Book Synthesis: The First Page by Guest Blogger Cheryl Anne Gardner

For April, our Book Synthesis feature is written by fellow author and book reviewer Cheryl Anne Gardner.

Cheryl Anne Gardner is a writer of dark, often disturbing literary novellas. She is an advocate for independent film, music, and books, and when at all possible prefers to read and review out-of-the-mainstream indie published works, foreign translations, and a bit of philosophy. Her love of literature began at an early age with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Captivated by the Gothic and Dark Romantic stylings of Poe, Lovecraft, Kafka, and de Sade, her passion for the macabre manifests itself throughout her own work to this day. She lives with her husband and ferrets on the east coast USA, is an enthusiastic gardener, and her weekly blog column titled “Thoughts on The Craft” can be found at The Pod People Indie Book Review and Commentary site.

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When Shannon Yarbrough asked me to contribute to his Book Synthesis column, I was thrilled to death. I didn’t know what topic he would choose for me, but it didn’t really matter. When I received an email from him tasking me with the first page, I was delighted. Why? Because the first page is a Chapter Start and will affect every single chapter start in the entire book.

Johannes Cabal ~ Jonathan Howard

Chapter starts are another area where you can get a bit creative or you can be as plain and straight forward as you want. The sky is the limit, and I have seen all kinds of crazy stuff in Chapter Starts.

Now, first and foremost, size does matter when it comes to how creative you should get with your Chapter Starts: smaller book sizes look better if you keep the starts uncluttered, and the larger sizes like 6×9 have more room to get a bit fancier. Scale is very important. Now I won’t go into the canons of page construction here because that’s a whole lot of geometry the average self-published author doesn’t really need to understand in order to make a decent looking book.

The elements of a chapter start are as follows — this list is basic and by no means inclusive, and design choices will need to be made by the individual author. It’s all about choices, and my advice to any Self-published author who has tasked themselves with the interior design of their book is that they need to get their hands on a couple hundred or so books and look at the Chapter Starts. In this process, you will discover things you like and things don’t like, and this will help you to decide how creative you want to get … or not.

Chapter Starts include some and sometimes all of these elements and the trick is that the choice of elements needs to be consistent throughout the entire book:

High Fidelity ~ Nick Hornby

* Chapter Numbers
* Chapter Titles
* Chapter Subtitles or Epigraphs
* Flourishes such as images and drop caps and type ornaments
* Body Text
* Footers or Drop Folios

As a start, Chapter 1 of your book should start on the recto — always. All Chapters can have either a drop folio (page number) or a blind folio (no page number) but should not have a running head (header). When I am looking at the blank page, I like to work in what we artsy types call “the rule of thirds” which is where we divide the page into thirds. As a personal preference, I like to keep the first third of the page reserved for white space. My book size of choice is small – 5.25×8 — and so the white space works better for me. In the second third, I like to put the chapter number, chapter title, and chapter sub if there is one, and in the final third of the page is where I normally begin the text.

1. Chapter Numbers, like most creative elements of the chapter start, are optional. You don’t need them, but they help readers keep track of where they are in the book. You can do all kinds of crazy creative things with Chapter numbers, but most often, a decorative font will be used and the font size will be noticeably larger than the text, but it doesn’t have to be. In Clive Barker’s Mr. B Gone, you will notice that there is no chapter number, and that is because the book has no chapters. A type ornament separates the sections throughout the book and the text is continuous. In Hornby’s High Fidelity, the chapter numbers do not begin until chapter two, and then it is spelled out in the header. In Rice’s Sleeping Beauty, the chapters have only titles – no numbers.

Mr. B. Gone ~ Clive Barker

2. Chapter titles/subs are again optional. I personally like them because I use them to lead the reader into the chapter with a premise or a bit of foreshadowing. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing and Howard’s Cabal are examples of chapter titles used to set mood and entice the reader.

3. As for the flourishes, have at it. In small books, I find that flourishes tend to clutter the page, but in the larger sizes like the 6×9 you have more room to work.

4. I love Drop caps as well, but you have to be careful of the Font style and formatting because it is easy to throw the alignment of the page off if you misstep. Some designers indent the drop cap, some don’t. Some indent all the way to the centre of the page too, and some designers don’t use drop caps at all choosing instead the use of small caps for the first line or even just the first word. What ever suits the feel of YOUR story. I have tried to show a wide range of drop cap uses.

5. For headers and footers, well, chapter starts should not have a running head. I don’t like headers or footers on chapter starts, but a page number footer or drop folio is acceptable.

With my own books, as you can see, I have adopted a house style, and I keep my Chapter Starts very simple and streamline, preferring to focus instead on the words versus flourishes. I use a Garamond drop cap because it’s crisp and works well with the Palatino typeface I use, and I do indent them to keep them in line with the Chapter title and number. I use Bold and Italic for my numbers, titles, and subs, but I use the same font as the body text, one font size larger, with a simple line boarder to delineate the “indexing” information from the actual body text. I like this look, and it makes it easier to reformat the manuscript

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty ~ Anne Rice

for ebook later. A poorly formatted Chapter start can look slapdash and amateurish and can turn a reader all the way off, and too much flourish is distracting. You will need to look at the project with an artist’s eye, so if you do not have an artist’s eye, seek someone out who does, or get a professional book designer to help you. The idea is to enhance the appearance of the words or the set the mood for the story, not muck everything up. When in doubt, keep it simple. Simple is always the elegant choice. The scanned examples are from my own personal library. As you can see there is simple, funky, fanciful, elegant, and over the top elaborate. Whatever you decide, make sure it suits your story. For more insider information on book design, visit Joel Friedlander at The Book Designer.com.

Antiquity ~ Cheryl Anne Gardner