Most authors think hard and long about the titles of their novels. They need to be memorable, of course. How to find the perfect title?
We can go to the classics... Some of what Mark Twain wrote were considered "boys' stories" in their time. And so his titles were meant to draw the interest of this audience...The Adventures of Huckeberry Finn, Tom Sawyer. Very what you see is what you get. When I was writing my adventure novels for young people, a seasoned author advised me to follow Mark Twain's example and so: The Ghosts of Stony Clove got a title. (She also told me not to be afraid to put ghosts in the title!)
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| Mark Twain, who knew a cracking good story |
How about those one word titles... they are easy to remember!...Jaws, Jazz, Beloved, Atonement, Emma, It, Middlemarch, Mudbound, Room and Outlander come to mind. I've never achieved the magnificent feat of a one word title! The closest I've gotten is two words: Seven Aprils, my novel of the Civil War that is the first of my American Civil War Brides series.
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| My two-word title novel |
Some titles are beautifully poetic and evocative...To Kill A Mockingbird, Lord of the Ring, Catcher in the Rye, Tender is the Night, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Don't those titles make you want to dive into the story?
My upcoming novel, Mercies of the Fallen came from a beautiful song written and performed by my one-time neighbor Dar Williams. Mercy of the Fallen. It begins:
Oh my fair North Star,
I have held to you dearly,
I had asked you to steer me...
I have held to you dearly,
I had asked you to steer me...
Those lyrics spoke to me as I was writing this story of damaged people growing in grace and beauty through the travails of war. Here's more of what proved deeply meaningful to me
in my own storytelling:
There's the wind and the rain, and the mercy of the fallen...
There's the weak and the strong and the many stars that guide us,
There's the weak and the strong and the many stars that guide us,
we have some of them inside us
Speaking of song lyrics, I used popular songs of the 1940s to title my romantic suspense Code Talker Chronicles. The first is I'll Be Seeing You because my team of Luke Kayenta and Kitty Charante have not yet met, but Luke's longing for Kitty is already in place. In Watch Over Me, they have their first adventure together. This sets the stage for what they'll do from now on: watch over each other. Book 3? How does All of Me (one of my mom's favorites) sound?
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| Book 1 |
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| Book 2 |
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Titles are important, is right. I must have a title before I can really get into the book. Waiting for your next book.
ReplyDeleteMy titles do not always come to me right away. Unless it's a series, and the titles have similar words reflecting the series. Like in my Chronicles of Kassouk series, where all the titles include big cats, like the stunning covers.
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