Quote at the beginning of a chapter, is it advisable for fiction novels?
I have read a few non-fiction works (mostly scientific) where there is a quote at the beginning of each new chapter. Sometimes the quote related to the chapter along with the title, sometimes it was difficult to make out why its there.
I am assuming this is to set-up a mood for the chapter or even summarize.
I had followed suit for my novel. For an e.g. for the chapter where my MC recovers from divorce and starts a new life I have put the following quote at the start of the chapter. This quote I selected after googling quotes, I don't know much about the author but the quote suggests that she will recover in this chapter.
Her fetters burst, and just released from prison, A virgin phoenix from her ashes risen. - Christiana Baldwin
Is this advisable for fiction novels?
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2 answers
This is a matter of opinion, it is done, but not by most.
In my opinion, I recommend against it. First for all the reasons @SteveJessop has outlined; but just as important, I don't do it because to me it seems pretentious, as if comparing your writing to theirs, and it seems like trying to borrow the fame of other great writers to make your own look better.
The only exception would be something like a quote from a source you invented; a fictional philosopher, politician, religious icon, or military generals or whatever in your own invented world. Then you own the copyright on it.
I always stick to my own writing, I don't try to borrow anybody else's to make mine seem better, my characters never quote anybody I did not also invent in their world.
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A quote (called an epigraph) is added to the start of a book or a chapter when it adds an insight to the story. What kind of insight is up to you: it might be an additional understanding of events on a meta level, it can be foreshadowing, it can be extra information, etc. It is never a random quote found in google, since that adds no insight. The epigraph is as integral a part of the story you're writing as anything else. If it adds nothing, it shouldn't be there at all.
For example, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls starts with a quotation from John Donne:
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of they friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
This epigraph should inform the reader's understanding of Hemingway's novel, convey that it is bigger than the story of one guy named Robert Jordan.
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