Book Of Authors

Author: Yang Chen（314）

3. Chapter names

If your novel title is considered the main advertis.e.m.e.nt for your story, then chapter names are advertis.e.m.e.nts for each individual chapter.

Compared to your novel title, each individual chapter's name is of course far less important. However, if you add all the chapter names together, it's still an influence that you shouldn't ignore.

In comparison to your novel title, the main trait of chapter titles is that the good ones won't really help you that much, but they can be a critical factor in making your book into a failure. A good chapter title probably won't help to attract more readers, but a terrible chapter title is more than enough to cause you to lose many readers. And so, the most important thing about choosing a chapter title is to avoid risk. Generally, you should obey the following six principles when choosing chapter titles.

（1） Avoid elements that can cause your novel to fail

Causing your novel to fail refers to commercializing your novel but finding out that your novel later massively drops in popularity. Naturally, there are elements out there that can cause an originally popular novel to suddenly take a steep nosedive. We should take all necessary precautions so that these elements aren't a part of your chapter titles.

For instance, a plot where the main character's boyfriend or girlfriend is stolen away by another character. The large majority of authors know that this is a huge taboo of any novel. However, some authors might attempt to create suspense or simply attempt to subvert readers' expectations by having chapter titles that hint at such a thing occurring even if they don't actually write about it.

To be honest, this is quite an unwise way to name your chapter title. Some readers will misunderstand and directly give up on your novel, which will give you irrecoverable losses. And even for the readers that force themselves to read your chapter despite not enjoying the content they think they're about to read, finding out that the author just played a joke on them won't make them enjoy themselves, either.

（2） Avoid too many plot spoilers

No matter if it's in your synopsis, or in your chapter titles, an appropriate amount of spoiling is fine. For example, telling readers that your main character will finally end up conquering the world and being the most powerful individual around is fine. This won't have any negative effects on the readers.

However, some types of spoilers might cause your suspenseful plot or foreshadowing that you worked so hard on to lose its effectiveness. That type of spoiling is no good.

For example, let's say that your main character's clan is under threat from powerful enemies and might be destroyed at any moment. In such a situation, readers will continue reading, wondering about what will end up happening to the main character's plan.

However, if some of the later chapter titles have a name like "The main character's clan is destroyed," or "The main character escapes by himself," then readers will learn the plot without even needing to guess.

While this might not necessarily cause all readers to give up on reading your novel, you've definitely lost one reason why a reader would be interested in continuing to read your novel.

（3） Limit the number of words in your chapter title

This factor isn't really a critical one, as technically there's no limit on how long your chapter titles can be. It can be as many words as you want. What truly limits the number of words in your chapter name is the appearance of the interface readers use to read your novel. This is mostly shown in two ways.

First, if you have an overly long chapter name, this will cause some websites to have disorganized or misshapen webpages. Although this can be attributed to a web design problem, it's still a matter related to your concrete benefits. That's why you as an author should pay attention to the issue of word count in your chapter name.

Second, what if you have chapter names that are wildly inconsistent in length? If they're all over the place, it will make your book's table of contents look wildly disorganized. This is quite easy for anyone to see. As long as you as an author take a look at your own table of contents, it's easy to prevent this from happening.

（4） No matter what, you should have chapter names

Some authors might consider themselves to be unskilled at thinking of names. Even thinking of a novel title is hard enough already for them. Naturally, they will want to save effort by not having chapter names at all, and only having chapter numbers.

However, as long as you don't have any problem elements in your chapter names, even a boring chapter name is better than no chapter name at all. A table of contents that only has chapter numbers in it will look really unappetizing to readers.

（5） Appropriately utilize wish-fulfillment factors

As long as it doesn't spoil too much, an appropriately wish-fulfillment chapter name can slightly increase the possibility of attracting new readers without lowering the quality of your novel.

What's more important is that this type of chapter name can give readers something to look forward to. Since most novels are unable to maintain interesting factors all throughout, being able to keep your old readers' interest is something quite meaningful.

4. Non-chapter chapters

What non-chapter chapters refer to are chapters that are just about asking for votes, telling the readers you need a short break, explaining a bug that went wrong with the website, explanatory chapters to explain something to the readers, and so on. This applies to both free chapters and paid chapters.

These chapters that aren't actually part of the story are chapters that you should periodically delete. However, there are differences among them.

For any chapters that are about you asking for a break or explaining that you have a writer's block, you absolutely have to delete them later on. Leaving them in your story is doubtlessly nothing but slapping your own face. Do you think that there aren't enough failed novels out there? You absolutely want the readers to know that you can't have inconsistent updates? Even if you can't have consistent updates, you should at least let the readers finish reading what you've already written.

As for chapters asking for votes, you can appropriately leave a few, especially if you're one of the top-ranked authors competing for the top few spots. That's because readers can understand upon seeing these chapters that your novel is one of the most popular. This will help the readers to gain confidence in your novel.

Of course, even if you keep such chapters, you should only keep one or two at most. You need to delete the majority of such chapters asking for votes. Otherwise, it'll really affect the readers' sense of immersion when reading your novel.

Compared to chapters asking for votes, chapters stating your feelings for becoming a front-page novel or receiving an award aren't actually non-chapter chapters that need to be discarded. That's because you won't have many such chapters to begin with, probably only one or two, and you can set such chapters aside in a different category, separated from the main novel, which won't affect the readers' reading experience.

The fact that your novel can become a front page recommended novel is itself a good advertis.e.m.e.nt for your novel's quality and popularity. Leaving your own author's thoughts on receiving this award is just like an emblem of glory. No matter if you do a good job or not with your own author's comments, the fact that it exists is proof of your novel's popularity. That's why I recommend keeping such chapters.

As for chapters that are explanations to the readers, especially chapters aimed at discussing the flaws that readers point out in your story, this should be based on the specific circ.u.mstances. But in most cases, I recommend deleting such chapters.

That's because this method is basically akin to revealing your own shortcomings for all to see. Only a few readers would probably notice these flaws in your story to begin with as few readers read the comments, but if you have an explanatory chapter like this, every single reader will find out the flaws in your own novel, which will cause them to enjoy the story less. Why bring this upon yourself?

Of course, oftentimes, so-called story flaws don't really exist. It's often caused by reader misperceptions or misunderstandings. But even so, if a new reader sees the author f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y explaining him or herself to the readers, the new reader will unconsciously think that the novel isn't a good novel.