Weekly Writers: The Main Body Of Text

Chapters and Subheadings

Here’s the Weekly Writers Monday post. This post is for paid subscribers only. If you’d like to become one, you get 50% off the annual subscription if you click the button below!

---

I discussed front matter in recent posts. Now I can talk about what comes next in a book!

The main body of the text – body matter – goes between the front matter and the back matter. It represents the content people are paying for, and is made up of a number of chapters, and possibly parts.

A very simple Part Title in a multi-book publication

Part Title

Books are divided into chapters. Some books are also divided into parts, which are major subdivisions of the text and group related chapters together.

Parts often indicate a radical change – a big jump of time, place, perspective, or escalation. They are not necessary, but may be useful in some stories or non-fiction works. They can also be used with a compilation of previously separate books – the Part Title will indicate the title of each book, to divide them.

Part Titles could be called Part One, Part Two etc, or divided as “books”: Book One, Book Two. They may also have named parts (like chapters): “1978” or “John’s Story” or “Death By Summer”. These two systems can be combined: “PART FOUR” on one line and “2027, Tokyo” on the line below, for example.

Usually a whole page is dedicated to the part division. It may be embellished with graphics to make it stand out. The back of the page will be blank.