It's an interesting kind of path that I'd never used before in a novel, but is evident in some of my favorite chapters:
Stupid People Should Never Read Books
Eden Five Needs You
The Vice-President's Balls
Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone Never Wore Coonskin Caps
Rat Boys From Mars, and an Unfortunate Incident Involving an Inflatable Whale
Yes. Those are chapter titles.
In Eden Five Needs You, for example, the chapter starts as Austin and his girlfriend Shann are eating in a diner after a movie date. Austin goes through the entire plot of the ridiculous movie they saw and all the embarrassing things that happened to the couple in the theater in Waterloo, Iowa, and then the chapter ends again, back in the diner where the following conversation takes place:
“You know what I
really love about you, Austin?”
I did not know
what she really loved about me. Probably not my endurance.
I said, “No. Tell
me.”
Shann said, “I
love how you tell stories. I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go
backwards and forwards and tell me everything
else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion.
Like a flower blooming.”
“Really?” I asked.
“I… Hmm… I never noticed that about me before.”
