Don’t Read This
Did I get your attention? A lot can be said for a title. So how does one choose the right title? Is it true that a great literary work can sit undiscovered in a publisher’s slush pile because of a bad title?
Don’t worry. There is no magic ingredient to a great title. You could scour your library shelves for what makes a great eye-catching title and you’ll see many different approaches. I’ve read numerous books on writing and every single one has contradictory advice for what makes a memorable title. Check these out for example.
- The Stand
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Rebecca
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- The Time Traveler’s Wife
Great books, all of them. And each one defies someone’s idea on what makes a good title. Take Rebecca, one of my favorites. I’ve read that a title should never be named after a major character. Tell Charles Dickens that. What if Oliver Twist had been called Street Urchin, or if Stoker’s Dracula had been titled Bloodsucker? And don’t forget Carrie and IT.
My advice is this. Don’t stress about your title. There are many writers who needlessly lose sleep over it. Nobody really knows how to come up with the perfect title although they say they do. Let your work speak for itself. More often than not a title will spring to you when you stop thinking about it. Forget convention or some “experts” method. Let your book or story name itself.
And my vote for a great piece of literature with a title that completely thumbs its nose at convention? A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Hats of to Dave Eggers for that one.
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Comments
A buddy of mine just bought his first convertible and he’s loving it.
I’ve always had fun with titles. They often come to me when I’m not not concentrating on it. Examples include: The Black Toad Tavern, Curtis of Cloma, Milenka, The Angel of Mersey (sic), There’s a Man on the Moon, Forgive Us This Ring, Angela, Carbon Copy, etc.
I have to say I do not follow any convention when it comes to titles.
I love writing titles.. then I came on the blogosphere and read all this stuff about how to write titles.. the list rules all and things like that.
I’d like to think I stick to my style. For goodness sakes even my URL would have to be different. 
( I just looked up at your URL as I wrote that. I like it)
lol
I tend to keep my titles very short. Examples include, The Bridge, Mudpies, Thorns etc. But my stories are about 1000 word long so a short title matches a short story. I think my longest title is :letting your hair go!” This was a story I wrote last week about the dilemma I was having between keeping the long hair I finally grew as an adult looking good and letting it go to freely enjoy my convertible. You can’t have both good hair and a good time in a convertible! I picked the convertible- to heck with the hair!