Titles. Blog posts need them. Books need them. Movies need them. Short stories need them. Poems need them. And I suck at them. The only one of those I don’t write is poems. So I have to come up with titles for a lot of different projects. Frankly I’m glad that once I publish my editor will most likely change my title. I don’t get married to my titles because I know they’ll most likely change. If they don’t just come to me in a flash of inspiration I have a hard time coming up with a title. The inspired ones though, I’ll fight to keep. As an example, here are the titles of my complete, still unpublished books.
Highland Deception
Double Deception
Lorelle’s Song (ugh, that one’s really horrible)
Silk Secrets
Highland Deception takes place in the Highlands of course and the hero thinks the heroine has deceived him. In Double Deception my heroine is a twin. For Lorelle’s Song I had no clue what to call it. The heroine’s name is Lorelle and the hero writes her a song to show how much he loves her. The heroine in Silk Secrets owns a lingerie store called Silk Secrets.
Titles are important. In an article in the Huffington Post about what motivates readers to buy books titles are on the list. A good, catchy title means a lot. For me that’s the first thing that usually attracts me. If the title sounds intriguing I’ll pick up the book and read the back cover copy. Then I read the first page. If everything sounds good I’ll buy it.
I was looking at the Chapters list of NYT bestsellers and I gotta say, based on the titles alone I wouldn’t have picked up a lot of those books to even get to the back cover copy. For example: Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel. It’s just not speaking to me. The Passage. Also didn’t speak to me but it was a recommended read by Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly article so I read the blurb. It sounds like an awesome book. I will be buying it. Maybe even before it comes out in paperback. Swimsuit. I love James Patterson but that title doesn’t grab me either. Not like his older ones – Kiss the Girls, Cat & Mouse, Cradle and All.
Of course if you’re a well known author readers will buy every book you write. I would buy Dean Koontz’s grocery lists if he ever decided to put them into book form. Other authors have to grab me first. And they do that with the title. Publishers know this. That’s why they usually end up changing the title the author originally thought up. Sometimes titles just don’t grab me though so I’ll have to buy those books based on recommendations from other people.
I’m off to work. Maybe on my way I’ll come up with a title for the first book in my urban fantasy series. I love the idea, love the character. Can’t come up with a title for it to save my life.
Until next time…
Cindy
August 11, 2010 at 9:59 am
All of my books start out with either the hero or heroine’s names as a working title. The one I just signed to Loose Id started out as GARRICK, but as I got closer to subbing it, I knew I had to do better and since it was the first book in a series, it had to be good. It’s an erotic paranormal set in an apocalyptic vampire storworld so I focused on the dark setting & ended up with VAMPYR CHRONICLES: WHAT ROUGH BEAST based on the classic modernistic poem, The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats. Pretentious much? LOL. Sorry, former English major.
Anyway, if all goes well, the remaining titles in the series will also be drawn from the apocalyptic imagery in the poem (ex. Blood-Dimmed Tide)…
If Loose Id doesn’t change it, that is.
I HATE coming up with titles, too, and usually put it off until right before subbing. But once I knuckle down to it, I don’t think I do too shabby. Just pretentious.
August 11, 2010 at 11:14 am
A good title is important to motivate you to pick up a book when you’re browsing. People in advertising seem to be very good at this, probably because they understand the importance of a good, shiny bauble for people to reach for!
One of programme makers at a TV company where I used to work had “They shoot slower bullets now” as one of his favourites! Excellent.
With me, the working title is usually the first thing I think of when the work is still at the concept stage – and then I try to improve on it. Often, though, I just can’t think of anything better even if the original isn’t much.
Jan
August 11, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Titles are definitely not easy, but we have to come up with the best one possible even if we think it will change.
August 11, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I cannot come up with an interesting title even if my life depended on it.
Excellent post, Cindy.
From GIAM2
August 13, 2010 at 10:26 am
Kari, that’s a great title. My problem is the series thing too. Especially for my urban fantasy. I “intend” for it to be a series so I want a killer title. I’m also trying to come up with a title for the series itself and I’m drawing a blank on that too. I need to come up with a working title at least before I can work on the book for some reason. I don’t need character names but I do need a working title.
Jan, that’s exactly why I want a really good title. For me that’s what makes me pick up the book in the first place.
Carol, yep. We need that title even if we think it’s going to change. I still try to come up with a great one if I can.
Sandy! Welcome. Very cool to see another GIAMer. And not from my loop! I’m from x1. Every once in a while an amazing title will come to me. And even rarer, but it still happens, I’ll come up with a killer title before I even have a story. And then I have to come up with a story to go with the title.