Target your title
How to make a title your story’s best friend
What do Of Mice and Men, Cloud Cuckoo Land, Troubled Blood, A Comb of Wishes, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and The 22 Murders of Madison May all have in common?
Each represents a graspable technique to help writers select compelling titles for their stories.
I’ve always felt challenged by story titles. I tend to choose story names on a whim and don’t always notice when I’ve slapped an inadequate title on an otherwise delightful story.
Fortunately, last week my four-year-old taught me a powerful lesson about the importance of titles. His preschool wisdom inspired me to study how to break down the daunting task of title selection into a surprisingly manageable process. Here’s what I learned.
Great Expectations
My son and I are curled up in his bed reading one of my beloved childhood picture books: A Baby Sister for Frances by Russel Hoban. The badger on the front cover whisks me back to my Midwestern childhood and the home-sewn gingham dresses I wore to preschool—and to the days when I was a fledgling older sibling to a newborn baby sister. I couldn’t be more thrilled that my son selected this book as his first choice for our bedtime read.
We’re about two pages into the story—big sister, Frances, feeling neglected by busy parents caring for her newborn sister, is camped out under the kitchen sink singing a little song.
My son looks up at me. Mom, where is the baby?
It’s been a couple decades since I read this book, but I assure him the baby is coming.
He nods, we read another couple pages. This is the part of the story I remember best. Frances, feeling entirely unappreciated, gathers her snacks and favorite toys in a satchel and “runs away” under the dining room table.
The scene floods me with nostalgia. My four-year-old, however, has other concerns. He’s demanding to see the baby. He would also like to know the baby’s name.
I blink. It’s true, Frances’s baby sister has been entirely off camera, sleeping in another room. Baby’s nap causes Frances no end of grief because she has to be quiet.
I’m aware that my son, safely the second child of two, has been curiously seeking books about new babies joining the family. I reassure him the baby will wake up soon.
But, guess what? The baby never wakes up.
Frances’s parents eventually soothe their “runaway” daughter and help her feel appreciated, but to my chagrin, the baby sister never appears.
When we get to the end of the story, my son closes the book and tosses it across the bed because he never got to meet the baby.
As a beloved fictional companion of my preschool years sails over the covers, a realization hits me: this read failed my son because its title made a promise it didn’t keep.
My kiddo didn’t sign up for How Francis Felt Neglected When Her Parents Were Busy. He was curious about Frances’s baby sister. The book set expectations it would be about a baby, but sadly for him, the promise implicit in A Baby Sister for Frances never materialized.
This is it—the whole raison d’être of a story’s title. To set reader expectations about what we’re about to read.
How writers set expectations
My son would humbly request that writers NOT include characters in a title who don’t appear in its book.
Seriously, a title should tell readers something about what to expect from a story. We’re all mortal and many of us subscribe to Netflix. We’ve only got so much bandwidth in our reading lives, so we need something to go on to advise us whether to skip over that story in our favorite lit mag or read it—whether or not to click that Kindle book and skim the sample.
As writers, how do we set these expectations?
To research the answer, I analyzed dozens of my favorite reads over the past six or seven years. I searched for patterns. I studied similarities, mulled over differences. To my delight, a handful of distinct categories emerged offering practical, actionable help when wrestling with how to name a story.
A Protagonist
A Man Called Ove, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Ender’s Game, Circe.
I could go on and on. Putting your protagonist’s name in your story title is a tried and true technique for naming a story. You’ve already given your protagonist a stunning name, why not use it in your title?
A Setting
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Daughter of the Forest, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Mountain in the Sea.
Okay, okay. I’ll stop. Particularly for a fantasy writer, including some aspect of your setting in a title is a fantastic idea. Story is, at its heart, a person in a place with a problem. In the second example, Daughter of the Forest combines a protagonist and a setting to provide an excellent handle for readers on what to expect from the story.
A Mood
My favorite example of mood in title is Shotgun Lovesongs. I also love Troubled Blood and To Say Nothing of the Dog. In each case, the reader immediately gets a sense of what to expect in terms of how they’ll feel while reading the story. Shotgun Lovesongs implies both toughness and tenderheartedness. Troubled Blood suggests a scary atmosphere and dark undercurrent. To Say Nothing of the Dog sets readers up to anticipate delightfully clever humor.
Mood in title can also be more abstract. One favorite example is Of Mice and Men (inspired by a poem). I also adore Sal and Gabi Break the Universe. The word “break” in context of two kid protagonists and the whole universe at stake grabs me no matter how many times I read it
A Genre
Several of my favorite mysteries use numbers in their titles. They’re setting the stage for logic, puzzles, deduction. Examples include The 22 Murders of Madison May and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Notice how “murder” and “death” also set the mood? And how each includes an important character’s name?
In the fantasy category, my loved reads list is rife with titles that invoke epic storytelling: songs, sagas, legends. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, A Song of Fire and Ice.
Take a look at favorite reads in your go-to genres. What patterns to you notice?
A Magic System
In the fantasy genre magic systems figure prominently in titles. I love this. After all, fantasy readers come to the page for magic, and having some hint of what the magic concerns sends tingles up my spine. Here are some examples:
City of Ghosts (supernatural story, anyone?)
A Comb of Wishes (my writer friend, Lisa Stringfellow, won’t disappoint you, there’s gonna be a magic comb)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January (get ready for portal magic)
Howl’s Moving Castle (needs no further explanation)
And let’s not forget Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which sweeps us right into the style of Rowling’s magic system.
A Rose by any other name …
Part of my struggle with titles is they’re chosen before a story has had a chance to form. I fire up a brand new Scrivener file with nothing more than foggy, undeveloped notions. I have to call the file something. It’s easy to grow accustomed to that name, get complacent.
To combat this, I’ve started including a “title ideas” list in all my writing projects, big or small. As the story moves from planning to drafting to editing, different aspects of the story grab me and I write them down. Now that I’ve analyzed the stories I love best, I have a much better idea of how to categorize my inspirations. I understand the power of drawing from multiple categories, or allowing one category to speak loudly for itself. Armed with this knowledge, I curate those brainstorms into a title that speaks not just to me, but to potential readers.
If you take half an hour to analyze reads in your wheelhouse, you can, too.
Don’t tell my four-year-old—but between you and me, I’m kinda glad he chucked A Baby Sister for Frances across the bed. It was a wakeup call for me and the start of a new adventure in learning to study what titles work in the types of stories I love to read and write.