I am currently adding chapter notes to the historical fiction novel I’ve been writing for the last two years. I am going to self-publish at the end of this summer. Adding chapter notes to the book was something I waffled on throughout the writing. I was originally very against it, as I wanted the novel to stand on its own as a story. But, I finally decided on adding them during a class on writing historical fiction I’m taking from Heather B. Moore which is being offered through LDSPMA.

One of the things Heather has mentioned, I believe in the first class, that I’ve thought about a lot, is that an editor or publisher told her once that historical fiction books are sold with the Front / Back Matter. These are things like: Maps, Character Lists, Author Notes & Historical Notes, Glossaries, Timelines, etc., etc. She said that book clubs (a big market for historical fiction) love this stuff. And, that generally, anyone reading historical fiction is looking for this kind of fact vs. fiction stuff anyway.

So, I just decided, “Man. I guess I’ll go in and add chapter notes.” And, I actually really like the book a lot better with Chapter Notes. Which surprised me. I thought I’d hate it. The thing is – everything I’m adding in the chapter notes is stuff I already knew, and was making my reading of the text richer. But it’s stuff that the reader didn’t know, and wasn’t going to know, because it wasn’t written anywhere. So, now, the reader is having the same experience with the book I was having with it. Which, is probably important. It’s probably better that I’m not judging the quality of the book I’m writing while bringing things to the text which aren’t actually in the text.