Choosing The Right Title For Your Work (Or: Heh, You Said "Titular")
-
You tell me, “Chuck, I need a short story about the mating habits of dragons, and I need soon,” I’m there.
You tell me, “Chuck, I want you to write a game supplement about a team of zombies that hunt child molesters across the Midwest, and I need it in a week,” I’m in it to win it.
You tell me, “Chuck, write me a novel that combines the work of Charles Fort, papal biotech, and the American presidency of some guy I just made up called ‘Nathan Hanover,’ and I need it in 15 minutes,” then you can count on me, hoss.
But you say, “Chuck, this work needs a title,” and I will stare at you. Utterly slack-jawed.
A thin rivulet of drool will creep from my lips and hang from my chin.
Instant mental gridlock. An avenue crammed with silent cars, bumper-to-bumper, nobody honking because they are afraid of the sound it will make. A lone whitetail deer plays amidst the human stalemate, happy for a moment to be frolicking in this quiet place. A hawk circles overhead, smelling sweet stagnant doom.
So, when Justin Jacobson says that he’d like me to talk about “coming up with titles,” I cannot help but feel a flutter of panic inside my chest.
And that means this is a good topic to talk about.
YAIA. You Ask, I Answer.
It Seems So Simple…
And yet, the subject introduces in me a kind of pants-filled-with-shit fear. It’s not necessarily that I’m bad with titles. I like coming up with titles. Only problem is, I’m good with inventing titles for books that I’m not writing. Titles flit in and out of my brain-canyons all day like birds on their way to somewhere else, somewhere better. But when it comes time to actually name The Thing I’m Currently Writing, I once more return to the torpid panic state, a “locked in” syndrome where I am trapped inside my own hollow mind.
So, to jar free the scree inside my skull, let’s see if we can’t zero in on what makes a good title.
Me Likey These Titles
I look on my shelves and I see great books by authors I love, and some of these books have kick-ass titles.
Christopher Moore knows how to title a book. You Suck: A Love Story. Practical Demonkeeping. Lamb (The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal). And so forth.
McCammon, too: Mister Slaughter, Queen of Bedlam, Speaks the Nightbird. These, his latest titles, are far better than his earlier titles which, while punchier, had a bit of that generic “horror novel” bite to them (Stinger, Bethany’s Sin, Baal). Though, you have to admit — They Thirst is a lean, mean title that says it all for a novel about vampires. Why nobody’s made that into a film? I have no idea.
Other titles around the office I like:
- Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer.
- The Mystic Arts Of Erasing All Signs Of Death, Charlie Huston.
- Boneshaker, Cherie Priest.
- New World Monkeys, Nancy Mauro.
- One Day Closer To Death, Bradley Denton (oh, where have you gone, Bradley Denton?).
- The Shadows, Kith and Kin, Joe Lansdale (or, really, most of Lansdale’s catalog: Mucho Mojo, Two-Bear Mambo, The Bottoms, etc.)
These? Not So Much, Maybe
Not trying to pick on any authors should they be flitting around, but:
- Isolation, Travis Thrasher
- The Calling, Inger Wolfe
- Downtown Owl, Chuck Klosterman
- Act of Love, Joe Lansdale
- Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
Etc.
The fact I don’t like these titles doesn’t mean I don’t like the books, mind. Brite? Lansdale? Both authors I dig unrepentantly.
Secret fact: I think a lot of book titles suck a little bit. I pop on over to Amazon, and I see titles I like dwarfed by those I don’t. I’ve never read a Jim Butcher novel, and I hear they’re great, but his latest is called… Changes? That’s it? I love Chuck Palahniuk’s work, but sometimes his titles move from “spare and elegant” to “simple and a little bit boring.” Tell-All? Stranger Than Fiction? Click on over to fantasy and science-fiction, and the ehh-pbbt-so-so titles keep on flowing: At The Gates Of Darkness, A Hunger Like No Other, The Angel Experiment, Storm of Swords: Steel And Snow, and on and on.
What the fuck is a Storm of Swords, anyway? And what do “steel” and “snow” have to do with that? Is it a blizzard of broadswords? Is the sequel called Daggersquall, The Blade Tornado?
Again, I’m not saying any of these are bad books.
They might be awesome.
Further, this is proof that whether or not one likes a title is surely subjective. Chuck Klosterman’s Downtown Owl is a book title I might very well like if I didn’t know who wrote it and what it was about (the title seems… well, like a Klosterman title).
Ah, but. It at least gives me a place to start when talking about what makes a good title.
What Makes A Good Title?
Right off the bat, I think the best titles are titles that apply only to your book. If you take the title, hold it up in your hand and say, “This could be the title to ten other books,” then you’ve gone generic. Mister Slaughter is the title of that book, and not any other book. The Calling is a title that could be the title for zillions of books. It says nothing. Too general. Practical Demonkeeping? Good. Great, even. Lost Souls? Really? Ehhh. A bit bland. Certainly could be the title to countless other works.
Don’t let your titles be flimsy, weak things.
Give them bones. A spine. Give them purpose. Anchor the title to the work. To your work. Your book is special. Give it a special title.
That’s not to say it has to be fancy. Simplicity is good. Scott Brown’s book, A Simple Plan, has a title that maybe feels a bit generic, but I can’t help but feel it’s a perfect title for that novel (in which the plan to keep found money only seems simple and of course forms the backbone of the entire book).
On the other hand, you can probably go too far. You can leapfrog “generic” and come up on the side of “precious.” The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner (the new Twilight novella by Stephenie Meyer) is way too twee for me. It could be pared down. The Second Life Of Bree Tanner? Second Life? Maybe it’s “Bree Tanner,” because damn, I kind of hate that name. It sounds like some hyper-generic Yuppie girlspawn. Once more, we’re talking “subjective,” but you do want to be careful about not crossing the line and bloating the title or making it sound too delicate, too precious.
Your title shouldn’t just be married to the subject matter, but also be bound to the way you tell your story. Mister Slaughter isn’t going to be a book about ponies and dolphins and star-crossed lovers. You get a feel from that title right from the get-go, and it prepares you for the horror within. Practical Demonkeeping or Lamb (The Gospel According To Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal) do not sound like serious novels. You hear those titles, you chuckle, you raise an eyebrow, you get it.
But Isolation? Stranger Than Fiction?
Do those feel like anything?
Meehh? Nnngh? Muh?
Further, will people remember it? Too generic, and they’ll forget it. Too precious or complex, and it will remain out of reach. The title must pop. It must stay top-of-mind.
Your title asserts the book’s content, genre, and purpose.
A bad title isn’t going to sink you, but a good title will buoy you.
Of course, that still leaves the problem…
Where Do I “Find” The Title?
This is where I fail. I generally know what makes a good title or a bad title, but revealing the title — finding it somewhere inside the work — is where I have my most trouble. It’s different if I come up with the title before I write the book, and this is in fact pretty damn ideal because I feel like it’s a piece that’s no longer missing. But often enough I vacillate, or I don’t really have the title nailed down from the get-go, or the book changes enough where the title now no longer applies. I want to weep! I want to gibber! I cannot find my voice when it comes time for title-making.
Titles, they elude me.
So, how to pull that out? How to extract and reveal? Where does it come from?
First, maybe sit down and try to describe to a friend just what the book is about. See if any interesting phrases or ideas pop up. If you don’t have a friend, pretend you have a friend. Just ramble to your imaginary nobody. Write a bunch of things down. Stream-of-consciousness “automatic writing” can loosen all kinds of things inside your skull.
Second, much as you maybe hate themes, try to identify one or several that apply to the work. The title may not immediately emerge from this, but it might give you some hooks — or, at least, give you a feel so that when potential titles parade themselves before you, you can have a more immediate reaction to what works and what irritates you like sand in your panties.
Third, do any phrases or character names or situations stand out? Re-read your own work. See if anything pops. “Oh, that’s a clever turn-of-phrase, and it applies to the novel’s content and purpose. The Monkey-Gobbler’s Locket? Johann The Prestidigitator! Coffee And Buttplugs.”
Fourth, ask someone. Let them read it. Or at least give them the synopsis and see if they have ideas. You don’t have to shoulder this all by your lonesome. They will see things that you cannot. You’ve got a “forest for the trees” problem. (Or, at least, I do.) They, however, have fresh eyes. Total clarity.
Or, finally, you could always try the Random Book Title Generator. For instance, my next two books will be called “The Danger In The Ice,” and “The Winter’s Husband.”
When this is all said and done, compile a list. Throw everything at the wall. Put together a host of options: even if it’s a shitty-sounding title, put it on the roster. Then, sit on them. Tuck them away. Let someone else go through them. Try to envision your book on the shelf or try to imagine a review that talks about your book. Does the title work? Does it pop? Does it make sense? Does it walk the line between elegant simplicity and perfect uniqueness? Is it the title of your book only and not a title that could apply to a dozen other books? Pare the list down. Find the pearl in the oyster. The peanut in the turd.
My Dark Secret
The novel that’s repped is called Blackbirds.
I don’t know that it passes the smell test.
It’s a hair generic. Yes, the lead character is named Miriam Black, and the book has a “bird” motif buried within it, and it also is tied to hair dye in the book, and blackbirds are considered spiritual psychopomps ushering souls from the world of the living to the land of the dead and metaphorically that’s what she does as a character…
So, it’s not inappropriate, exactly.
It just doesn’t really sing. At least, for me. It could be a title to other books, couldn’t it?
But all the other titles felt too precious. Like I was overreaching. I thought about Vultures instead of Blackbirds, but she’s already somewhat of an unpleasant character, and that felt too surly a title.
For now, Blackbirds remains.
The good news is, my next book already has a handful of potential titles, and they all (I think, I hope) work.
The bad news is, I will forever struggle to find just the right title.
(Sidenote: you know how Ray Bradbury used to do titles? He came up with them first. He did a list of… I think it was 100 titles, and then he went down them one by one, writing a story to match each title. Awesome. Very cool creative way of really knocking out the work. Not necessarily appropriate to this discussion, but a cool tangent.)
Now I ask: how do you come up with titles? Anybody having trouble naming their work? What makes a good (or bad) title to your ears and eyes? Callers, go ahead.
About The Author
ChuckWendig
Chuck Wendig is a novelist, a screenwriter, and a freelance penmonkey. He's written too much. He should probably stop. Give him a wide berth, as he might be drunk and untrustworthy. He currently lives in the wilds of Pennsyltucky with a wonderful wife and two very stupid dogs. He is represented by Stacia Decker of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
Leave a Reply
- FAIL WHALE
- Painting With Shotguns #51 September 2, 2010
- Getcher Bingo Cards, Biznitches September 1, 2010
- Three Most Important Words In Plotting Fiction: Escalation, Escalation, Escalation August 31, 2010
- Giving Good Criticism August 30, 2010
- Recipe: “Mood Stabilizers” August 29, 2010
39 Responses and Counting...
RE: Storm of Swords: Steel And Snow
I actually think you’d really dig A Song of Ice and Fire, which is the series this title comes from. (I’m going out on a limb to assume you haven’t read it, since you probably wouldn’t ask what the title means if you had.) A STORM OF SWORDS follows the name scheme of the previous two books (A GAME OF THRONES and A CLASH OF KINGS) as all the politics, intrigues and betrayals set out in those titles erupt into warfare and bloodshed. “Steel and Snow” references one of the common themes in the series: in Martin’s fantasy world, summer lasts years and winter for generations. In the first book, it’s made very clear that Winter is coming. It’s also a clever play for the name of one of the PoV characters, Jon Snow.
YAIA.
I’ll go back to reading the rest of your post now.
Hah, I didn’t even realize that it was the next book in that series. I just saw it, sans cover, as a link.
I do want to read those books, to be clear.
And the first two titles are (for me) more evocative and unique.
And to reiterate, I don’t think “title I don’t like” translates into “book I don’t like.” Some books I’ve truly loved have had less-than-appealing titles.
– c.
I am a good namer generally.
Although i do tend to fall back on the cheat of occasionally having a Hunter S. Thompson-esque subtitle… and sometimes i think of the good title too late.
“The Ebon Shelf” probably should have been “lurid tales of viscera curdling horror.” Or something like that.
you might get some mileage out of the following:
A Murder of Crows. (Probably taken already.)
A Building of Rooks.
An Unkindness of Ravens.
Titles are one thing I’ve never really had much trouble coming up with, but they’re not always pure gold. The current list of titles I have in my head are all about the same character, and should I ever get them published, will be grouped under “Inheritor” or “Mark of the Inheritor” as a series title. I’m actually kinda proud of the five I have so far — with vague plots inspired by the titles to boot. “Soulbinder” might not be the most inspired, but it fits the world, the theme and the plot fairly well. (I’d tell you the rest of the titles, but I’m tightfisted with my Creative Thinkmeats. I don’t trust you, you look shifty what with that beard and those shades and that faux friendly smile. You’ll mug me and steal my titles and run cackling into the night. Don’t try to deny it, I’m onto you…)
Short stories are hit or miss for me, though I think the title I’ve had the most fun with is “Infinite Space in a Box”.
It’s not the titles that I personally have trouble with. It’s the stories themselves. But that’s another problem for another day, I think.
@Maggie:
You can totally trust me.
Here, I’d like to sell you my series of fantasy novels: “Mark Of The Inheritor: Soulbinder, Book One, The Adventures Of Rick ‘Rhapsody Belle’ Carroll.”
– c.
Pete:
A Murder Of Crows was one in my list, but it felt… I dunno, too obvious?
The others are maybe too overt, too. For this kind of book — lean, mean, spare, profane — I kind of want something punchier. A shorter, sharper shock. Hence, VULTURES, or as it became, BLACKBIRDS. Boom. One word. One and done. Game over.
I waffle, of course.
…
Mmm, waffles.
– c.
It’s funny, too — while it works, titles following three general patterns:
THE SOMETHING’S SOMETHING.
A (THE) SOMETHING OF SOMETHING.
Or:
SOMETHING (one word).
– c.
I need two things to start a project, a title and an ending. Without the title, whatever I’m working on lacks…mental cohesion. Gravity, maybe, drawing my ideas toward it. For me, the title informs the work. For example, my new novel (the western/fantasy) is called THE INCORRUPTIBLES which when I thought of it, it just sounded cool to me but had no thematic weight. But now that I’m starting to pick up steam in the writing of the project, I’m seeing the idea of corruptibility, of literal and figurative corrosion, throughout the plot.
I didn’t know that about Bradbury, but that’s what I have, a list of titles with a one sentence synopsis afterward. These are the books I’m going to write.
You really will enjoy Martin’s ASOIAF series. Read it before it hits HBO as a series. They’re filming now.
Justin Jacobson? Hey, that’s me. Glad you tackled this. Every time I’ve seen someone give it a run, it often ends up as yours did: a lot of trepidation, a few suggestions, and no reliable formula. I guess a good title is a lot like pornography: I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.
One trick I’ve used–and this would seem to be in your wheelhouse too–is actually doing a cover mockup with some fancy fonts and yoinked art. You can see how it works as part of the cover. Bonus: I find cover mock-ups highly motivational for finishing a project.
Man, I hate coming up with titles too.
Wait, we were supposed to THINK about the title? Oh shit, better call Stacia. Wait, she hasn’t complained about it yet, maybe she didn’t notice . . .
I’ve never given my own titles much thought, which seems counter-intuitive seeing as how it is often the title that will get me to yank a book off the shelf for a quick look-see. But the titles usually come to me as I’m writing, and they usually feel pretty right when they do.
Book being repped now is titled Unto Ceasar. it has lots of religous undertones, so the bible thing works. It has lots of corrupt politics, so the Ceasar thing works. It’s a phrase people are familiar with, so they’re filtering it through their own baggage and hopefully that sets up a nice little echo chamber thing there. What’s not to like, right? . . . RIGHT?
Curent work in progress in titled The Gravity of Mammon. A phrase I made up a while ago (OK, used to be The Inexorable Gravity of Mammon, but I was afraid that felt a little too much like a remake of The Unbearable Lightness of Being).
Dan
@Dan:
I far prefer: The Gravity Of Mammaries. Subtitle: TITNERTIA.
Please retitle.
– c.
@Chuck: A Song of Fire and Ice is wrapping a pilot for HBO at the moment. Apparently they have a huge budget and the “Man Who Makes the Decisions” is reportedly a fan of the books. I’ll be checking it out in hopes that it translates well to TV.
As for titles? I have to admit, I’m a bit of a title snob. If I see a book by an author I’ve never heard of before, it had damn well better have a snappy title. I can forgive horrid cover art (I don’t like to, but I can), but the title had better grab me by the short-hairs.
Best discovery of late? “Best Served Cold” by Joe Abercrombie. I would never have picked up his first book “The Blade Itself” by the title alone, but having gone back and read his earlier work, I’m glad he had a title that grabbed my attention.
Coming up with titles is a process that tends to bog down that transition period between “Holy Shit, this is an amazing idea!” and the bit where you actually sit down and start creating it in a form other than scraps of toilet paper covered with scrawls of bled-out Sharpie ink. I have to have at least a working title before my skull-dwarves will even pick up their pickaxes and hammers.
Frequently, I find myself going for simple, sometimes too simple, titles. One or two words at most. The hard part of this is trying to make it “pop” and not end up becoming too generic.
Book titles I have enjoyed tie into a line somewhere in the book. Halfway through, a character makes a remark using the words from the title, and the tone in which he makes it suddenly defines the book for me as a reader.
Also, it seems to me that titling short fiction would present much more of a challenge.
@Paul:
Actually, the Abercrombie books hooked me because of their titles. It shows that title can really matter. Again, it may not sink, but it can definitely buoy.
(Though, that series also fell down for me a little, but my mileage with fantasy is not so hot. Purely a personal preference.)
– c.
Kyle:
In my experience, titling short fiction is easy-breezy. Odd, maybe. But you have little to work with, so the title’s there in your 5,000 words rather than your 70,000 words. Plus, you can get a little artsier with short fiction titles — risky, experimental. Novel-length is on a shelf. It has to sing, it has to fly. It has to leap into hands.
– c.
@Justin: I did mockups for Blackbirds, actually. Maybe I’ll post ‘em eventually.
@John: First, may I say, I love the title? THE INCORRUPTIBLES is a book that calls to me. Second, yes, I prefer to have the title first. BLACKBIRDS was once called LIVING DEAD GIRL, but that’s a title oft-repeated in fiction and song.
– c.
Titles kill me. Can’t do ‘em. I tend to think they’re all silly when I’m coming up with them.
Alright, here’s is Martin Praise so I can join this conversation. Blah blah blah dark blah blah blah people die a lot blah blah blah Tyrion blah blah blah lol, cunt blah blah blah big wolf blah blah blah useless prologue blah blah blah best fantasy series to date.
There, I am glad that’s out of the way.
Fantasy titles bug me… like, they bug me a lot. It really seems to me like someone made a Mad Lib based on two of Tolkien’s Titles, and just sent it out to everyone interested in writing fantasy. It is almost always “The of “. The Fellowship of the Ring. The Sword of Shannara. The Pawn of Prophecy. Game of Thrones. The Itching of Sphincter. The Beard of the Princess.
And so on.
One of the best, yet oddly generic, titles that ever caught me was (oddly enough, by a writer you mentioned) Swan Song. Something about that title just yanked me right into the page, and years later when the story is a little fuzzy, that name still makes me want to go back and reread it. No other book could be Swan Song – it’s the perfect title.
I used to name titles in advance, and then try to build around it, and I know a lot of people who do that. Now I am much more into calling the project by an arbitrary name until I come up with something better. At some point during the writing the name will action hit me, and it will resonate with what I am writing. No fears on that, I’ll just let it be.
If I ever name a book with the fantasy scheme, someone please strap a few tons of dynamite to a hobbit and ram it up my ass.
I hate coming up with titles. I’ve passed on posting to my blogs because i couldn’t find a title I liked.
I’ll look past a book in the store if I think the title is stupid, but I can only think of one book I bought because of its title: Chris Moore’s THE STUPIDEST ANGEL. Good decision, there. great book. Angels and zombies both. in fact, that’s a title I might give a look to: ANGELS AND ZOMBIES. Let’s see Dan brown write a best seller around that.
@Rick:
“The Itching of Sphincter. The Beard of the Princess.”
+7 laugh points.
Also: Swan Song is literally my favorite book.
That is all.
– c.
@Dana:
I would read ANGELS AND ZOMBIES. (A to Z!)
– c.
I’m so glad you posted this, Chuck.
I suck at titles.
No. Seriously.
I suck at titles hard.
[...] over at Terribleminds discusses the ins and outs of titles over yonder. Rather than completely rehash what he wrote, I’m going to tell you to go read it, because [...]
Oh man, it took me forever to come up with Clockworks. For a long time I knew I wanted to name it “Clockwork (Something)” and could not for the freaking life of me figure out what that (Something) should be, so in the end I just went with Clockworks. On one hand, it fits and is pretty easy to remember. On the other hand, if I’d have named it Clockwork Jungle or whatever, I could have bought Clockworkjungle.com and gone on my merry way. Ah well.
For the individual comics, I tend to go with my trend of Comic Titles That Sound Like New Order Song Names. Usually I just figure out something related to what happens on that page, and then hit thesaurus.com to look up related words, and pick the wankiest. (Today’s page being an exception, and I kind of wish I went with a different title.)
I quite like the name Clockworks, for what it’s worth.
I actually think it’s much more distinctive than Clockwork __________. It’s almost like it owns it.
– c.
Yay! Writing topics are back! You’ve been kind of gamey lately, so I’ve been keeping my distance. And by that I mean your choices in topics, not that you smell or taste like a wild animal. Or maybe you do, but I don’t know you well enough to make that assumption.
Oh, lordy, I hate titles. Rick, you think straight Fantasy titles are bad, try coming up with an original and not ridiculous PARANORMAL ROMANCE title.
Some people really struggle with character names, but I haven’t found that difficult yet. But titles? Shoot me. Please. I suck at titles so bad that I put a poll on my blog to have everyone else choose the damn thing for me. And those options aren’t even titles that I love. They’re just the lesser of many other evils that don’t already exist out there (according to Amazon or Google anyway). Unfortunately, cheesy titles seem to be the nature of the beast with the romance genre, so I’m not sure that your tips and tricks would apply. Although I still think those are great ways of looking at the process, so good on ya’, mate.
How much should we twist and toil on our titles though when the publisher ultimately has the final say in what it will be called? Don’t they?
Chuck – thank you!
I’m pretty fond of the name myself, despite the random moments of doubt. Plus, it works on a couple of different levels, which will become clear in like a year or two on the comic.
So, a couple things.
First off, the title “Changes” in the Dresden Files has a specific significance in the context of the series. Every single title in the series up to that point has been two words, each word in the pair having the same number of letters. The fact that book 12 in the series breaks a pattern that’s 11 books long means something beyond the word itself. It’s the FOOM of a twist in the plot landing. Because of the context that’s been built up over a decade around it, the title actually IS higher impact than you might otherwise think.
Which brings me to another thing: that letter pattern? Wasn’t Jim’s decision. His first book comes around to get published, his working title is Semiautomagic. Publisher decides they want something punchier. “Storm Front” gets floated. It lines up with an incidentally similar “Fool Moon” which is already planned as the title for the second book. Graphic designer working on the book cover sets it up so each letter in each word lines up above each other. Publisher likes the look of this. Pattern is born, and since it’s there in the first two books, Jim moves on with a plan of titling each book in the series that way.
Point being, if you aren’t publishing your own work, any title you come up with may well only be a suggestion. A title is marketing, it’s brand. Whoever in your chain of command — whether that’s you or the dude or gal publishing your work for you — is in the driver’s seat with marketing and money is going to be the one making the call there. That doesn’t mean good titles will come out the other side of it, but in a way I see it as a potential point of liberation — the idea that your title that you’re coming up with right now as you’re writing the thing doesn’t have to be perfect because there’s a decent chance it’s not going to be final.
For stuff I publish, games specifically, I try to think about the way folks are going to shorthand it as well as the title itself. I try to listen for music in how it rolls on out. Don’t Rest Your Head is probably my favorite title of the ones Evil Hat’s put out so far for all of that, even if “Dry H” is how some people read its acronym.
Man, I *love* to title things. My hold-up, though, is that I title things roughly right at the beginning, and then that sticks. (See Requiem Chronicler’s Guide, which is a fairly shit title.) I think, in contrast, the clan books ended up with pretty good titles.
For your book, I think even Blackbird Black is good, because it has a kind of jazzy rhythm to it and is more descriptive. (It’s also better than Black As A Blackbird, though it means basically the same thing. The trouble with this suggestion, of course, is that it is so extreme, it practically mocks itself. So what do I know?
These days you really do need to take how your title will be shorthanded on the internet into account.
That said, currently, one of my favorite titles is “Werewolf: The Forsaken”, because the shorthand, WTF, is just oh so appropriate. I swear, it’s like someone at White Wolf has met my friends, and named this book for them. It’s either that or they have a surveillance camera installed at my friendly local game store. Perhaps all people who play WTF are completely insane?
Personally, I’m terrible with titles. I think that everything I come up with sounds absolutely cheesy, which is probably owing to the fact that I watch B Movies by choice…and like them.
@Will: I like Blackbird Black, and it’s the hair dye she uses. I’ll keep that one in mind. Thanks!
@Fred: I figured it was something to do with the series and, moreover, something put on the series by the publisher. And you’re right, it is a little liberating. Even still, the title is also the thing you’re marketing to agents and editors before representation and purchase, so it still deserves reasonable consideration.
@Gina: We definitely shouldn’t twist in the wind about it, but ultimately the publisher decides just about everything if you let ‘em; doesn’t mean we can’t attempt to take early ownership. If we knock it out of the park with a good title, it might be one we actually get to keep, which is pretty cool. And I think I’m off of games for a while. Back to writing topics.
– c.
Chiming in: I hate titling. hee hee. Titling. the more I look at the work, the funnier it gets.
Also saying: YOU MUST READ A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE SERIES!
My enthusiasm trumps all rules of grammar. The fourth book was flawed and he’s taking forever with Book 5, but DUDE. Great stuff.
In my search for titles I sometimes go to quotation websites and search under a word that I think I might want in the title. Lately that’s been “shadow” and “moon.” Then I see what cool or lousy quotations come up and steal from them. “The Blade Itself” is from a quote, likewise “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and so on. I haven’t found the perfect title yet (because, see above, I hate titling) but it helps generate ideas.
@Will, I do EXACTLY THAT. I come up with a “working title,” and tell myself that I’ll come around to changing it, and NEVER DO. The one time I wanted to change a title (New Wave Requiem), everyone liked my “working” title so much that I kept it.
RE: Bradbury:
Fred Hicks and I engaged in a bit of this for game design purposes. We called it the Title Game.
The first player tosses a made-up game title. The second player has to come up with a game idea that fits that title. Whether that’s a synopsis of a setting, a premise, a game mechanic… Just come up with some kinda gamey thing. Then pitch a new title which the first player has to come up with a game for, and so on, back and forth until one of you dies.
Or until you come across a really juicy game idea like Fred did.
The title I pitched was “Dinocalypse.” That led Fred down a crazy three-part game concept that will some day see the light of day from Evil Hat. (I still pester him about it.)
Chuck: Spinny Wheel O’ Titles
http://io9.com/5511250/is-your-book-publishable-consult-this-insanely-detailed-poster
[...] first is a post by Chuck Wendig about Choosing the right title for your work. I really enjoyed how he shared insights but also his own insecurities about a fairly critical [...]
[...] Choosing the Right Titles for Your Work (Or: Heh, You Said Titular) [...]
I’ll be starting a book, and when I’m stuck on the actual writing I’ll come up with some Chapter titles (Which can be even more fun that the actual book title.) I fall in love with the chapter titles, but never get to actually writing them.
I think everyone has trouble with titles. They’re tough. Finding the right title is like finding the perfect balance between “Gee, that’s Cheesy” and “Could use more Umph”. I love titles when they’re actually coming to me, but when they aren’t….. it’s bad.