Dear Writer Revisited: Letter Ten
Baby's Name
Finding a Title for your Story
Hooray! This couldn't come a moment too soon because I am stupendously, bizarrely, terribly, horribly bad at naming things.
And, as Virginia says, titles must be interesting and must provide an open invitation to read on. Who is going to buy a book that seems duller than their taxes? Not me! The title is key in marketing your book, and if you have a great title, customers will remember it and maybe you when they go to the bookshop. This prevents horrible situations where your bookseller looks at you down her stylish glasses with a polite mixture of confusion and fatigue when you enter and say "I'm looking for a book but I don't remember the title or the author's name, only that they talked about it on ABC's Books and Arts Daily sometime during May to October." (Seriously, don't do that. Booksellers are excellent people but we are not genies.)
2 word titles have a nice rhythm to them and are often quite fun to say. Take Helen Garner's title Monkey Grip which is emotionally evocative and provides a neat metaphor for the story itself. Long titles will often present themselves during the body of the story, and are more common in short fiction.
Writing Exercise 11
A list of some of the best titles I can see whilst sitting at my desk
Whisky Charlie Foxtrot
What Is Left Over, After
Rhubarb
Elsewhere in Success
The Wonderbread Summer
Transition
Atonement
Floundering
The Shining Girls
Burial Rites
Character names can also be quite tricky. Virginia suggests the following approaches
* telephone books
* baby name books
* google
I would like to add to this list
* people on Twitter
* people who turn up as "people you may know" on Facebook (obviously don't use their full name, gosh.)
This was a great chapter full of the classic "Keep it Simple" approach to deep writing.
Finding a Title for your Story
Hooray! This couldn't come a moment too soon because I am stupendously, bizarrely, terribly, horribly bad at naming things.
And, as Virginia says, titles must be interesting and must provide an open invitation to read on. Who is going to buy a book that seems duller than their taxes? Not me! The title is key in marketing your book, and if you have a great title, customers will remember it and maybe you when they go to the bookshop. This prevents horrible situations where your bookseller looks at you down her stylish glasses with a polite mixture of confusion and fatigue when you enter and say "I'm looking for a book but I don't remember the title or the author's name, only that they talked about it on ABC's Books and Arts Daily sometime during May to October." (Seriously, don't do that. Booksellers are excellent people but we are not genies.)
2 word titles have a nice rhythm to them and are often quite fun to say. Take Helen Garner's title Monkey Grip which is emotionally evocative and provides a neat metaphor for the story itself. Long titles will often present themselves during the body of the story, and are more common in short fiction.
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| Also responsible for the wonderful but enigmatic title "The Children's Bach" |
Writing Exercise 11
A list of some of the best titles I can see whilst sitting at my desk
Whisky Charlie Foxtrot
What Is Left Over, After
Rhubarb
Elsewhere in Success
The Wonderbread Summer
Transition
Atonement
Floundering
The Shining Girls
Burial Rites
Character names can also be quite tricky. Virginia suggests the following approaches
* telephone books
* baby name books
I would like to add to this list
* people on Twitter
* people who turn up as "people you may know" on Facebook (obviously don't use their full name, gosh.)
This was a great chapter full of the classic "Keep it Simple" approach to deep writing.