realized I named two chapters the same. I just noticed this now, two years later. Yikes.

Thanks! I can now go fix that.

Ouch.

[whdean]

Jun 26, 2015 14:13:50 GMT -5 @andrew said:

Do you chap mean titties?

I love chapter titles. Then again, my chapters can be anything between 5,000 and 12,500 words long. For me it's kind of a theme, and I hope the reader has some tingling of anticipation.

These are the chapter titles of Bonds of Hate, the first book in my Epic Fantasy series.

Chapter 1: Lord Governors of the Northern Marches
Chapter 2: The Ways of the House of Tanahkos
Chapter 3: The Prisoner of Lorseth Castle
Chapter 4: The Devil's Crown
Chapter 5: The Dragon Flies Again
Chapter 6: Clansmen of Anaxantis
Chapter 7: Medicine for the Heart
Chapter 8: Hope in Times of Trouble
Chapter 9: The Road to Soranza
Chapter 10: Friends in Low Places
Chapter 11: The Lioness's Cub
Chapter 12: Fall of the Eagle
Chapter 13: A Traitor in our Midst
Chapter 14: All for Landemere
Chapter 15: Poison in a Pretty Cup
Chapter 16: Empty Promises and Idle Threats
Chapter 17: Ably Performed Deceptions
Chapter 18: A Luxury Denied to Kings
Chapter 19: Burning Questions
Chapter 20: Where the Black Monsters Dwell
Chapter 21: Warlord


It's actually fun coming up with them.



(From Book VII)

See now, I like those titles. Nice and snappy. Makes me want to read the book.

Once thing I forgot to mention before. Chapter titles disappeared as chapters got shorter, yes, but there's something more to that. Chapters themselves have changed, especially in thrillers. A chapter is now more of a scene than an episode, so naming them makes less sense because the chapters are just breaks between scenes.

[Daniel]

Jun 30, 2015 21:37:36 GMT -5 whdean said:

Once thing I forgot to mention before. Chapter titles disappeared as chapters got shorter, yes, but there's something more to that. Chapters themselves have changed, especially in thrillers. A chapter is now more of a scene than an episode, so naming them makes less sense because the chapters are just breaks between scenes.

Why does naming chapters make less sense when they are individual scenes?

I've never really thought of a chapter as an episode. Whenever I've seen someone ask about how to break a book up into chapters on a forum, you get many different opinions and nothing close to a consensus. When I look up the definition, I get "a main division of a book," which seems sufficiently vague as to allow just about any interpretation you want. I use chapters as a collection of related scenes, but I also break to a new chapter at every POV change.

[whdean]

Jul 1, 2015 7:04:15 GMT -5 Daniel said:

Jun 30, 2015 21:37:36 GMT -5 whdean said:

Once thing I forgot to mention before. Chapter titles disappeared as chapters got shorter, yes, but there's something more to that. Chapters themselves have changed, especially in thrillers. A chapter is now more of a scene than an episode, so naming them makes less sense because the chapters are just breaks between scenes.

Why does naming chapters make less sense when they are individual scenes?

I've never really thought of a chapter as an episode. Whenever I've seen someone ask about how to break a book up into chapters on a forum, you get many different opinions and nothing close to a consensus. When I look up the definition, I get "a main division of a book," which seems sufficiently vague as to allow just about any interpretation you want. I use chapters as a collection of related scenes, but I also break to a new chapter at every POV change.

Episode is probably not the best word. I'm thinking of thrillers here, where each chapter is around 1,500 words, and where they never go much beyond a scene. Naming these chapters with anything other than a description strikes me as odd. For example, "Chapter 1: Pritchard meets Donna and Jim."

[vrabinec]

I'm assuming the chapter titles will be ignored unless someone needs to find their place. I see it as a town name on an exit sign to compliment the exit number. In a thriller someone like Patterson writes, there are some five paragraph chapters. I think it's possible that a title could give away what happens in those five paragraphs with one word, and leave the reader wondering "Why bother reading the chapter if I can figure out what's gonna happen by the title?", so I'm trying to title mine with something that's distinctive about that chapter, but doesn't even hint of what's going on. If it's a name, the reader should already suspect the POC character was going to meet the person. If it's a place, the reader should already know the POV character was going there. Otherwise, I try to find something else, even if it's a part of the setting.

[Daniel]

Jul 2, 2015 9:00:42 GMT -5 vrabinec said:

I'm assuming the chapter titles will be ignored unless someone needs to find their place. I see it as a town name on an exit sign to compliment the exit number. In a thriller someone like Patterson writes, there are some five paragraph chapters. I think it's possible that a title could give away what happens in those five paragraphs with one word, and leave the reader wondering "Why bother reading the chapter if I can figure out what's gonna happen by the title?", so I'm trying to title mine with something that's distinctive about that chapter, but doesn't even hint of what's going on. If it's a name, the reader should already suspect the POC character was going to meet the person. If it's a place, the reader should already know the POV character was going there. Otherwise, I try to find something else, even if it's a part of the setting.

Your approach works for me, as it should, since I do more or less the same thing. The key is that your chapter titles probably do make sense after the reader has read the chapter. The title functions as a useful way-marker for readers who want to find something they read earlier, but scanning the TOC without knowledge of the content doesn't give the story away. That's the theory, anyway.

[vrabinec]

Jul 2, 2015 9:23:05 GMT -5 Daniel said:

Jul 2, 2015 9:00:42 GMT -5 vrabinec said:

I'm assuming the chapter titles will be ignored unless someone needs to find their place. I see it as a town name on an exit sign to compliment the exit number. In a thriller someone like Patterson writes, there are some five paragraph chapters. I think it's possible that a title could give away what happens in those five paragraphs with one word, and leave the reader wondering "Why bother reading the chapter if I can figure out what's gonna happen by the title?", so I'm trying to title mine with something that's distinctive about that chapter, but doesn't even hint of what's going on. If it's a name, the reader should already suspect the POC character was going to meet the person. If it's a place, the reader should already know the POV character was going there. Otherwise, I try to find something else, even if it's a part of the setting.

Your approach works for me, as it should, since I do more or less the same thing. The key is that your chapter titles probably do make sense after the reader has read the chapter. The title functions as a useful way-marker for readers who want to find something they read earlier, but scanning the TOC without knowledge of the content doesn't give the story away. That's the theory, anyway.

Yeah, and that gets tougher at the end of the book. Early on, you can use names when a character is introduced and things like that, but later in the book, you've already used names and places, so you have to get more creative. Luckily, the chapters toward don't really need to be all that distinctive since the reader is closing in on the finish line and doesn't have that same sense of being in a big, foreign market, looking for his wife.

[sheilawrites]

I haven't been naming chapters, mainly because I haven't felt like it works with what I'm writing. Also, I've been spending a fair bit of time doing mostly short stories, which I don't use chapters for anyway.

Early on, when I was first working on my UF novel, I was using yWriter and I did give each scene and chapter a spiffy little title ("wherein Bel meets a wizard" sort of thing), which helped when I was looking over the project and seeing how everything worked together.

I meant to add that I normally just skip names of chapters when I'm reading. I've found myself trying to figure out why the chapter was named as it was, rather than paying attention to the story, and it was making it hard to follow the plot. I skip little quotes/poems for the same reason.