Titles are important. That's the first thing anyone sees of your book or short story. It has to be catchy, and good, and it has to mean something.
Well, that's the goal, anyway. I have a history of working titles that don't necessarily mean anything. They sound cool, and somehow reference something in the story or in its creation, but don't necessarily make sense for the finished project.
What do I mean? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's some examples:
- Locking Up the Sun: This was a superhero story about a guy who could teleport. The title vaguely made sense because the main character was sent to rescue a superhero named Supernova. But really, it was just named after this song.
- Secrets and Thieves: A post-apocalyptic adventure with a wide variety of strange characters. And while yes, there are secrets, and at least one thief, I don't know that they were central enough to get a spot in the title. It's a line from this song, which has nothing to do with anything. It's just a good line.
- A Conspiracy of Ravens: A governor assassinated. A man in the wrong place at the wrong time is framed for it and must joined forces with the elusive blogger Nykorax to clear his name. Now "nykorax" means, via some creative license, "night raven." There aren't really any other ravens in the story, let alone a conspiracy of them (that's the term for a group of ravens). But man, it sounds cool.
- Night Train to Nowhere: If you've been around the blog a bit, you'd recognize this one as "My Soul To Take." In my notes, when I started it, and even now, it's labelled "Night Train to Nowhere," despite the fact that the story takes place in mid-afternoon.
Which brings us to:
- Just One Yesterday: This is the serial story I'm working on right now. That's what it's called in my notes. Because that's the song that gave me the idea. It doesn't make any sense with where the story's going, but I'm still hesitant to name it something else.
So as you can see, I tend to name projects after song lyrics/titles and random phrases I like the sound of. But by the time the thing's actually written, they don't always make sense. Which gives me two options: change the story to fit the title, or change the title to fit the story. You can imagine which would be easier.
Or I could just take further inspiration from Fall Out Boy and give everything long and complicated titles that have nothing to do with anything. (If you're not in the loop, they're kind of known for having songs named things like, "Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes" and "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More 'Touch Me.'")
Anyway, I wouldn't really care about naming this story, except I want to tag it with some kind of label to make it easy to find all the pieces of it. You know, for all my new readers who are going to come flooding in. From… somewhere. And they're all going to want to read this story.
So what do you think, readers? All five of you, plus the 10,000 about to materialize out of the ether. Do you like your titles to make sense? Does it put you off when you see a title that sounds interesting, and the story has nothing to do with that? What do you think I should call this thing?
I'll see you Saturday, maybe with a title. Probably not, but at least with another piece of the story.
I think that the title will get someone to read the dust jacket. The dust jacket is what is going to make someone read the book. What you're doing works. It's my understanding that what you call it won't be what it's published under most of the time anyway. It'll get changed.
ReplyDeleteYou write enough that this will help you search, hashtag, reference, etc. I like your titles.
I haven't written a lot of stories that have titles. I tend to write the story and use a nickname for it. This Nano was Piper's story. Nano 5 years ago was also Piper's story, even though it was a different book. That one got an official title after I finished the draft. In Plain Sight. This years is a sequel to that first Pipers story, so the nickname stuck. And I don't like it enough right now to give it a new name. It needs a lot of love.