A day late and a dollar short; What's in a Name?

 

I was supposed to blog yesterday. But a bunch of stuff kept me from it -- mostly family gatherings and the editing. I spent most of last week's downtime in the editing cave, getting edits done for A Curse of Ash and Iron.  I am so glad it's done! One step closer to the big day! 

Still waiting on the cover, hope to see it soon.

So I'm a little late in posting my blog. What I wanted to blog about this time is titles. Book titles.

I have published six books up to this point, and never had to change a title. Until now. I'd heard about authors having to come up with new titles for their manuscripts after they sold. I've seen them go through lists and lists of options, tearing their hair out to find one that both they and their publisher agree on.

I can sympathize.

For the first time ever, I had to change a title. It wasn't that the original title didn't fit, it was that the title had already been used. And let me back up a minute. Titles can't be copyrighted. You can have as many books with the same title as you want. No one has the market on a title. BUT, the title that I submitted the manuscript under had already been used by this guy named Neil Gaiman. Maybe you've heard of him? Anyway, his book is an anthology and so different, the editor thought there would be some confusion or that it would take away from MY book.

So the hunt for a new title began. It was difficult at first, because the manuscript had had the old title for YEARS, and it was hard for me to think of it any other way. I mean, I can't say I was 'attached' to the title, it had to go. When I started writing it, I had no title. I came up with something totally ridiculous first, when I took the first 30 pages to a Mentoring Workshop, and then I came up with what I thought was the PERFECT title. And then we had to change it.

My agent and I tossed around a few ideas, having to do with masquerades, and theater, and other themes in the book. Editor shot them all down. I think I went through three lists before we came up with A CURSE OF ASH AND IRON, in early January.

Which was good, because we couldn't announce the deal without a title. Overall it was fairly painless, and now I can say that I'm one of those authors who has had to change a title!

And now, A Curse of Ash and Iron has really grown on me :)

Choosing a Title

How do you decide on a title for your book or short story? Do you come up with a title first and write a story to fit? Or does the right title come to you in the course of writing a story?

I’m one of those who can never come up with a title until I’ve finished a story. And even then I might dither between several choices. This probably comes to no surprise to anyone who read my post on choosing character names.

It’s an important decision. Authors and various writing guides will say that a title is an important part of your marketing. A title should be catchy, something that could either summarize the story or create an emotional response in a reader.

So how do you decide? One mystery series I follow by Donna Andrews features punny titles which includes a bird such as Murder with Puffins, Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, and The Real Macaw. Jessica Day George has Tuesdays at the Castle and its sequel Wednesdays in the Tower. Robert Asprin and Jody Lynne Nye for the MYTH series have variations on 'mis' and 'myth' words, such as Myth-Taken Identity, Another Fine Myth, Myth-Told Tales, Myth Alliances, and Myth Conceptions.

Maybe you don't want to aim for humor, but you still need something to catch a reader's attention and interest.

In science fiction, the title might be a planet name, such as Janet Kagan’s Mirabile, or Lois McMaster Bujold’s Komarr, Barrayar and Cetaganda. CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series has descriptive words for a character: Foreigner, Invader, Intruder, Inheritor, Explorer, and others. The Galactic Gourmet by James White is another variation on describing a character.

Fantasy books may have names of magical objects or places or creatures in their titles. Character names are also popular in several genre. Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke is a recent example.

Short story titles, for me, seem to flow out of the story. I always have a lot more fun with them. But that could be because novel titles have the additional pressure of the marketing aspect.

The title of my first book, The Crystal Throne, went through several changes before it was published. In the first versions it was The Secret of the Haunted Tree. Then I thought it sounded too much like a mystery and it became The Door to Elsewhen. Several years and drafts later, it became The Crystal Throne, named for an object used to identify the main villain. Talking to Trees, on the other hand, was always named that, both because one of the main characters spent most of the book talking to tree beings and also because I had a particular song stuck in my head by the time I finished the final draft.

Titles can’t be copyrighted. Even so, I made sure, when choosing my titles, to look through Books in Print and, with the later books, WorldCat and Amazon, to make sure no one else had a book by that title. Not everyone else did the same research. Two years after The Crystal Throne came out from my first publisher (a different one than I am currently with) another book used that title. And five years after Talking to Trees was published, someone else decided to use that title.

Sometimes a title might trigger a different response than planned. When I gave out information about my short story collection, Agents and Adepts, I learned to sense when someone was focusing on the wrong word. “Agents, huh,” someone might say, “I’ve been looking for an agent…” And then I’d have to quickly interrupt that it was a book of short stories about galactic agents and wizards.

What titles or types of titles have caught your attention? How do you choose a title?