For Want of a Title

[duckprintspress]

A guest blog post by Shea Sullivan!

Titling is hard. You might think that the goal of the title is to get people to read the story, and that’s almost right! But, more importantly, you want the title to pull in the people who want your story, specifically. They’re definitely out there, but they have a lot to choose from. Titling will help them connect to your story. There’s a lot to consider, but let’s break it down!

What people should derive from your title:

• a sense of what the story is about;
• the style of the writing;
• the overall tone and genre of the piece; and
• curiosity.

Get More Bang for Your Character Count

Sometimes, you can use a well-known phrase to do some extra work. See, for example, the title of this post: For Want of a Title.

You probably have some familiarity with the phrase “For want of a nail (the kingdom was lost).” So you’re in on the joke, we already have a connection, a little wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you get it! And then, on top of that, you might also get a sense that this is a Big Deal. Because losing a kingdom is a pretty major thing, when the start of it all was just a nail. And so, this title says (without saying) that a bad title can also lose you a kingdom (a reader, a following… something big and important). So, I didn’t have to say, “Without the right title, you might not get readers even if your story is the most perfect thing in the world.” If you know the original saying, you already got that idea.

You can do this with sayings, with tropes, with metaphors—use what the reader likely already knows to give them more information and to entice them to keep reading.

Theme and Metaphor

Some stories have strong themes or repeated imagery in them. For example, a theme of growing up and learning that what you want isn’t actually what you need. Or, repeated imagery of a pool of water, where the state of the water changes based on the mood of the main character: it might be clear and still, or cloudy or turbulent, or flooding over. Maybe you planned your themes and repeated imagery carefully, or maybe your beta readers noticed them. Sometimes a house is not just a house, but a representation of standing in a community, or of wealth, or of responsibility.

If you have a continuous thread that winds through your story, as identified by you or your readers, you can use that to create a title.

What is the thread? You can use any level of that to bring people in. Take the water example above. In the story, there is a pond that is returned to over time. You can make the title about the water, about the changes, about the passage of time or the emotional upheaval. You can use water imagery that isn’t in your story but still shares the types of feelings you want to evoke in the reader, such as something about tides, or seasons, or water lilies. Any title choice will carry with it some sort of feeling. You can use that to bring your readers’ expectations closer to your story. For example:

• The Seasons of Water: indicates a passage of time, a degree of epicness.
• Waterlogged: open-ended, this could be funny or dark or a series of vignettes.
• Beneath the Still Surface: a sense of oppression and seriousness.
• Five Times Bittle Pond Overflowed: a lighter writing style, maybe slice of life.

Water, Water, Everywhere: a line from a poem! Most people know “not a drop to drink” comes after, so it will say, without further explanation, that this is about a person who seems to have it all but is actually overwhelmed by the need for something they are not allowed to have.

It’s a good exercise to write down a bunch of potential titles and see what they might say about a story without any more context.

Lead… Do Not Mislead

Sometimes, we think so much about writing a captivating title, we forget that the point of the title is to appeal to the same people who will want to read the story.

The general tone of your title should match the tone of the story. Whether your story is body horror, humor, epic fantasy, the title should reflect that in some way. While, of course, a title can be interpreted many ways, and will be helped along by any graphics, summary, blurb, etc, that accompanies it, you do not want to mislead a reader into thinking the story is something it isn’t. Doing so tends to irritate people and can lead to bad reviews or lost opportunities. Not every reader is your reader.

Don’t put a knock, knock joke on the cover if the story isn’t funny, and don’t model your story title on a standard format (The Character Title of Things and Stuff) in any serious way if you’re not at least in the ballpark of the genre. Of course, you can play with that a bit, but doing so should be intentional, and your goal should be clear: who do I want to bring in, and will this do it? Will they understand what I’m offering them?

In the End

Titling can be really fun. It’s another way of writing that can seduce your readers into checking out what may become their new favorite story. Be willing to play around with a lot of options and keep your reader in mind. You can even run titles past friends who have no knowledge of the story and have them describe what they think the story will be about based on the title!

Ultimately, I hope that titling can be fun and creative, rather than a dreaded thing to tack on to a project after you’ve done all the hard work of writing it. You’re a writer! You can also be a titler!

TL;DR

• Use the repeating elements of your story to inspire your title.
• Evoke the tone of your story in the title.
• Use poetry, lyrics, sayings, etc, that already exist to extend your meaning (with awareness of public domain and fair use concerns!).
• Try a lot of different titles.
• Bounce ideas off friends.
• Have fun!