How do people feel about those little quotes at the top of chapters?

Short story:

I love them! Sorta.

Long story:

I've got a love/hate relationship with them (I love what they are but hate what they do).

The extra lore is great but I don't like how it interrupts the flow of each chapter. Footnotes are easier to enjoy as long as there aren't tonnes of them -- there were too many in the Bartimaeus Trilogy for example (though again, I loved their contents) but I really liked how they were used in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The lore was great to read, and the way certain books were referenced/expanded upon lent the story itself a hint of authenticity/an academic sort of feel.

So they're awesome but I enjoy going through them far more during a re-read than while I'm trying to stay in the world of the immediate story.

I use musical quotes for my YA fantasy set in a music-magic realism. My critters all commented positive on them. Was a lot of work to find them though

I'm using them in "DreamWeaver: Earth Day: 2074." I try to keep them germaine to the overall plot of the chapter that they're refering to. I remember the first quote that introduced Frederick Brown's "Knock!, a science fiction short story that starts with a short-short story based on the following text of Thomas Bailey Aldrich:
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room, and there was a knock at the door..."

I try to keep such tidbits germaine to the following text, otherwise, it becomes drudgery for me and thus for the reader. despite how it may seem in my earlier offerings here.

Epigraphs like any other element can add to a story if done well, distract if done poorly. The Mistborn example cited earlier is done well. However I've read plenty of critique pieces where they are not done well -- they add in loads of additional terms, people and places I've never heard of and the ensuing chapters appear unwilling to explain. They need to serve a clear purpose, not just added to "make it look more like a fantasy epic."

In fantasy and far-future sf, invented epigraphs from the same world do seem to fit better. Reading excerpts taken from the real world or other works look completely out of place in a fantasy novel not set on Earth, at least to me. If George RR Martin stuck Marilyn Manson quotes under every Tyrion chapter, you'd be like, what the heck is this doing in Westeros? Make it go away.

Another thing to keep in mind is that even if you are self-publishing, using epigraphs from other copyrighted works is risky. Some people say it falls under fair use depending on length but if your book is a runaway success and you didn't secure the copyright holder's permission ahead of time you could have a hot mess down the road. It's a gray area, the kind of zone where lawyers and lawsuits thrive, so is it really worth the risk? The music industry is particularly aggressive in regards to song lyrics.

Here is an agent discussing the same thing.

Stephen King can do it because he is Stephen King and he can afford to hire someone to track down permissions and pay for them. It's unlikely your publisher will do this for you and if you self-publish through Amazon or anywhere else I would almost guarantee the boilerplate contract puts the legal liability squarely on you.

Public domain quotes are a great alternative.

Someone I know has used a few licensed quotes, and he says they cost him anything from an acknowledgement to $250. So that's probably a good ballpark for more-obscure quotes. As noted above the music industry has, um, stricter notions and is best avoided.

I really like these though most of what I've read them in are not fantasy works. I think I might try to make my own for my WIP, considering there's a lot of religious/legal stuff that has not really been in the text but is kind of required to flesh out the world...

As for the "speed bump" -- most of the stories I've read that have them are told from different perspectives that change from chapter to chapter, so you're going to get jarred with each chapter, anyway.

Kylabelle said:

I love them. They are like condiments or appetizers, and often lead me to books or poems I didn't know of.

What I don't like is if some juicy bit is quoted somewhere and I can't find the source. I always want to know who wrote it. So, if yours are made up bits from your world's literature, I would want to know that!

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I feel that way too, a carefully chosen and relevant quote at the start of a chapter adds spice, and can even set up what's about to happen.

And of course every quote should be attributed, whether it's a famous writer (or quotable person such as Yogi Berra) or a character in the novel.

Reziac said:

Someone I know has used a few licensed quotes, and he says they cost him anything from an acknowledgement to $250. So that's probably a good ballpark for more-obscure quotes. As noted above the music industry has, um, stricter notions and is best avoided.

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Peter McWilliams used many quotes throughout his non-fiction self-help books - so much that one of them seemed to be MOSTLY quotes. I don't know if he actually got permissions to use them all or not.

I recall Heinlein using Bible verses for quotes in his novels, and he used at least one title ("I Will Fear No Evil"). The Bible and Shakespeare are two good/popular sources of public domain quotes. To thine own self be true and all that.

benbradley said:

And of course every quote should be attributed, whether it's a famous writer (or quotable person such as Yogi Berra) or a character in the novel.

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Oh lordy, Yogi Berra quotes for a comedy of errors...

I love them, especially when they are taken from in-world writers, poets and philosophers who may not even get a mention in the text. It's like there really is a whole real world beyond just the events we see in the books.

I don't think quotes like that are so bad. It's fun and breaks up the narrative in clever ways.

Go for it!

For me, tt greatly depends. Sometimes they're interesting, sometimes they're pointless. Brandon Sanderson's books have great examples of both.

In the Mistborn books, the pre-chapter quotes were usually interesting and built up to something by the end of that book. With the Stormlight books, some of the quotes are interesting but most of them are pointless and overly cryptic.

So...if you're revealing information that otherwise would not be revealed and/or the quotes build up to some clever reveal in the book then go for it.

I've been thinking about writing mini-scenes between chapters. I have a lot of ideas for tiny snippets of dialogue and general interaction that wouldn't really fit in any of the actual scenes.

Is this something that anyone's ever seen done?

NRoach said:

I've been thinking about writing mini-scenes between chapters. I have a lot of ideas for tiny snippets of dialogue and general interaction that wouldn't really fit in any of the actual scenes.

Is this something that anyone's ever seen done?

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Yes, tho I don't recall what it was (decades ago) which is why I immediately knew what you meant. I think it could be very interesting, and useful for adding bits that don't fit in the main narrative, or for telling a side story that parallels the rest, etc.

ETA: Having remembered another that does this that I'd read more recently, I've also seen it become an annoying nuisance, because it stopped being its own little side story and started being whatever joke was available, or so it seemed to me.

NRoach said:

I've been thinking about writing mini-scenes between chapters. I have a lot of ideas for tiny snippets of dialogue and general interaction that wouldn't really fit in any of the actual scenes.

Is this something that anyone's ever seen done?

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One of Robin Hobb's Rainwild Chronicles does it. The main action is out on the river and in a city and if I recall (been several years since I read the book) the people on the river are travelling to a different city. In each of city A and city B, there is a guy who is basically a carrier pigeon handler (can't remember if they are really pigeons, ho hum) anyway, they send each other personal comments in the spare capacity of any regularly sent pigeon and their ongoing chat is a brief interleaved chapter now and then, some of which adds info to the action, some of which doesn't but is amusing. Can also be light relief after a particularly grim chapter. - I think also that it starts out as "straight" messages - then the chat is gradually worked in. So messages about "if you see Joe Bloggs then...." that relate directly to the action.


Regarding bits of text at the top of chapters I vary between reading and ignoring (think it depends on what is in them and also when I was reading - as in I might read more of them now than I used to, not sure). I love the ones in Thursday Next. There was one in a series I read (which will remain nameless) where the author was putting scene setting information in the little bit at the top - more an extended chapter heading as in "later the same day in Castle doo dah" but there was also text from an almanac, which I was not enthralled by and I finished up not reading the headings at all, just going from end of chapter to start of next chapter, and then was going "huh, where the heck are they now?" as the author had put all the scene setting in the chapter heading. Then I had to remember to read the chapter heading to get the place info, skip over the Almanac and then start the chapter.
So that's really another vote for keep it simple (as well as relevant).

I like Terry Pratchett style footnotes - and sometimes his footnotes have footnotes. - but it is not too often. It also has a conversational style to it, as in someone has to make an aside, then add an aside to the aside. He does gossipy conversation and the weird way people's minds can work and people making odd associations supremely well.

If they are very short, I might read them.

Sanderson did it in "Mistborn." I found myself skipping them more often than not.

I generally dislike them. However, the more pages that exist between them the less annoying they seem to be. Every 10 pages? Grating. Every 100? Perhaps they do their job a bit better, for me, without getting in the way.

NRoach said:

I've been thinking about writing mini-scenes between chapters. I have a lot of ideas for tiny snippets of dialogue and general interaction that wouldn't really fit in any of the actual scenes.

Is this something that anyone's ever seen done?

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I have seen this done, more or less. Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire (and I think some of the others, but I can't remember) is written in this format. There are the interactions between Louis and Daniel, a reporter, that occur between the various scenes of Louis' story.

I have also used this format in my own writing. One of my current WIP is very similar in format. The overall work is set up as a collection of four novellas, each focusing on a different character. During the prologue, interludes between each chapter, and the epilogue there is a story surrounding the storyteller and his captive audience (pun intended). This is designed to catalyst into an even larger story that encompasses elements from the canopy tale and all four novellas.

I personally never read them, unless they're either short quotes from the real world, or really well-picked snippets (Watership Down, I still can quote some of them).

It depends. They should add to the story, and not be there just for show.

If they're done well, I find them enjoyable, otherwise, they can become rather annoying.

It depends for me. I found Sanderson's ones interesting. Tad Williams to a slightly lesser extent. But I've started skipping them in the Malazan books because I have no idea what most of them mean, or what they have to do with anything.

Most books I read don't have quotes, so I'm neutral to them. The few books that did have them had quotes from real life people or are quotes from the fictional characters themselves. I (skim) read them because they're part of the book, but I won't miss them if they were taken out. (Some of the quotes were poetry or songs, and I don't understand poetry very well, so...)

I've seen them done well and I've seen them done horribly. The ones I will keep reading in a book are the ones that add some kind of tension. For me everything in a book should have tension why should the epigraphs be any different?

I like them. They can set a mood for the chapter, or fill in some backstory without having to work it into the narrative. The best examples I can think of offhand are Robert Cham Gilman's "Rebel or Rhada" and "Starkhan of Rhada."

Footnotes aren't as easy to use, and some people dislike them intensely... but they can add interesting but not immediately relevant detail. Jack Vance was a master of that. Terry Pratchett also makes good use of footnotes, more often for humorous comments though.

aikigypsy said:

These are made-up quotes drawn from texts (histories, legends, etc.) in the story's world. I did this in an earlier version of one books and I liked it, but I hear that a lot of people find those chapter-opening quotes annoying or pretentious.

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I like them, but only when they foreshadow what's going to happen and if they aren't too long. I just finished reading an author who got a little indulgent with them (some filled half the page) and I found them annoying, like an extra little chore before I can get back to the story.

Especially as often it was material already covered in previous books. But then that was my peeve with that author in general, she was constantly reiterating material from previous books as if I couldn't possibly have remembered it. I estimate her books would have been half as long if she wasn't constantly going over old ground.