Your what?
Neat things authors do
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
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Oops sorry, my mom.
Not sure if everyone saw this up-thread when I edited my post.
Have any of you ever done this? How do you choose your quotes? Past experience reading them in situ, or consulting a memorable quotes book? (Trek seems to like lit quotes as episode titles, too)
I opened the chapters with quotes in my debut novel, Ex Machina, and I figured at the time that I'd do it regularly, but I never reused the practice until The Captain's Oath. Most of the quotes are lines from episodes or invented quotes of in-universe documents about or relating to the events of the story, but I included the occasional real-world quote when it was relevant.
When I began the "3.0" from-scratch draft of my novel, I decided (in addition to the constraint of having chapter titles that [1] alliterated, and [2] contained at least one musical term) that I'd begin each chapter with some kind of quote, some in-universe, and some from real life. (I've mentioned before that I'm setting the thing in type, as I go, partly because I can, partly because it's the easiest way to see what it would actually look like, printed and bound, and partly because it might very well end up as a genuine self-publication; as such, I start the quote with a drop-cap, and then start the chapter proper with another drop-cap.)
Last night, at a chamber music concert at Disney Hall, some of what came up in this thread and the "annoying" thread caused me to come up with (and mentally draft) a short story that took a major episode of that novel, and retold it from an entirely different point of view. Hopefully, I'll have time this week to actually write the thing down before I forget it.
Last night, at a chamber music concert at Disney Hall, some of what came up in this thread and the "annoying" thread caused me to come up with (and mentally draft) a short story that took a major episode of that novel, and retold it from an entirely different point of view. Hopefully, I'll have time this week to actually write the thing down before I forget it.
What's your favorite chapter heading quote?
You asking anybody in particular, or everybody on the thread? And are you asking authors about their own works, or readers about the works of others, or all of the above?
All of the above.
While I'm entirely certain that I've read books in which each chapter started with a quote, or a real-life historical note, or an in-universe historical note, oblique comment or something else outside the narrative (I had to have gotten the idea somewhere), no particular examples from outside my own opus-in-progress come to mind. Other than maybe something out of Dune, or one of the "Solomon Short" epigrams that David Gerrold ultimately cut from the novel for which he'd created them.
But here's one of pretty much average length from one of my own chapters:
But here's one of pretty much average length from one of my own chapters:
This at the head of a chapter that has nothing to do with astronomy, and everything to do with outside-the-box problem-solving.
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The book I'm currently reading quotes Bible verses at the top of each chapter.
Which makes perfect sense, if it's still the one that's rather closely connected with the Purim story.
Yeah, the quotes are thematic to the content of the chapters, not contextual (other books besides just Esther)
Re-reading Dante's Divine Comedy, this time in the Binyon Translation, I'm reminded that these oblique comments at the beginnings of chapters could arguably (pun intended) be referred to as "Arguments." (see noun sense #3 in Wiktionary). Longfellow's translation does not include arguments at the heads of cantos, and neither does the original Italian, but Binyon's does, and I seem to recall reading one other epic poem or other classic literary work with arguments (specifically so-designated) at the heads of the major divisions, maybe Paradise Lost(?).
There's an argument at the beginning of Shakespeare's narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece. That's the only one I can think of.
Paradise Lost. At least, in the B&N paperback edition I have (and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'm guessing they are editorial additions).
Have you ever been inspired to seek out a quoted work and read it after seeing it in a book?
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