by James R. Preston

In 1961 Marlboro Cigarettes promised that "It's What's Up Front That Counts" iin a magazine ad, and, while the ad featuring a smirking woman holding a smoke with a filter is (mercifully) gone, if it’s that thought that counts then possibly some up-front information will help readers navigate your novel. 

In other words, a . . . 

Table of Contents

Definition 

Later we’ll get to what Wikipedia has to say. I know it’s traditional to start with a definition, for a lot of good reasons, we’ll get to it later. Quite a bit later, in fact. 

Dune

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Princess Irulan

The Princess was right. Starting your story is important; if it weren’t the countless How-To Write books would not always say things like grab the reader’s attention early, and even before that first sentence there’s the up front material that can also help hook the reader and let them know what they’re in for. 

A Table of Contents is a pre-organizer, a guide for your readers. Back in the day, potential readers standing in front of a shelf in a bookstore could look at a TOC to get a clue about the book’s structure. Not all novels have this sort of up-front skeleton, in some cases the structure is hidden and reveals itself as the story progresses. We have an example of this later in this essay. 

So, a TOC is a structure, but there are many different approaches, just as a mid-century house has a very different look from one of the Victorian “painted ladies” in San Francisco.

Do you need to tell the reader the structure ahead of time?

Yes . . . and no. 

You saw that one coming, didn’t you? 

Do you need an overriding structure?

Insert previous answer. 

First, some boundaries. This essay is about novels. Nonfiction works are a different kettle of fish, with different requirements.

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”

Right. Thanks, Princess. When I started this essay I felt I needed a structure. Searching for a structure I started thinking about old friends, not the flesh-and-blood kind, but the ones that live between covers and begin “Once upon a time.”

Now from Dune to 007: 

Goldfinger 

“Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago. The first time is happenstance, the second time coincidence, and the third time is enemy action.”

Ok, that works for a discussion of ways to structure your novel. 

Happenstance 

This is an interesting one. Look at Robert B. Parker’s Spenser books. Each chapter is about the same length, and usually one scene. This approach does several things for the writer and the reader. For the writer you don’t have to worry about when to break for the next chapter; it comes naturally. The result is a series of chapters of approximately the same length. So the readers know what to expect, making it a bit easier to decide whether or not to stay up and read a little more. (Most of us, including me, always answer that question “Sure, a few more pages.”) But with Spenser, Hawk, and Susan you have an idea how long “a few more pages” will be. 

So, you want a straightforward structure — Chapter One, Chapter Two and so on. There are two ways to approach it. The first is to list the chapters and page numbers in a Table of Contents at the front of the book. The second is to skip that and let the Chapters reveal themselves to the reader. 

Coincidence 

Many novels are a series of chapters, given names to pique interest. Take a look at Dumas’ The Three Musketeers which opens with “The Three Presents of D’Artagnan The Elder.” I know the purists among you (and I know you’re out there) will say, “Wait, The Three Musketeers was published as a serial in a newspaper, something different.” Well, yes, but the chapters live in our books today. Cut me a little slack. It’s one of my favorite novels and I saw a chance to include it. 

Look at Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry. There’s no Table of Contents, but there are chapters and each one is named. I personally like this kind of structure. It provides the reader with a clue as to what’s coming next, and — I’m speculating here but I bet I’m right — it’s kind of fun for the writer. “How much should I give away in the chapter title?” But the reader doesn’t get to see them all at once. 

Books that take place over a short period of time have a natural built-in structure: Monday, Tuesday, and so on. For example, F. Paul Wilson in Bloodline uses a TOC divided into days, with each day broken into Chapter One, and so on. So there’s Monday, followed by Chapters 1 - 10, Tuesday followed by Chapters 1 -12. F. Paul Wilson does this in several of his Repairman Jack thrillers. 

Quick review:

• Table of Contents with Chapter One, and so on, and page numbers. 
• Table of Contents with Chapter One, and so on, with names for each chapter.
• Chapters, with or without names, not listed in a TOC. 

Enemy Action 

The Andromeda Strain

Micael Crichton does the opposite. He divides The Andromeda Strain into days, and the days into chapter, but the numbering continues. In other words, Day One has Chapters 1-4 and Day 2 starts with Chapter 5.

Another Crichton, with another interesting structure,

Jurassic Park

No TOC..

“First Iteration” “At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.”

--Ian Malcolm 

“Second iteration. . . 

This structure says plainly that trouble is brewing. 

The Definition 

And now for Wikipedia

A table of contents is an ordered list of a document's sections, chapters, or topics and their corresponding page numbers, typically placed at the beginning of a long document like a book or report. Its purpose is to provide readers with an organized overview of the content and act as a navigation tool to quickly find specific information. You can create a table of contents by using a word processor's built-in feature,

“Hey, Siri, gimme a Table of Contents .” (Aka “Look, Ma, no hands!”)

Keystroke the document in Word, insert the appropriate tags, push a button and viola! Your TOC presents itself. 

Send me the doc and my PC can read it aloud to me while I drive to work. Back home, the AI can offer an opinion on the story, maybe along the lines of “all right plot but the characters are mechanical.” (It’s possible that AIs are not that good at irony. Yet.) My feelings on this are outside the scope of this essay, so I’ll just say that I regard the decisions that go into creating a structure as part of the creative process and best left to the author. 

So, when you start your novel, you have some choices to make. 

1. Build the Table of Contents including titles, and the structure first, then fill in the missing pieces. Advantages: you think about the whole thing and see the parts. Disadvantage: you may very well find that one of your beloved chapter titles simply doesn’t fit and that you must get rid of it. Oh, the pain! 

2. Type “Chapter One” and you’re on your way. Advantage: not a lot of up-front musing about the parts of the book. Disadvantage: you are faced with the dreaded, “What happens next?” over and over again.

3. Let the chapters reveal themselves. The advantage is the same as the disadvantage: you are letting your subconscious do the work but you aren’t aware yet.

Finally a few stories of my own adventures with structure. In my first thriller I had great chapters worked out, but after I wrote it something nagged at me, and it wouldn’t let go. The TOC actually helped, providing an overview, and then it hurt because that overview showed clearly that one chapter, one of my favorites, a piece of work that explained one of my characters, that sparkled but simply didn’t belong. The story didn’t need it, and the chapter head showed me. 

In one of my later books I used chapters and gave each one a name and, you know what? It made the work more enjoyable (I called one of the chapters With a Little Help From My Friends and it gave me a chuckle).

So let’s sum up. 

A Table of Contents can be an up-front organizer, and most often it is. It can also be revealed as the reader progresses through the story. It can be straightforward— Chapter One, and so on. It can be straightforward with names — Chapter One, The Three Presents of of D’Artagnan The Elder. As a writer you can create it first, or as you write, or add it on after you have a draft. 

It could be assembled by an AI, but why you would want to turn that important part of the creative process over to a machine, particularly a machine whose word-play is literal (anything but playful) is beyond me.

Now it’s your turn.

How do you build your TOCs? What flavor do you prefer? Have you used such a pre-organizer to identify parts of the story that need work or need to be removed? Have you encountered other structures in your reading and writing? What worked for you?

Always remember we are all in this together and I guarantee that other ink-stained wretches will benefit from your sharing.

* * * * * *

About James

James R. Preston is the author of the multiple-award-winning Surf City Mysteries. He is currently at work on the sixth, called Remains To Be Seen. His most recent works are Crashpad and Buzzkill, two historical novellas set in the 1960’s at Cal State Long Beach. Kirkus Reviews called Buzzkill “A historical thriller enriched by characters who sparkle and refuse to be forgotten.” His books are collected as part of the California Detective Fiction collection at the University of California Berkeley. 

Find out more about James at his website.