Are tables of contents mandatory in novels?
I've had several people ask me why my fiction story does not have a table of contents. I never really thought about it, seeing as plenty of fiction stories do not have one either. Is a table of contents mandatory or 'traditional' in fictional writing? Or is this like other writing rules where it can be broken based on different author style?
I am self-publishing, so I do not have an agent or publisher telling me what they want for the book. My last editor did not seem surprised that my story did not have a table of contents either, so I am looking for an official stance on this, or a reputable source detailing what is expected in this type of writing. Are there pro's and con's to each way?
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I've never read a fiction book and expected a table of contents. Also some of my favorite books have no table of contents nor chapter titles. So from a reader's viewpoint I see no flaw in not having a table of contents.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30367. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Starting around the 1920's dust jackets started to get decorative and became a place where you could market the book. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_jacket#Oldest_dust_jackets) That function has now migrated to the back page of the paperback. There is no place to put marketing material on the cover of a hardback book (though there are a few hardback formats that are smooth and printable these days).
Before the 1920's hardbound books had highly decorated covers and the dust jackets were plainer and were mostly discarded by bookstore before being put on the shelf.
Given this, it seems reasonable to speculate that the reason for a table of content in a novel was as a way to market the book by telling the reader what to expect inside. In support of this we should note that many 19th century TOCs included a synopsis of each chapter as well as the title.
Once books had decorative dust jackets or printable back covers, there was another place to tell the reader what the book was about. Conventions of the form are slow to die, but TOCs in novels seem to have been fading away over the last century as they serve no real purpose for the modern reader.
Clearly it is permissible and, indeed, conventional, to omit them today.
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