Should I use chapter titles?

The very first novel I ever completed had a title for every chapter. Digging through my old Word Perfect 6 documents (which OpenOffice really didn’t like, my book was not 7000+ pages with a bunch of numbers and symbols), I thought I’d share them with you (bear in mind this book was started in 1999 and finished in 2003):

Chapter 1 – The Proposal (solid)
Chapter 2 – The Problem (got a theme going)
Chapter 3 – Winning is half the battle (changing it up, nice)
Chapter 4 – What’s a ship without a crew? (good question)
Chapter 5 – Testing Phase (back to two words, good choice)
Chapter 6 – Sim-Central (don’t know what this really means, but I think they were using a simulator?)
Chapter 7 – Picking up the pieces (A little on the nose, but apparently they broke the simulator)
Chapter 8 – Cellular Christmas (wait … what?)
Chapter 9 – Scarecrow’s Dilemma (if he only had a … wait for it …)
Chapter 10 – Sarah Walker (Oh, now we’re using the name of a person, and remember Chuck hadn’t aired yet)
Chapter 11 – Unfinished Business (simple but back to solid)
Chapter 12 – Pre-launch Jitters (don’t you just hate those?)
Chapter 13 – Ready To Go (Okay so we’re ready now, right?)
Chapter 14 – Unto the breach (That doesn’t sound good)
Chapter 15 – Rapid Ascent (Wait, we were supposed to launch two chapters ago!)
Chapter 16 – Anticipated Arrival (We were expected?)
Chapter 17 – Crimson Sun Revisited (When did we visit it before? Answer, in the prologue which was titled ‘Galateia’ and not ‘Crimson Sun’, though Crimson Sun was involved. Anyway, moving on.)
Chapter 18 – Camping out under the stars (sounds nice)
Chapter 19 – Licking their wounds (maybe not)
Chapter 20 – Running the Gauntlet (originally misspelled Guantlet)
Chapter 21 – Awakened Spirits (meh)
Chapter 22 – Recovered Data (back to the theme I see)
Chapter 23 – Ghosts of Past and Future Days (seriously?)
Chapter 24 – Harkenings of Atlantis (is Harkenings a word? WordPress doesn’t think so.)
Chapter 25 – The Emerald City (Wizard of Oz?)
Chapter 26 – Behind the Curtain (Definitely Wizard of Oz, late in the game decision to go with this theme)
Chapter 27 – At long last (indeed)
Chapter 28 – Casual Conversation (eh)
Chapter 29 – The Greater Mysteries (getting profound)
Chapter 30 – For the future (inspiring)
Epilogue – Return Journey (There and back again)

There was also an interlude called ‘En Route’.

Here’s the problem. Obviously some of these are just dippy, darlings that even I wouldn’t recognize today. Some are straightforward and simple, others are bland and shapeless. Some make up words, some appropriate Moody Blues phrases, and some are too unspeakably clever.

This is why I don’t write chapter titles, and why my tendency has been for one or two word book titles. I’ve read a few books where the title really adds something to the chapter, but I’ve yet to write one. I do think that if you’re going to do it, you should make some conscious thoughts as to a consistent theme. It’s probably okay to break it once and a while, but only if you have a reason to do so. And “Ghosts Of Past and Future Days” is not such a reason.

I like titling parts of a book, as these can almost fell like mini-novellas, and those deserve a title. But beyond that, probably not. Hell, I have a hard enough time thinking of a title for each blog post.