The Great Chapter Number Conspiracy...

There are few debates in writing that have survived the centuries with quite the same stubbornness as the Oxford comma, the eternal "said" versus "exclaimed" argument, or whether prologues are literary appetizers or the narrative equivalent of making your guests stand in the hallway for twenty minutes.

Yet somehow, tucked quietly among these battlegrounds, lives another question that has consumed more coffee, more notebooks, and more collective brainpower than it probably deserves:

Should your chapters have numbers, titles, or both?

This is the sort of question that begins as an innocent thought and somehow ends with three writers passionately defending their position using examples from Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, and a fantasy novel nobody else has read.

Nobody enters the conversation intending to argue. Yet everyone leaves convinced they've been personally attacked.

The Number People insist simplicity is elegance. A chapter is Chapter One because it is, quite literally, the first chapter.

Why complicate matters?

Numbers are clean. They're unobtrusive. They don't telegraph what's coming next, and they don't tempt the author into writing something like Chapter Eight: Everything Goes Horribly, Spectacularly Wrong (Again). They believe chapter headings should behave like good stagehands: present, useful, and otherwise invisible.

The Title People, on the other hand, treat every chapter heading as an opportunity to flirt with the reader. A good title is a promise, a joke, a breadcrumb, or occasionally an outright lie.

They'll happily name a chapter Where the Crows Develop an Interest in Tax Fraud or Jerald Makes Another Decision That Future Jerald Will Regret, because if you're going to pause the story, why not make that pause entertaining?

Then there are the diplomatic souls who choose both.

They give us Chapter Twelve followed immediately by The Day Common Sense Took a Holiday, as though they're unwilling to commit to either philosophy. It's the literary equivalent of wearing both a belt and suspenders.

Is it necessary? Probably not. Does it work? Surprisingly often.

Here's the uncomfortable truth, though: readers care far less about this than writers do. Readers don't lie awake wondering whether your chapters should be numbered with Arabic numerals, Roman numerals, or interpreted through the phases of the moon. Readers care about one thing above all else: whether they want to keep turning the page.

If you've done your job well, you could label your chapters with IKEA product names, increasingly disappointed emojis, or the scientific names of mushrooms, and readers would barely notice. If you've failed to hook them, no chapter title in the world—not even one embossed in gold leaf and narrated by Morgan Freeman—will save the next page.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably admit my bias.

I'm firmly in the Chapter Title camp.

Not because they're better. Not because they're more literary. Certainly not because there's a rule somewhere in the Great Writer's Handbook etched into a stone tablet.

I just love them.

A good chapter title is like the opening act warming up the crowd. It sets the mood, hints at the chaos to come, and occasionally misdirects the reader so completely that, two pages later, they mutter, "Oh... that's what it meant."

Some of my own favorites include:

• ONWARDS TO THE EMERALD CITY OF SALT LAKE

• BACK IN SUBURBAN HELL

• SHITTIER PLANS

• SKINHEADS TO THE RIGHT, ASSHATS TO THE LEFT

• MEAT, AVOCADO, AND MAYHEM

  
  

Do they tell you exactly what's about to happen?

Not remotely.

Do they establish a tone before you've even read the first sentence?

Absolutely.

To me, that's the magic. A chapter title doesn't need to explain itself. It needs to whisper, Something interesting is about to happen. Buckle up, chum.

Sometimes it's dramatic. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's just weird enough that the reader has to keep going to find out what on earth Meat, Avocado, and Mayhem has to do with anything.