Titles Tell All by Victoria Chatham

 

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You spend weeks/months/years writing your novel. You type THE END. And then it hits you. You haven’t got a title.

Titles come easy to some, not so easy to others. But how important is that title? In a word, everything. After all those thousands of words in your content, you now must encapsulate them all in a few words. Not as easy as it sounds because choosing a title needs as much attention as your characters, plot, and setting.

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A good title should be easy to remember and be appropriate to the book. It must hook the reader into picking up your book to find out what is between the covers. Is it clear what your genre is? Is there a hint of intrigue in the title, or does it have a hidden meaning such as Nancy Bell’s Dead Dogs Talk or
Stephen King’s It? 

Does your title state who your character is? Think of Connie Vines’ Lynx, or Jane Austen’s classic Emma. 

Place can also be a character, such as Eileen O’Finlan’s Kelegeen or James Michener’s Texas. 

All these book titles tell their own tale and give the reader a clear clue about the content of the book.

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Authors who write a series or link books will often have ‘follow on’ titles as in Mary Balogh’s First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Seduction, At Last Comes Love or Donna Alward’s Larch Valley or Cadence Creek series. The titles of these books set readers up with what to expect. There is no cheating in them and there should be no disappointments.

There are tools to help you, like the any one of several book title generators you can find on the Internet. Or you can create your title from your content, create your own list of possible titles and run a contest for your followers to choose one, or appeal to your fellow writers or critique partners. 

There isn't much doubt about Loving That Cowboy. It's a contemporary western romance and the title says it all. However, no matter how good the title or how attractive the cover, there really is no substitute for a good story. With National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO) looming in November, it's time to get writing the next good story.