Last month, at the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors, Vendela Vida made an off-hand comment about her titles. She was talking about her first novel, “And Now You Can Go,” and she said she regretted how nondescript it was. She said that when people talked about it they never got it right. Apparently it just didn’t stick in anyone’s mind.
Vague Titles
I am regularly surprised at how many books have titles that are straight up vague and boring.
In my completely unscientific study of boring book titles, I’ve found four things they have in common:
- They tend to be between 4 and 5 words
- They lean on words like “who,” “were,” and “when”
- They often refer to an unknown “you”
- They hint at some depressing intrigue, like “That Thing We Never Had” (I made that up off the top of my head. If it happens to be your title, I apologize, and humbly suggest that you change it.)
Better Book Titles
In that same (wildly unsubstantiated) study, some pretty amazing book titles have caught my attention: “Difficult Women,” “The Garden of Small Beginnings,” “The One-Eyed Man.” I love these.
Thinking back on Ms. Vida’s thoughts on titles, she said that these days she tries to chose a title that evokes an image. For instance, her latest “The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty” is pretty evocative. Before that was “Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.” She said that, even if people get it wrong, they at least got that image in there. They’ll say something like “that Northern Lights one.”
Here’s a short list of things that good titles seem to have in common:
- They use specific nouns (“A Man Called Ove,” “The Refugees,”)
- They’re not afraid to go long (“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night” or “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”)
- If they hint at despair, they also offer up something bright (“Love in the Time of Cholera,” “War and Peace” I would even include “Grapes of Wrath”)
- They evoke an image, even if we don’t know exactly what that images means (“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”)
If you’re working on a novel, have you figured out your title yet? How did you come up with it? Do you have a favorite title? Has anyone out there ever played around with a title generator? I’ve seen reference to those, but I don’t believe any algorithm could possibly capture the spirit of a novel. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Good Morning Ms April:
How About My New Novel, “The Butterfly In Her Died.”
I like the Butterfly, and a good sense of mystery too. Thumbs up from me.
As an editor currently working (more as a ghost-writer) on the memoir of a woman who left school before she was fourteen, the title emerged after a number of readings of the book. It had been lurking in there the whole time. Buried in a list of things she’d enumerated as being among the things she feared were – in this order – ‘deep water, dark time’. Sublime balance and alliteration IMHO from a woman who endearingly admits she relies on me to put all the ‘comers’ (commas), full stops, paragraph breaks and chapters in her stream of consciousness manuscript. And wouldn’t recognise an example of alliteration if she fell over it!! I added a subtitle – ‘Julie’s Story’ because I find the DWater, DTime so freakishly poetic and evocative that it’s not really indicative of the nature of the book as a whole. Really enjoyed the article on book titles – thank you.
Hi, Anne,
It sounds like a really interesting project, and I agree, Deep Water, Dark Time does have a love ring to it. Subtitles are a whole other thing aren’t they? I haven’t put much thought into subtitles. I feel like they don’t get used much in fiction (which is where I focus my energies), but in non-fiction, especially memoir, they’re critical. Because you want to have that artistic title, but you also want your readers to know what they’re picking up.
Good luck with it!
I’m working on one where the main character dies within the first twenty pages So why is it called, ‘Saving Iris’? Hmmmmmm……
Good news: it’s yours to change.
Very informative. I’m glad the title I chose for my book does not align with your boring book title list, haha. It basically came about one night while I tossed around ideas with my husband and brother-in-law….and some drinks. It posed a special challenge for me because my book focuses on the Mexican card game, Lotería, but I don’t want to exclude an audience that doesn’t know what that means so I decided on In the Cards – A Collection of Memories Inspired by Lotería. It’s not out yet, but will be soon. April, what does your unscientific study think of subtitles?
Good question. I like subtitles. In my mind, they are very much a part of the title. For a collection of short stories (which is sounds like you have), a subtitle allows you to elaborate to include theme and give the potential reader a better idea of what they will find between the covers. I think your instincts on putting Lotería secondary is a good one, to make sure that potential readers aren’t scared off by something they don’t recognize. Cheers!
Very interesting. I had my title picked out years before I wrote the book. In fact, I tried to copyright the title, but the US Copyright Office said i had to have a book to go with it. So that got me started on the book, which, by the way, is titled The Book of Rhino.
My WIP is historical fiction. I was originally going to name it after the (fictional) town it is set in, because it hinted at something ominous. However, I’ve now decided to divide the story between two different locations, so I can’t really use that anymore. I’m stuck, but figure it will come to me eventually.
Sometimes, I think we just have to wait. I had a title for my current WIP but as kept working it didn’t seem right. Then, after I finished my most recent draft, it just kind of came to me. Good luck. And let me what you land on (when you do finally find something you’re happy with). Cheers, April