Writing and Healing Idea #30: Chapter Titles

This writing idea is offered as a companion to Writing Idea #29: Choosing a Title for Your Quest, which appears below. Say that this same person who needs you to generate a title for your book—your quest—also needs you to generate chapter titles—a structure for getting started. What might you name the chapters of your memoir?

As with book titles, other people’s chapter titles can spark ideas.

Here are some archetypal chapter titles from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces:

• The Call to Adventure
• Refusal of the Call
• Supernatural Aid
• The Crossing of the First Threshold
• The Belly of the Whale
• The Road of Trials

And here are some chapters from Judy Blunt’s Breaking Clean:

• A Place of One’s Own
• Salvage
• Lessons in Silence
• The Year of the Horse
• The Reckoning

What might your own chapter titles be?