How-to: Make Your Story Page Interesting — Part 1: Story Title · 7:05pm May 17th, 2014
The very first thing that will fall into the eyes of your readers is in 90% of all cases going to be the title of a story (closely followed by the cover art. Like, seriously. These two guys have like a constant e-peen fight for who is the faster one).
And even though there are only a handful of words in the title, their selection and formatting can often be crucial. Here I will share some thoughts and tips on that matter.
I like to think about the title of a story as the pizza bites in a pizza salad made entirely out of pizza: it gives you much more than just a way to refer to it. The pizza is the essence of the salad. Same with the title.
Leaving aside delicious comparisons, the few letters that make up the title usually have more personality than you can imagine. Mind you, it doesn’t need to be a “good” personality. Sometimes you read a title and realize it’s the slowest, most boring thing you’re ever going to lay your eyes on.
Take three guesses at what happens when a title shows a dull personality. Come on, take ’em.
Even in the few letters that make up the title you can already include more personality than you could imagine, and that personality is the first step to get a reader interested.
Proper Formatting
The first rule that I see many people doing wrong is the rule of proper nouns. Titles are the one place where grammar rules are slightly ignored for the sake of appeal. For example, Capitalized Words Leave A Bigger Impact On People. They Also Make You Look Like A Douche, But That’s Beside The Point.
Capitalize Things In the Title, That’s What I Mean.
The problem is knowing HOW you are supposed to do it. Well, one trick to keep in mind (which is also what I did above):
When In Doubt, Capitalize Everything.
But that’s the easy way out, and sometimes it can mess with the reading flow. It also doesn’t always make things nicer either.
The real method is best described on this page here. To quickly wrap up what goes into making the title properly capitalized: Write the first and last words capitalized regardless of what they are and don’t capitalize “unimportant words” (such as a, an, on, of, to…).
For the sake of neutral demonstration I will use some examples of album names that have absolutely nothing to do with ponies:
• The Theory of Everything (by Ayreon)
• Antennas to Hell (by Slipknot)
• Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (by Limp Bizkit)
• Seven Days a Week (by Bad Excuse)
In the end, this is like picking eggs on a farm: It’s easier to know which ones are bad and need to be thrown away; you know which ones are bad via smelling them. With words that doesn’t work quite as well, but you’re welcome to sniff your monitor, I guess.
Back on topic, it really annoys me when people don’t even do the when-in-doubt rule. I cry every time I see “Rainbow dash and her new friend” or something.
And that brings me to the second aspect of writing titles:
Wording of the Title
Oh, I’m the master of transitions.
With the proper formatting known, what we need now is of course the actual content. Even if the title was “Rainbow Dash Makes a New Friend” with the proper capitalization it’d still be terrible.
What is it this title does wrong, oh handsome Selbi? you ask. That’s an easy answer: It follows the deadly route of the “Character Verbs (a) Noun” aka “Character and a/the Noun” scheme. Don’t do that. Ever. That scheme has been the cause of many otherwise good stories to fail, and I’m guilty of using it myself.
And there are so many examples: “Lyra Heartstrings Kills Some Orphans”, “Twilight Sparkle Learns How to Fly”, “Pinkie Pie Bites the Dust”, “Pound Cake Ponders About the Meaning of Life and Eats Some Fish”. Really, it’s all been done.
The greatest problem of these title schemes (besides being more overdone than Michael Bay movie sequels) is that they don’t do anything to make the story interesting. It literally tells us what the story is about, in the dullest, most boring way possible. “Hey guys, in my story Twilight learns how to fly!” Well, thank you, you twat. You literally spoiled the entire fic to me with the first five words I see of your story. That takes talent. The only good book series that did this scheme not so long ago was Harry Potter, but you’re not writing Harry Potter, are you?
A good title is usually subtle about its contents before you read the description or look at the cover art. I personally think the best titles are those which you read, feel interested in the story, read the description and see the cover art, realize that the title misdirected you at first, and you are now interested in seeing what the story is.
I’d do some general examples, but sadly you couldn’t be more biased when it comes to good story titles, because everyone has different tastes. So I’m going to talk about some of my own stories titles for some clopfics to show what I mean:
• Love is Like an Apple Tree → AppleDash futa clopfic
• Make Royal Incest, Not War → Ridiculous Princest clopfic with extreme fetishes
• For Science! → Clopfic about Twilight making Fluttershy do an “experiment”
Ignoring the fact that I love female cartoon ponies with that certain extra bit more than I’d like to admit, I hope you can see this subtleness in the title making sense in the long run when it comes to the concept of the story, and it already gives an early hint how the mood and level of seriousness of the individual fic is.
Of course this doesn’t mean this way of subtleness is always necessary. Heck, it’s not even the best option. All I know is that it’s a good way to go.
So as a final run-down: Format a title properly and write it so that the reader becomes interested, not that he knows what the story is about. In fact, you don’t WANT the latter to happen.
One final tip I can share is this: less is more. Never write a title that takes more than two or three seconds to read.
The only exception to all these rules I can think of are trollfics or generally stories that aren’t meant to be taken seriously at all (like TWILIGHT SPARKLE FIXES EVERYTHING). But these stories get exposure for other reasons. (Like the all-capsing, which you should never do unless you are writing a story that should directly from the beginning give the reader the impression that you are screaming “This story is not meant to be taken serious at all!” into their face.)
That about covers everything I have to say about the first part of how to properly present a story to make it appealing. I’m quite surprised myself how much I could write about just the handful of words that make up the story title.
Well, I hope this could help some people. Thank you for reading! Next up is the cover art.
Stay tuned!
Weren't you going to ask me to look over these for you?
2120006
Things got in the way. I can still send you a PM though.
Add "Kills Jews" or "Walrus Phallus" at the end of title. Newer fails to get comments that way. Also always use ponified, if possible digital picture, that represents your character. It takes you like 10 minutes in pony creator, and extra 15 to hour or two, if you want to make it extra nice. Get gimp/exc editing program, and put a stock photo/drawing from google in background. See that aspect/pixel ratio is about the same four both images.
Or just find something similar.
If you can actually draw (or are not lazy, and download some good templates (on deviant art, there are a lot of them out there, animation templates, drawing instructions, hell take existing pony,recolor him, change cutie mark and add on/remove whatever needed.) Will offer a lot more poses. Go for classical portrait stuff 2/3 and stuff.
If you can't do the art, ask if some fans want to volunteer to do it. Quality usually will be bit meh, but it's still something better than you could have done, and you didn't waste much time surfing the net for animated tree gardens and medieval horse armor or something.
Or just do this
fimfiction-static.net/images/story_images/190376.jpg?1400319601
2120153
I will touch that in the next part for a short line. :V
Not bad.
Although you do undermine your credibility just a little bit when you state the Harry Potter series follows the 'X verbs a Y' title formula.
I have never seen a verb in Harry Potter titles, because they follow the age old 'Protagonist + main plot device' title formula... which rarely gives away very much information at all.
2141962
I was talking about the latter. Also, I just needed a fitting joke. :V
2141968
*blinks*
...
Oops.
Sorry.
Still; it goes against the grain to hear that style disparaged - half of the books of my childhood were titled thusly.
I'll grant you, however, that such titles are merely authors saying "My audience, I have released a new novel featuring your favourite character - this is what you should read!"
And therefore, unless released by an already acclaimed author, such series should start with a snazzily titled installment (unless you just wrote Harry Potter, apparently).