Meaningful Titles: Writing More than Numbers
Usually, the titles of chapters within books are numbers. In Stephenie Meyer’s novel Breaking Dawn (the fourth book in the Twilight Saga), the chapter titles are used as a tool to communicate the story along with naming the chapters. The book is about a young woman, named Bella, who is about to marry into a family of vampires. The book is divided into three sections. The first and last are told by Bella Cullen while the middle section is narrated by her friend Jacob. The switching of narrators gives the reader a chance to get to know Jacob primarily during a time when he cared more about keeping Bella’s heart beating than she did.The chapter titles of Breaking Dawn are single words in the parts told by Bella and often entire sentences when Jacob is narrating. The titles summarize the narrator's point of view while hinting at future events. Reading the character’s thoughts towards events before the anecdotes gives the reader a stronger understanding of the narrator, foreshadowing what will happen.
In “Irresistible,” Bella, now a vampire, narrates that her daughter, Renesmee, uses her talent to earn the trust of vampires. The chapter before “Talented” was titled “Irresistible” in order to communicate Bella’s attraction towards her own daughter. When the reader turns the page to see “Talented” as a chapter title, it is first assumed that Bella will continue to describe Renesmee’s talent. Previous chapters had suggested that Bella had no extra talent beyond average vampire abilities. However in “Talented,” Eleazar, one of the vampires who meets Renesmee, informs the Cullens that Bella has a talent as well. Eleazar has the ability to foresee other vampires’ powers. Bella doubts that she is really talented until Renesmee reassures her. “ ‘Momma, you’re special,’ Renesmee told me without any surprise, like she was commenting on the color of my clothes” (pg. 598). When Renesmee tells Bella that she is “special” in an unsurprised tone, Bella begins to feel “talented.” Bella felt uncertain when Eleazar suggested her talent. Renesmee was who Bella saw as “talented” and “irresistible,” making Renesmee the one who needed to assure Bella before she could believe it. The chapter title summarizes how Bella feels in the moment Renesmee called her special (truly “talented”).
In the chapters told in Jacob’s perspective, he stays with Bella as she is dying and still human. Siding with Bella and the vampires threatens Jacob’s relationship with his own family (who consider vampires their enemies), yet Jacob stays. One of the chapter titles in this section of the book is “What do I look like? The Wizard of OZ? You need a brain? You need a heart? Go ahead. Take mine. Take everything I have” (pg. 329). The sarcasm of Jacob comparing himself to the Wizard of OZ in this chapter title indicates that the situation occurring in this chapter is aggravating Jacob. The chapter title foreshadows that everything Jacob has will be taken from him, including his heart and mind. The words “go ahead” lets the reader know that Jacob will do this willingly. Knowing that Jacob is willing to give what he has away before the events actually occur allows the reader to understand Jacob’s state of mind within the chapter. If the reader had only been given plot, the reader may have never known Jacob was willing to give himself away, and the reader may draw a different conclusion.
In a part of the book that Bella narrates as a vampire, the lives of the Cullens are threatened by a powerful group of vampires called the Volturi. Alice Cullen, who can see the future, has a vision of the entire Volturi coming to destroy the Cullens. When the day Alice foresaw comes, the Cullen family waits for the Volturi in the location the battle will take place. Some hope to negotiate peacefully while others think they have no chance of prevailing. Bella waits with Edward, the vampire she loves. While standing there, Bella communicates her thoughts to the reader by stating, “Edward and I had not had a last grand scene of farewell, nor did I plan one. To speak the word was to make it final. It would be the same as typing the words The End on the last page of a manuscript” (pg. 674). With this statement, Bella lets the reader know that a page titled with the words “The End” will not come until Bella believes she and Edward have “had a last grand scene.” This foreshadows that any chapter that comes before “The End,” the “final” chapter, will be about Edward and Bella.
The section of the book Jacob narrates focuses on what he believes to be the end of Bella’s life. Jacob doubts he will be able to see her as alive once she is a vampire. The last chapter Jacob narrates describes when Bella’s heart stops. Jacob thinks of Bella ending with her last heartbeat. The chapter is titled “There are no words for this.” Jacob’s statement directly conflicts with Bella’s idea of the end, because Jacob says there will be “no words for this,” while Bella says the story will have the words “the end.” The reader can conclude that Jacob is not able to describe Bella’s end because it is too sad or emotional for him. Jacob imagines death as Bella’s end while Bella pictures ending her life loving Edward. There is also the unrequited love Jacob has that makes losing Bella to painful to describe.
Bella and Jacob’s different personalities come across in the chapter titles. While Bella describes chapters with positive words, such as “Talented” and “Irresistible,” the first chapter title Jacob provides looks at his situation negatively. Jacob is part of the Quileute tribe of Native Americans. Some people in the tribe can transform into wolves. The Cullens and wolves signed a treaty decades ago that prevents the Cullens from biting anyone in Forks, and once Edward makes Bella a vampire, the treaty will be broken. After Bella and Edward get married, the wolves, including Jacob, wait for that break to occur. Jacob describes this as “waiting for the damn fight to start already” as his first chapter title when he begins to narrate. Using words like “damn” and focusing on fighting shows how Jacob is generally more negative than Bella. These differences in language within the chapter titles show the reader the character’s personality. Knowing the character’s personality from the titles before reading a chapter also allows the reader to understand who the character is and predict how they will later react to events within the chapter.
Wendig, Chuck. "25 Things To Know About Writing The First Chapter Of Your Novel." Terribleminds. N.p., 29 May 2012. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. <http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/05/29/25-things-to-know-about-writing-the-first-chapter/>.
Chuck Wendig, an author of screenplays and novels, wrote a blog post about the importance of opening lines in the first chapter of a book. In the article, Wendig stated, “A good opening line is a promise, or a question, or an unproven idea.” In Breaking Dawn, Wendig’s idea can be expanded to include chapter titles, since the titles are the first words a reader sees before starting a chapter. The promise is a foreshadowed event or emotion the character will have in the chapter. Some chapters are questions from the thoughts of the character (ex., when Jacob says “What do I look like?”). The unproven ideas are the adjectives Bella uses as titles, such as talented and irresistible. These adjectives have not been proven to belong to anyone, yet someone in the chapter will be considered to be that adjective by Bella after it is stated in the chapter title.
If the book had only numbers for titles, some of the character’s emotions and opinions would have been subtly expressed or absent from the story. The chapter titles summarize how Bella and Jacob feel in their parts of the story. This gives the reader a better understanding of the character than plot alone. This structure also makes the reader pay more attention to small details in the books, because even the one word chapter titles in Bella’s sections communicate her thoughts. Though some readers may overlook the chapter titles, Stephenie Meyer uses the titles as a technique for foreshadowing and expressing the characters’ personalities.
Meyer, Stephenie. Breaking Dawn. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print.
Wendig, Chuck. "25 Things To Know About Writing The First Chapter Of Your Novel." Terribleminds. N.p., 29 May 2012. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. <http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/05/29/25-things-to-know-about-writing-the-first-chapter/>.
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