Do you love creating titles for your work? Do titles matter?
litmagnews.substack.com
Welcome to our weekend conversation!
Do you like coming up with titles for your work?
I do. It’s one of my favorite parts of the process, actually. Creating the title is an important aspect of the craft, in my opinion, as it helps orient the writer to a piece’s about-ness. This is vital when so much of the process of crafting a story is trying to determine what the story is actually about. And, of course, what it’s really about.
Titles are also the reader’s first introduction to the work. So not only are they important for the writer in the crafting process, but they serve as the first bridge between writer and reader.
Is this piece going to be funny with elements of satire? (Will Ejzak’s “Dads Like White Elephants” works for this.) Might it be a near-farcical situation and thus worthy of an invented word? (Deb Olin Unferth’s “Uncrowd the Planet” conveys this nicely.) Or, of course, the piece could be serious, could focus on a single place, tell the story of a single person, and the title could be, like so many titles are, just a single word, possibly a word which will take on a different meaning over the course of the story (think Russell Banks’s “Kidnapped”).
While I enjoy title-making, I’ve learned that, in fact, many writers don’t like this part of the process at all. I’ve heard countless writers say they hate coming up with titles, or they’re terrible at titles, or they never know what to title their own work.
Perhaps this is why so many writers wind up using the same titles for their pieces.
On his site, Clarkesworld Editor Neil Clarke created a list of Top Ten Most Common Short Story Names. Among 50,000 submissions, the title “Dust” was used 18 times, “The Box” was used 15 times, “Lost and Found” was used 13 times, and so on.
Has he rejected work because it uses a title he’s seen a zillion times before? Absolutely not. He says in another post, “I have never rejected a story because it had a common title.” And, “There are plenty of good and bad stories with those titles, but the title is not what made them good or bad.”
It’s a relief to hear this, of course. If you have a story or poem out there circulating that happens to be titled “Dust” or “The Gift” (used 16 times), it will almost certainly not be rejected on that basis alone.
On the other hand, perhaps this could be a moment to reflect: Do you want to have a piece circulating that has the same title as dozens of other pieces? Does this matter to you?
It may or may not. It’s perfectly reasonable to hold onto a title because it works, and you like it, and so what if it’s used by others?
It’s also perfectly reasonable to want to give this some thought. Perhaps this might be incentive to skim the tables of contents of various lit mags to see other titles being used. Maybe looking for a more original title could even unlock a problem you’ve been struggling with in the piece itself.
Or, perhaps titles are not something you have ever thought very much about.
In that case, you’re in luck! Because thinking about titles, this weekend, is precisely what we shall do.
Tell us, friends. Do you love crafting titles? Do you loathe crafting titles?
Do you have a strategy for creating strong titles for your work?
Have you ever changed a title of your piece after encountering work in a lit mag with the same exact title? (I have!)
If you are an editor for a lit mag, how important are titles?
If you are an avid lit mag reader, have you encountered works with the same title used again and again?
My favorite title story: I was sitting with a bunch of bright, accomplished mystery writers at lunch during a conference and Sujata Massey asked us for help with her first book's title. Half an hour went by as people suggested one failed title after another. Then my introvert spouse quietly said, "The Flower Master." Sujata lit up, the group applauded, and I asked later how he came up with it. Response: "I knew right away as soon as she described the mystery, but I thought you all should go first."
Sometimes a piece will grow out of the title alone, sometimes the reverse happens and often the title will change for any number of reasons. I just sold a piece to The Smart Set whose original title wasn't very good, more of a place holder: "I Am Not My Brother." But once I had a new first line, "I Killed My Brother," then I knew I needed a better, tastier title. It's now called "My Brother is Toast" which readers will see is a kind of pun when the essay appears.
I love doing titles. I'm lucky in that I rarely have to work at them much. They just come. "Empire of the Sea", "The List", "The Habit of Sleep", "How to Break a Boy", "Son of God, Son of the Earth".
When I do sometimes struggle with a title I think I've realized that it usually means there's something incomplete/unfinished in the piece itself. Something hasn't jelled yet. If the piece hasn't found it's truest form, the title won't come. One piece started off as "A Divine Comedy". Nah. Then "Contrition". Nope. Then I described to myself what the story with this less-than-likeable narrator was about. He's unlikeable, I said, because he's blind to a part of himself that if he saw it clearly would actually allow him to be kinder to himself and the people around him. That resulted in me adding a new paragraph that elucidated that part of his personality. Then the title came that encapsulated this flaw when I saw it in an Emily Dickinson poem: "Between the Light and Me". Hopefully, it'll get picked up in what I think is it's truest form with the title that bloomed naturally from it.
I come up with titles all the time. For poetry, the convention (traditionally) is to work your way backwards. You write the poem and then you come up with a title. It's often recommended, and I recommend this myself, that you select a title that adds something to the poem that is not otherwise covered in the body of the text.
Yes! I love too and I always have the title before I start typing . Occasionally it will change when the piece is finished if it gives me a new title during the writing . I’ve have had the title changed by the litmags that published two pieces of mine . I made them explain why . One made sense and so I use their title from now on. The other made no sense to me so I still use my original title .
I didn't always love it, but I've come to. It was when I realized that it wasn't merely a descriptive process, but a parallel creative process all its own.
As such, I often like to approach it as an opportunity to make someone laugh, give them a small chill, or invoke a sense of mystery. If I can slip a sly joke into one of them that nevertheless encapsulates what follows, I consider that a creative success.
I think the other approach, treating it as a synopsis or sales technique can work for certain kinds of content, but I'd rather the reader be mildly puzzled than to feel nothing at all.
Consider this. In the universe of literary journals, how does one overwhelmed reader with a zillion choices decide what to read? The first filter is the journal itself, but after that it's the title. I read journals for my own enrichment and even for fun but also with an eye to nominating for anthologies. Where do I begin? The title. Is the title intriguing? Clever? Promising? Zippy? Unique? Informative? What about "The Gift," "The Box," or "Lost and Found"? Pass. Those titles are not just overused; they don't give me―a willing, potential reader with nominating authority―anything to go on. They don't excite my curiosity; they don't tell me anything. They don't raise a question in my mind that must be answered by reading. Maybe this is unfair of me. Maybe these are great pieces with uninteresting titles. Too bad. I only have so much time, and very little to go on except... the title.
FYI, If I were to choose just one piece to read from the list in Kathy Fish's article, I would read "I'm on the Side of the Wildebeest," by Amy Stuber. It's fun. I want to know more. Excellent title.
Critically, the title can also change the meaning or add a "third leg" to add a dimension to the poem it did not previously have.
My related question, which I find more mysterious, is how authors choose which poem will supply the title of their book. It seems that there is a balance between a catch-all and the strongest poem of the group--but those two things aren't always mutually satisfying. Has anyone changed the title of the poem to make it fit as the title of a book?
Titles are one of my favorite parts of writing! Sometimes the title is the first part of the piece that springs up, while other times it comes later. Often they are a distillation of the work, other times an added piece of the puzzle, and in a couple poems the first line acts as the title. In my story in The Dunes Review, "Perch" is about the fish but also the position of the nine-year-old narrator on the bow of the 12-foot boat when he and his father are bucking waves in a storm on the Saginaw Bay. I like titles with multiple meanings. My Picky Eater poems in deLuge online are erasure poems from Cook's Illustrated magazine. The action of taking out words called up the image of a child with a fork picking at a hated food. I think titles are an important part of a work. They can frame it, add to the meaning, and catch a potential reader's attention, so making a memorable title is worth the effort. My forthcoming poetry book from Shanti Arts is titled Tethers End (multiple meanings dealing with freedom and constraint, chaos and order).
I suspect people who like coming up with titles also might like coming up with slogans. Or is that just me? I often think of things I'd put on a t-shirt (often as a play on an image that comes to mind). Memes, sure (a current iteration of the same line of thinking).
I love creating titles. In my flash stories the action often begins immediately, so I want the reader to know what they’re looking at and feel grounded in the space or situation right away. For example, my piece about a woman’s troubled relationship with her late father begins right after his funeral, so I titled it “In Lieu of Flowers”.
It's rather odd, but I always know when I'm onto something good because I can't think of a title. If I start with a title it's almost like having an outline. And I avoid outlines at all costs. If anybody can think of a better title for something of mine they are welcome to it. I think I even asked you to title something of mine for this newsletter once. To me, it's a secondary situation. If I chance on a good one, it's news.
I have a love/hate relationship with titles. For my forthcoming YA novel in verse that comes out in December, my editor and I brainstormed en route to my granddaughter's birthday party. And then we completely changed it the next day. I kept envisioning in my head that scene of Meryl Streep as Julia Child and her editor coming up with the title of her cookbook. titles are worth the time, and I do think the title made a difference in the acceptance of one of my short stories from "The Sonnenschein Pyroxylin Company" to "Enough." In titling individual poems, I strive for a title that doesn't repeat in the poem and love titles that have nothing to do with the poem, like "The Day of JFK's Assassination," and it's all about my falling down the brick stairs outside our home.
Someone once advised me to take the fifth line of a poem and make that the title. I think titling deserves more consideration than that.
I neither love nor hate creating titles. I do think they are important, but think they're often found within the work itself. Sometimes, when I'm revising, I find a better title than the one I originally chose. Another place I'm careful about titles is in my blog: https://thepensmight.com/. However, this is with the artwork that I choose to share with the piece. I'm also a fine artist and a digital artist and the titles of the work I display often relate to what I've written, even when the image does not appear to have any reference. If I can get both that's even better but I know the reference and hopefully others notice it, too.
Does anyone else keep a list of potential titles? I have a list of about 30. I’ve never used one of them but I think it’s a good exercise. Now I just need a story to fit my most recent “ Type Two Fun”
Having been a copy and headline writer for so many years in advertising I welcome titles, and try to make them referential to the text, or a plot point. I like titles and hope they cause a reader some pull-in to the story.
I'll give you a different spin. titles of nine books, one publshed one to be published, seven waiting.
Long ago in 1980 South End Press, a new mainly nonfiction lefty press heavily supported by Noam Chomsky (he gave them all lhis royalties for his books they published that were too hot and controversial for the "maistream houses") published my stories of race and class in public hospitals, a topic seldom explored by the literary community that has, primarlily a penchant for the angst, romance,trials tribulatiosn of white midlde to upperclass people, with , often, pallidly predictable plotz and characters who have all the fascination of a used kleenex. I thought I had a pretty good title - I LOOKED OVER JORDAN AND OTHER STORIES. The title story was about an aging African American shipyard worker in San Francisco who, like hundreds of other shipyard workers in the Bay Area during World War II contracted cancer from putting absbestos fireproofing into different ships and coming down with various mesothelioma lethal cancers years later. My character comes to find out the result of a biopsy- malignant or benign?
A song that fits his story is the compelling spiritual "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT" whose beginning lines go " I looked over Jordan and what did I see?/ Coming for to carry me home/ A band of angels coming after me/ Coming for the carry me home".
The most curious comment on this title came from two friendly Amtrak passengers when I was coming from New York To Boston to go over final detials with South End. The two lovely elder ladies had been representing their rural Massachusetts church at a convention in NYC.
When I told them the title of the book, they both frowned and held each other tightlyd
ssaboudeath."
"Now, Mabel," said her friend, " That is severe."
"Molly, death is severe."
"I dont think many people wll buy your book. Too depressing."
"Oh I think they will. Sinners can be very morbidl."
This is how the conservaion proceeded the rest of the way to Boston.
A few years later, one of my best friends, the legendary bookbuyer Paull Yamazaki of City Lights bookstore suggested I coulld havehad a better title. There was a story in the collection " Crazy Hattie Enters The Ice Age" about an aginging nursing aide's refusal to sign an annuall employee performance evaluation. Paul felt this story's title was more entrancing I think he was right and should it ever be reprinted, I would change the titlee (TBc
Finding titles for short stories isn't much of a problem for me. There's the occasional one that causes a back and forth, but first impressions/instinct is usually the best. This week, the working title stayed on the final piece, for instance. Titling books is harder. I like a snappy two-word title but sometimes that doesn't work. I've started to pluck sentence fragments from the MS. They're more atmospheric, lol. I write crime fiction and that feels like a plus.
My writing began through taking on additional jobs at work. These jobs included blog posts, email marketing campaigns, marketing slicks, etc., so titles were a major part of jobs. Including brainstorming and collaboration I spent more time writing titles than writing content.
In my own writing, I've tried to be less salesy. Another struggle I've had is the urge to reuse lines or titles from other works. Some of my favorite works are examples of that - "Absolam, Absolam", "A Sport and A Pastime", "Slouching towards Bethlhem." I felt Faulkner overdid it with "If I forget thee Jerusalem." I've used song titles that could more everyday expressions than scripture - "Landslide" and "Paid in Full" (I thought about Rihanna's, "B- Better Have My Money," but held off). Music is a big inspiration for me and it also can show an everyday word in a new light. I recently started to use the Flannery O'Connor "A Good Man is Hard to Find" tactic by looking for a poignant bit of dialogue or narration and elevating that to the title. In general I like to get a working title down after the first draft or break and then review that along with everything else.
As a non-fiction editor, I've tried to be unobtrusive to the writer's work and go with their flow. I did get a reader suggestion for an improvement to a title and it worked out very well. Part of that decision was because the original title hinged on a word that by itself could have a different meaning depending on context, which the reader doesn't have at the start.
yes. Sometimes, the title helps for better structure. As an academic writer as well, I can say "Title is important piece to start." Sometimes, when you finish your writing, the title might be revised, edited, or even to be in the final paragraph or sentence, but title is the mane rope that keep you produce a cohesive work.
Damn straight, titles matter: that's the hook that gets a reader at least to try the "all-important first line" of the story. When Im cruising at the library shelves, what am I looking at, anyway? Titles, yah?
I often change titles as I write a story, because the story itself gives me a better tag line than whatever I came up with so I could find it int he file list as I work on it. Sometimes, the working titles becomes the real title, as in my first novel, "The Dust Will Answer." Sometimes the story changes enough that I need to change the title, and then the story generally tells me what it wants to be called.
But titles matter, absolutely.
Hemingway's first title for "The Sun Also Rises" was..."Fiesta." Which sounds like a title for a treacly article in a travel rag. (I believe it's still marketed under that title in the UK.) And doesn't "As I Lay Dying" kind of inspire a smidgen of curiosity about the story? "Death Comes for the Archbishop," "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots," my unpublished noir novel, "My Turn to Die," "A Thousand Splendid Suns," "Dept. of Speculation," so many titles that might make you want at least to sample a chapter.
Anyway, I don't fret too much about titles. If I don't start out with a good one, I will, as I said, find one in the story itself.
100% agree... and generally, it's the Title that hits me first. It's like having the perfect dog name in mind, but one doesn't yet have the actual dog (I know this from personal experience !)...
Titles are important, but I find them difficult. Some of my pieces change title many times, including after submission. I don't want a title to be too obvious, but ideally to add something to the piece when the reader looks at it again having read the whole thing.
Titles are probably one of my favorite parts of writing. Often, I come up with a title first and the piece flows from it. I rarely change a title once I think it works. Interesting how many writers have different thoughts about titles! I struggle with opening lines more than titles.
Coming up with titles is hard for me! As an editor, titles are unimportant to me until after I've decided to accept a piece. I only once suggested to a writer that they come up with a new title.
To me, the poem's title is a little poem I put on top, something I think of as the poem's "hat," and it doesn't always relate that much to the surface of the poem, but the connection sometimes only dawns later. I try to make titles that, if I were leafing through a book, would compel me to read that poem, but also, like a good bio, is a tiny extra poem I can sneak into the whole process. One of my favorite titles recently encountered on a poem is Leigh Chadwick's "Cough Medicine Works Best When You Drink It Straight from the Bottle". And the poem doesn't contain any cough medicine drinking, but like a nice hairstyle, becomes something that adds to the overall effect of the piece. I love making titles so much, I usually always wait until the first draft of a poem is complete before making one, kind of like saving the cherry on top until you've eaten the whole sundae!
I would love to read "Dads Like White Elephants" since I'm teaching Hill Like this week in my fiction class. Alas, it's behind a print only paywall from what I can tell. I would pay, but I don't thing there's access online. Oh well!
The title, for me, is much easier to write than the piece itself. I usually have a title in mind before I start, though I may change it along the way. One thing I dislike are titles that try too hard to be cute or witty. It always feels like an overpromise to me, as if the writer is trying too hard to impress.
For poems of limited length, like a sonnet, the title can be a way of adding to the poem, can get you almost an extra line. But in the olden days sonnets generally didn’t have titles, so I wonder if when writing traditional sonnets, you should really omit the titles and number them. Although even numbers have resonance, I suppose, so if you had an "18" it had better be a good one since many readers will be reminded of Shakespeare’s.
My favorite title story: I was sitting with a bunch of bright, accomplished mystery writers at lunch during a conference and Sujata Massey asked us for help with her first book's title. Half an hour went by as people suggested one failed title after another. Then my introvert spouse quietly said, "The Flower Master." Sujata lit up, the group applauded, and I asked later how he came up with it. Response: "I knew right away as soon as she described the mystery, but I thought you all should go first."
Sometimes a piece will grow out of the title alone, sometimes the reverse happens and often the title will change for any number of reasons. I just sold a piece to The Smart Set whose original title wasn't very good, more of a place holder: "I Am Not My Brother." But once I had a new first line, "I Killed My Brother," then I knew I needed a better, tastier title. It's now called "My Brother is Toast" which readers will see is a kind of pun when the essay appears.
Titles are the hardest part for me. But Becky, your post reminded me of Kathy Fish's recent newsletter on titles: https://artofflashfiction.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-titles
Titling my piece is my favorite part of writing, and the title typically comes to mind very quickly.
I love doing titles. I'm lucky in that I rarely have to work at them much. They just come. "Empire of the Sea", "The List", "The Habit of Sleep", "How to Break a Boy", "Son of God, Son of the Earth".
When I do sometimes struggle with a title I think I've realized that it usually means there's something incomplete/unfinished in the piece itself. Something hasn't jelled yet. If the piece hasn't found it's truest form, the title won't come. One piece started off as "A Divine Comedy". Nah. Then "Contrition". Nope. Then I described to myself what the story with this less-than-likeable narrator was about. He's unlikeable, I said, because he's blind to a part of himself that if he saw it clearly would actually allow him to be kinder to himself and the people around him. That resulted in me adding a new paragraph that elucidated that part of his personality. Then the title came that encapsulated this flaw when I saw it in an Emily Dickinson poem: "Between the Light and Me". Hopefully, it'll get picked up in what I think is it's truest form with the title that bloomed naturally from it.
I come up with titles all the time. For poetry, the convention (traditionally) is to work your way backwards. You write the poem and then you come up with a title. It's often recommended, and I recommend this myself, that you select a title that adds something to the poem that is not otherwise covered in the body of the text.
Yes! I love too and I always have the title before I start typing . Occasionally it will change when the piece is finished if it gives me a new title during the writing . I’ve have had the title changed by the litmags that published two pieces of mine . I made them explain why . One made sense and so I use their title from now on. The other made no sense to me so I still use my original title .
I didn't always love it, but I've come to. It was when I realized that it wasn't merely a descriptive process, but a parallel creative process all its own.
As such, I often like to approach it as an opportunity to make someone laugh, give them a small chill, or invoke a sense of mystery. If I can slip a sly joke into one of them that nevertheless encapsulates what follows, I consider that a creative success.
I think the other approach, treating it as a synopsis or sales technique can work for certain kinds of content, but I'd rather the reader be mildly puzzled than to feel nothing at all.
Consider this. In the universe of literary journals, how does one overwhelmed reader with a zillion choices decide what to read? The first filter is the journal itself, but after that it's the title. I read journals for my own enrichment and even for fun but also with an eye to nominating for anthologies. Where do I begin? The title. Is the title intriguing? Clever? Promising? Zippy? Unique? Informative? What about "The Gift," "The Box," or "Lost and Found"? Pass. Those titles are not just overused; they don't give me―a willing, potential reader with nominating authority―anything to go on. They don't excite my curiosity; they don't tell me anything. They don't raise a question in my mind that must be answered by reading. Maybe this is unfair of me. Maybe these are great pieces with uninteresting titles. Too bad. I only have so much time, and very little to go on except... the title.
FYI, If I were to choose just one piece to read from the list in Kathy Fish's article, I would read "I'm on the Side of the Wildebeest," by Amy Stuber. It's fun. I want to know more. Excellent title.
Critically, the title can also change the meaning or add a "third leg" to add a dimension to the poem it did not previously have.
My related question, which I find more mysterious, is how authors choose which poem will supply the title of their book. It seems that there is a balance between a catch-all and the strongest poem of the group--but those two things aren't always mutually satisfying. Has anyone changed the title of the poem to make it fit as the title of a book?
A good title should also make you want to read the piece.
A good title helps a person choose to pick up your book, whereas as generic or not so great title might leave it untouched on the shelf.
Titles are one of my favorite parts of writing! Sometimes the title is the first part of the piece that springs up, while other times it comes later. Often they are a distillation of the work, other times an added piece of the puzzle, and in a couple poems the first line acts as the title. In my story in The Dunes Review, "Perch" is about the fish but also the position of the nine-year-old narrator on the bow of the 12-foot boat when he and his father are bucking waves in a storm on the Saginaw Bay. I like titles with multiple meanings. My Picky Eater poems in deLuge online are erasure poems from Cook's Illustrated magazine. The action of taking out words called up the image of a child with a fork picking at a hated food. I think titles are an important part of a work. They can frame it, add to the meaning, and catch a potential reader's attention, so making a memorable title is worth the effort. My forthcoming poetry book from Shanti Arts is titled Tethers End (multiple meanings dealing with freedom and constraint, chaos and order).
I suspect people who like coming up with titles also might like coming up with slogans. Or is that just me? I often think of things I'd put on a t-shirt (often as a play on an image that comes to mind). Memes, sure (a current iteration of the same line of thinking).
I love creating titles. In my flash stories the action often begins immediately, so I want the reader to know what they’re looking at and feel grounded in the space or situation right away. For example, my piece about a woman’s troubled relationship with her late father begins right after his funeral, so I titled it “In Lieu of Flowers”.
It's rather odd, but I always know when I'm onto something good because I can't think of a title. If I start with a title it's almost like having an outline. And I avoid outlines at all costs. If anybody can think of a better title for something of mine they are welcome to it. I think I even asked you to title something of mine for this newsletter once. To me, it's a secondary situation. If I chance on a good one, it's news.
I have a love/hate relationship with titles. For my forthcoming YA novel in verse that comes out in December, my editor and I brainstormed en route to my granddaughter's birthday party. And then we completely changed it the next day. I kept envisioning in my head that scene of Meryl Streep as Julia Child and her editor coming up with the title of her cookbook. titles are worth the time, and I do think the title made a difference in the acceptance of one of my short stories from "The Sonnenschein Pyroxylin Company" to "Enough." In titling individual poems, I strive for a title that doesn't repeat in the poem and love titles that have nothing to do with the poem, like "The Day of JFK's Assassination," and it's all about my falling down the brick stairs outside our home.
Someone once advised me to take the fifth line of a poem and make that the title. I think titling deserves more consideration than that.
I neither love nor hate creating titles. I do think they are important, but think they're often found within the work itself. Sometimes, when I'm revising, I find a better title than the one I originally chose. Another place I'm careful about titles is in my blog: https://thepensmight.com/. However, this is with the artwork that I choose to share with the piece. I'm also a fine artist and a digital artist and the titles of the work I display often relate to what I've written, even when the image does not appear to have any reference. If I can get both that's even better but I know the reference and hopefully others notice it, too.
Does anyone else keep a list of potential titles? I have a list of about 30. I’ve never used one of them but I think it’s a good exercise. Now I just need a story to fit my most recent “ Type Two Fun”
Having been a copy and headline writer for so many years in advertising I welcome titles, and try to make them referential to the text, or a plot point. I like titles and hope they cause a reader some pull-in to the story.
I'll give you a different spin. titles of nine books, one publshed one to be published, seven waiting.
Long ago in 1980 South End Press, a new mainly nonfiction lefty press heavily supported by Noam Chomsky (he gave them all lhis royalties for his books they published that were too hot and controversial for the "maistream houses") published my stories of race and class in public hospitals, a topic seldom explored by the literary community that has, primarlily a penchant for the angst, romance,trials tribulatiosn of white midlde to upperclass people, with , often, pallidly predictable plotz and characters who have all the fascination of a used kleenex. I thought I had a pretty good title - I LOOKED OVER JORDAN AND OTHER STORIES. The title story was about an aging African American shipyard worker in San Francisco who, like hundreds of other shipyard workers in the Bay Area during World War II contracted cancer from putting absbestos fireproofing into different ships and coming down with various mesothelioma lethal cancers years later. My character comes to find out the result of a biopsy- malignant or benign?
A song that fits his story is the compelling spiritual "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT" whose beginning lines go " I looked over Jordan and what did I see?/ Coming for to carry me home/ A band of angels coming after me/ Coming for the carry me home".
The most curious comment on this title came from two friendly Amtrak passengers when I was coming from New York To Boston to go over final detials with South End. The two lovely elder ladies had been representing their rural Massachusetts church at a convention in NYC.
When I told them the title of the book, they both frowned and held each other tightlyd
ssaboudeath."
"Now, Mabel," said her friend, " That is severe."
"Molly, death is severe."
"I dont think many people wll buy your book. Too depressing."
"Oh I think they will. Sinners can be very morbidl."
This is how the conservaion proceeded the rest of the way to Boston.
A few years later, one of my best friends, the legendary bookbuyer Paull Yamazaki of City Lights bookstore suggested I coulld havehad a better title. There was a story in the collection " Crazy Hattie Enters The Ice Age" about an aginging nursing aide's refusal to sign an annuall employee performance evaluation. Paul felt this story's title was more entrancing I think he was right and should it ever be reprinted, I would change the titlee (TBc
Finding titles for short stories isn't much of a problem for me. There's the occasional one that causes a back and forth, but first impressions/instinct is usually the best. This week, the working title stayed on the final piece, for instance. Titling books is harder. I like a snappy two-word title but sometimes that doesn't work. I've started to pluck sentence fragments from the MS. They're more atmospheric, lol. I write crime fiction and that feels like a plus.
My writing began through taking on additional jobs at work. These jobs included blog posts, email marketing campaigns, marketing slicks, etc., so titles were a major part of jobs. Including brainstorming and collaboration I spent more time writing titles than writing content.
In my own writing, I've tried to be less salesy. Another struggle I've had is the urge to reuse lines or titles from other works. Some of my favorite works are examples of that - "Absolam, Absolam", "A Sport and A Pastime", "Slouching towards Bethlhem." I felt Faulkner overdid it with "If I forget thee Jerusalem." I've used song titles that could more everyday expressions than scripture - "Landslide" and "Paid in Full" (I thought about Rihanna's, "B- Better Have My Money," but held off). Music is a big inspiration for me and it also can show an everyday word in a new light. I recently started to use the Flannery O'Connor "A Good Man is Hard to Find" tactic by looking for a poignant bit of dialogue or narration and elevating that to the title. In general I like to get a working title down after the first draft or break and then review that along with everything else.
As a non-fiction editor, I've tried to be unobtrusive to the writer's work and go with their flow. I did get a reader suggestion for an improvement to a title and it worked out very well. Part of that decision was because the original title hinged on a word that by itself could have a different meaning depending on context, which the reader doesn't have at the start.
yes. Sometimes, the title helps for better structure. As an academic writer as well, I can say "Title is important piece to start." Sometimes, when you finish your writing, the title might be revised, edited, or even to be in the final paragraph or sentence, but title is the mane rope that keep you produce a cohesive work.
Damn straight, titles matter: that's the hook that gets a reader at least to try the "all-important first line" of the story. When Im cruising at the library shelves, what am I looking at, anyway? Titles, yah?
I often change titles as I write a story, because the story itself gives me a better tag line than whatever I came up with so I could find it int he file list as I work on it. Sometimes, the working titles becomes the real title, as in my first novel, "The Dust Will Answer." Sometimes the story changes enough that I need to change the title, and then the story generally tells me what it wants to be called.
But titles matter, absolutely.
Hemingway's first title for "The Sun Also Rises" was..."Fiesta." Which sounds like a title for a treacly article in a travel rag. (I believe it's still marketed under that title in the UK.) And doesn't "As I Lay Dying" kind of inspire a smidgen of curiosity about the story? "Death Comes for the Archbishop," "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots," my unpublished noir novel, "My Turn to Die," "A Thousand Splendid Suns," "Dept. of Speculation," so many titles that might make you want at least to sample a chapter.
Anyway, I don't fret too much about titles. If I don't start out with a good one, I will, as I said, find one in the story itself.
100% agree... and generally, it's the Title that hits me first. It's like having the perfect dog name in mind, but one doesn't yet have the actual dog (I know this from personal experience !)...
another great weekend read, Becky, thank you...
Titles are important, but I find them difficult. Some of my pieces change title many times, including after submission. I don't want a title to be too obvious, but ideally to add something to the piece when the reader looks at it again having read the whole thing.
Titles are probably one of my favorite parts of writing. Often, I come up with a title first and the piece flows from it. I rarely change a title once I think it works. Interesting how many writers have different thoughts about titles! I struggle with opening lines more than titles.
Coming up with titles is hard for me! As an editor, titles are unimportant to me until after I've decided to accept a piece. I only once suggested to a writer that they come up with a new title.
To me, the poem's title is a little poem I put on top, something I think of as the poem's "hat," and it doesn't always relate that much to the surface of the poem, but the connection sometimes only dawns later. I try to make titles that, if I were leafing through a book, would compel me to read that poem, but also, like a good bio, is a tiny extra poem I can sneak into the whole process. One of my favorite titles recently encountered on a poem is Leigh Chadwick's "Cough Medicine Works Best When You Drink It Straight from the Bottle". And the poem doesn't contain any cough medicine drinking, but like a nice hairstyle, becomes something that adds to the overall effect of the piece. I love making titles so much, I usually always wait until the first draft of a poem is complete before making one, kind of like saving the cherry on top until you've eaten the whole sundae!
In one case I believe a change in title led to having a story published after several rejections. A new title made point of the story much clearer.
I would love to read "Dads Like White Elephants" since I'm teaching Hill Like this week in my fiction class. Alas, it's behind a print only paywall from what I can tell. I would pay, but I don't thing there's access online. Oh well!
Although Billy Collins has a meh attitude
about them, I feel they are very important in Poetry. They can either add a dimension or underscore a point, or just be fun or ironic. Tonia Kalouria
The title, for me, is much easier to write than the piece itself. I usually have a title in mind before I start, though I may change it along the way. One thing I dislike are titles that try too hard to be cute or witty. It always feels like an overpromise to me, as if the writer is trying too hard to impress.
For poems of limited length, like a sonnet, the title can be a way of adding to the poem, can get you almost an extra line. But in the olden days sonnets generally didn’t have titles, so I wonder if when writing traditional sonnets, you should really omit the titles and number them. Although even numbers have resonance, I suppose, so if you had an "18" it had better be a good one since many readers will be reminded of Shakespeare’s.
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/facsimile/book/UC_Q1_Son/8/
Coincidentally I just unearthed this piece I wrote about clichéd title patterns for Bookslut in 2013(!)
https://www.gordonhaber.net/home/
This is important to think about, and in critique group I always ask for opinions of my working titles,
other suggestions, as I tend to have understated titles .
i write more titles than i do works. i've got hundreds of them waiting to be used