"All right, title, there ain't room here for the both of us."
>> Saturday, December 19, 2009
And lo, a post! Shocking.
Over at The Literary Lab, Scott F. Baily has an interesting article about titles.
*clears away the dust from the floor* So, what makes a good title to you? Do you have Preferences? Do certain words or formats appeal to your more than others? Do you even notice a title, or just go for the shiny cover art?
(Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman is still one of my favorite book titles in awhile--plus, the novel was fun to read.)
I haven't done any real analysis of what works for me. It's one of those cases of I either like it, don't like it, or don't care either way and other factors determine if I read a book. (Choosing a title is a whole 'nother post*.)
What'cha think?
(No, the emoticons have nothing to do with titles, per se, I just found that one here and had to use it. O:))
Have a great holiday, everyone!
~Merc
*Which I've started. Shock! Awe. Yeah.
Also, semi-connected, I'm digging up examples of titles for published books that were changed by editors/publishers. The list is growing and should be fun to compile. If anyone has examples (e.g. Lisa Shearin's Magic Lost, Trouble Found was originally submitted as Thief of Souls), feel free to share. The more the meatier. Merrier. I think it's time to go...
5 comments:
Hrrm. I like startling-intriguing titles that give a hint to the book's flavor, like His Majesty's Dragon, or All the Windwracked Stars (though The Sea Thy Mistress may beat that for sheer cool).
Or [something] of [something] titles--like Shards of Honor. Sometimes those all blur together, though--I can never keep straight A Game of Thrones or The Path of Daggers or Lord of Chaos. Maybe those work better as standalone or loosely-linked titles than for long series.
Otherwise, I tend to prefer one or two word titles that really evoke the book, or have echoes and thematic weight that make them feel inevitable afterward--the kind where you look back and think, yes, that is the only title that book could have. Lois Bujold's novel Memory, for instance--I thought that was a somewhat odd and plain title for the book, the first time I picked it up (with no knowledge of the series or much of the author). Now I see all the ways the story's elements and interlinkages and that slightly plain, unassuming air all fit together brilliantly.
Patricia McKillip's two novels The Sorceress and the Cygnet and The Cygnet and the Firebird were combined a couple years ago into an omnibus simply titled Cygnet--I find that single title far more powerful than either of the originals.
Have a great Christmas, Merc!
I want a title to mean something or otherwise have some thought to it. So, Hollow Man works better for me than, say, Summer of Night. One is a reference pertinent to the work, the other just seems like a generic horror title.
Or take 'The Screwfly Solution'. How could you not read that?
I'm surprised so many of my own titles have been adjective noun combinations, but maybe that was to balance the sentence-long titles of a couple of them. :)
B
My absolute favorite titles are the ones that make me stop and think "Wait, what?" For my money, the best person for this is Harlan Ellison. "'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," "The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World," and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" are the greatest titles ever. To me the title doesn't have to do specifically with what is in the story, as long as it properly captures the story's feel.
Thanks for the feedback on this, everyone. Great to see what makes titles tick for you.
Happy New Year! (I shall hopefully be back on the blog then. ;))
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