Let’s Talk Process: The Title

image via metafiller.com

I have declined to purchase books with titles I didn’t find compelling.

Bad cover art I can overlook.  Sometimes.  Maybe.  But a bad title?  Even when they’re library books they end up at the bottom of the stack, get renewed the requisite two times, and go back without ever having been cracked.  Though a smaller nitpick, I am also driven bonkers by books that fail, by the end, to explain the title by even the thinnest threat.  Give me some spider silk at least, people!

BTW and FYI: I hold grudges.

That said, a decent title is at least as hard, if not harder, to force into being as a good query or synopsis.  Which sucks.  Because you can’t release a book without a title.  I mean, I’m all for throwing the rule blob into the trash compactor for that eyestalk thing but there are a few things carved in stone.

So.  How to effectively sum up this thing you bled for in one to four words in a way that isn’t too enigmatic or fatuous or opaque?  Or cliche?  Or lame?

I don’t have a fucking clue.

When Changes, the 12th Dresden Files novel came out, I went to a reading/signing and Jim Butcher explained his method: he felt there was a nice rhythm to the two word title and that the repetitive two word pattern tied each book in the series to all the others.  The single word title, Changes, was both expositional re: the book’s plot and also a signal that the series was going to veer off the Autobahn and go off-roading or, if you will, “change.”  Subsequent titles have returned to the old two-word format, tying two very different parts of Harry Dresden’s life neatly together.

I’ve set myself a one word title challenge.  Why?  I have to think really, really hard which makes me much less likely to regret the choice later.  Single words are quick for the readers eye and their sensibilities; if you pick the right word, you can get a decent emotional response in a minimum length of time.

image via amazon.com
Pretty much sums it up, no?

It’s also word game.  There are so many words in so many languages.  How do you pick just one?  That’s like putting some sort of caramel filled chocolate in front of me, or sushi, or a really good breve and telling me it’s the last one I’ll ever consume.  Unless you back me up against a wall, I’m not going to be able to do it (wall, in this case, being my desire to have someone besides my friends, family, and self read my brain barf).

I want my titles to be clues, a simple but meaningful outside for my creamy center.  Akin to my wearing of mostly black and gray on the outside while inside, I’m a writing mass of neuroses, inadequacies, imaginary friends, creativites, proclivities, and the desire to take naps.  Makes sense my books would match my personal sensibility.

Perhaps, most importantly, a good title displays the writer’s faith in the reader.  If you shoot your wad on the title, why would a reader pick up the book?  If the title is so obscure she has to hack through it with a machete, you’ve probably made a bad decision as well.  Clear out some of the underbrush for her, give a hint of the glittering jewel within via a few perfect syllables and let her do the rest.  She’ll appreciate the mushroom cloud “aha!” moment of connection all the more for it.

All that said, I really don’t have a fucking clue.  If anyone out there happens to have some sort of magic formula, I’ll pay you in cookies, blood, sweat, editing… Whatever.

That’s how I do it (probably poorly), kids.  How about you?