Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
It's even more of a problem with poetry and flash fiction/non-fiction.
I love titles! (even started a thread by that name) whether chapter or book. 
In many ways I think they are the most important part of a book and certainly of a story or poem.
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I was thinking about this a bit more, and I wonder if (sometimes) titles mean more to the writer than they do to most readers - in longer fiction anyway.
My first two books all have one-word chapter titles (and I expect the next books in the series to be the same) - except the prologue. This started because most of the early chapters were written with a particular theme, some particular mood or idea I was trying to get across. Often the word came early in the writing of the chapters, at other times I'd come to what I felt was the end of a chapter and look back and see the title in what I'd written. It felt right so I kept doing it, and found myself amused with the way the titles were often ambiguous, and/or had multiple points of reference through the chapter.
It hasn't always worked out exactly that way, but often enough that it became something I started to pay definite attention to. But I'm can't be sure that a reader will notice, or care even if they do. In other words, I'm not really sure that they add that much to the books. But I will, of course, be self-righteously happy if readers come back and say they liked them.