Writing 101: Creating Titles · 10:17am Aug 15th, 2018
Titles are one of the most important parts of any work, in any medium. Titles are the first impression your story gives. When someone recommends a new book or movie to a friend, the title is the only universal part. The title requires conciseness, but must also hint at a lot of ideas and information.
Here some basic tips for writing titles. And if you missed it the first time, check out the companion post about descriptions
* Proofread your title: Yes, I am repeating myself. No, this is not as common an issue as it is for descriptions. But if you fail to proofread your title, it only makes any mistakes that much more severe.
** Intentional misspellings, crazy punctuation, and other typographical gimmicks are things to be avoided, unless the story’s content and themes leave you no other choice. I once had an English teacher mark me down for the spelling of Pet Semetary by Stephen King. Even things as simple as question marks or exclamation points can create a very specific impression that you may not want. Interrobangs are right out.
* Can it pass a Google test?: If you were to Google the title of your story, would it be on the first page of results? This is a bit of a misleading name, because obviously popularity will push things higher in search engine results. But imagine your story has just been published and has no recognition yet. How common is this title? Is it a fragment or quote from something better known? Do other works have the same title? If yes, how many? There is a line, but the more unique something is, the better. Just today I had to search for Up (2009) on Netflix, and the simplicity of the title added an entire extra click to my search. (You may not even know what I’m talking about with the year there.) That may sound trivial, but sometimes that one extra click means your story will be ignored.
* Don’t make your title too short or too long: Short titles are often easily forgotten, and long titles are often too hard to remember exactly. You want a comfortable middle ground, generally at least three and no more than seven words. All the good one or two word titles have often been taken, and extremely long titles are a pain to say and remember. I like No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!, but I actually copy-pasted the title instead of typing it out. This is the most subjective thing on this list by a very wide margin.
* Be wary of references: This is something I’m particularly guilty of. Making your title a reference or allusion to something else can often seem like an effective shortcut. But such titles are often overshadowed by the thing they are referencing. Roundabout or less obvious references can sometimes work, but creating that vagary can run against the other advice on this list (see 10 A BOOT STOMPING 20 A HUMAN FACE 30 GOTO 10).
If You Came to Conquer manages to beat out its source material in a Google search, but I Am Not the Actor doesn’t. Just saying.
* Avoid colons and subtitles: If you can’t decide on a single title for your story, then cheating and putting two on there is not the answer. If your title is too short or hard to remember, then adding another title is not likely to help. There are very few situations where colons and subtitles do more good than harm, and I’m already struggling to think of them.
* Use contrasts: One way to grab attention is to juxtapose two contrasting terms or ideas. “Good and evil”, “war and peace”, or “angels and demons” are quite cliché at this point, but there are plenty of other diametric oppositions left to explore. The contrast doesn’t even need to be that severe or obvious, ex: House of Leaves.
* Make your title relevant to the story: If these were in a particular order, this would probably be at the top of the list. Your title can be snappy and easy to remember, but that doesn’t mean anything without some connection to the story it represents. Some connections are more tenuous than others, and some themes are much easier to express in a title. But a connection should exist, and it should be more substantive than the emotion the story is trying to evoke or the reaction you expect.
A trick I like to use is to pick an important line from the story itself, and use that as a starting point for the title. Many stories name themselves after the main character; while this runs into other problems, you can’t mistake the title for being about something else.
* Make your title easy to remember: This ties into every point above. If your title isn’t memorable, then it doesn’t matter how good the story is. I’ve read fanfics which gripped me, but whose titles refused to stick in my mind afterward. This is especially problematic with very short titles or very obscure words. Just a few days ago, I was playing a boardgame called Sidereal Confluence: a title I couldn’t remember during the game, let alone when I had to look it up while writing this. If you have trouble remembering the title, then how do you expect your audience to?
So there you are. Some basic (and slightly advanced) tips for what makes a good title. How do you usually choose titles for your stories? Are there any things I missed which really turn you off a title? And are there any works (you’ve read or written) which go against this advice successfully?
Some good stuff here. Do you have any advice on the names of sequels, connected series, and spinoffs?
I like big titles and I cannot lie...
Naw, this is pretty good general advice. I do tend to deviate from some of this, but I think I'm at the point where I understand the risks inherent in doing so, as well as the effect it generates when you present people with something long and/or unexpected.
Re: long titles, you'll notice one of the first things fans do when they talk about a story with a long title is that they come up with some quirky way to shorten it down. So Yadda yadda Popular turns into WataMote (from the first two words in the Japanese title, "Watashi Motenai"). Classic novels are also infamous for piling tons of phrases and clauses into their titles--which usually just get shortened down to the main character's name. :P
Looking at the list of books with long titles, a couple that jump out to me as being well-known despite their clunky titles: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day and From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. So having long titles is... possible, but it takes a really snappy title, and ideally a convenient way to abbreviate it for ease of speaking.
(As for me? My stories usually have short, punchy titles, but I do sometimes like to give my blog posts long titles. Exhibits A and B: "A List of Changeling Plots that Don't Involve Replacing a Main Character with an Evil Duplicate of Themselves" and "How to Write a Romance that Won't Make Aragon Want to Gouge Out His Eyes." Both of which I made ridiculously long for comedic purposes.
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Good advice!
4920291 Sequels are a tricky business. Not only do all the usual rules apply, you also need to have a strong connection to the preceding stories. And unlike other mediums, written fiction doesn't really do numbered sequels.
Multiple works acting as a single story is one of the few times I think colons and supertitles might be worth the effort. Something like Lord of the Rings where the three stories are meant to act as one, or even Discworld, which has several storylines and arcs that each get their own series of novels and needn't be read in publication order.
My own If You Came to Conquer trilogy has the first and third stories use different references to the same song. Not a great connection, but better than none (and I messed up by not including that connection in the second story's title).
4920503 Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day is a great example of title matching theme. Yes, it's long and hyperbolic, but it's written from the perspective of a child, and that is how children often react to such things. It is a pain to abbreviate and type, but the title also encapsulates the story well.
4920443 Fiction is, of course, subjective. There are plenty of stories that have ignored these guidelines to their benefit. But like you said, this is a risk, and the pros and cons need to be thoroughly understood before doing something that flies in the face of convention.
4920503 Another thing I forgot to mention: if your title is so long that it demands abbreviation, then you are giving up a lot of control to your fans, and creating another barrier to your story. The audience will always have some control over fiction, but the title is something where you don't want that to happen.
This is actually why I had Discord give revenant Celestia an in-universe nickname in You Too Will Deteriorate: sure, it wasn't necessarily accurate or witty, but the story used it in order to create consistency. A few other names popped up in the comments, but most people stuck to calling her "Celichtia".
It's the same for titles. Giving control of your story's title to the audience is a dangerous thing. I don't even like calling it WataMote: it sounds dumb, is hard to say for a non-Japanese speaker, and it doesn't mean anything to someone who isn't already familiar with it. But unless I'm trying to sell the show to a friend, I'm not going to bother saying its full name, either.