Story Titles, Cover Art, and Descriptions 101 · 8:14am Jul 5th, 2020
Imagine this: You wrote a story that you deem great. You may have even shown it to a few folks for beta-reading and might have it edited, so the fact the story ain’t bad is most likely not just your subjective perception. Then you publish the story. Nothing happens. No comments, a modicum of votes, and a few views. Maybe it’s just bad luck. Or maybe the story’s boring and fails to maintain the audience’s attention—however, if you had a bunch of good beta-readers helping with the story, this shouldn’t be the case. What remains is the way your story presents itself. And that’s what this short piece of advice’s going to be about.
Let’s start with story titles. A few centuries ago, people really loved long titles (such as Commentarius brevis et iucundus itineris atque peregrinationis, pietatis et religionis causa susceptae ab Illustri et magnifico Domino, Domino Leone, libero barone de Rosmital et Blatna—and that’s without the subheading) that told you basically everything you needed to know even without reading the book. Such lengthly titles are pretty rare nowadays, especially when it comes to fiction, and titles the length of a few words are preferred.
Such a title should be something really characteristic of the story—it may be the name of a place or a character that’s relevant to the story, some short phrase that is repeated thorough the story, something that pertains to the tale’s theme... truly anything relevant. (I suggest looking at titles of various successful books, films, series, and games, and thinking about why they are named the way they are.) Also, the title should be original. Once you think you have the best title possible, you should look through the already published stories on this site and see if your title isn’t generic (for example, look up the words ‘Voyage’ or ‘Legacy’ to see how overused they are—these wouldn’t make for an original title anymore). An original title ideally refers to only one story, so the readers can remember it quite easily. To sum it up, a good title should be (moderately) short, easy to remember, original, and ideally interesting.
Next, cover art. You may have been told that every story has to have a cover art. I beg to differ. No cover is better than a crappy cover. If you cannot find a fitting image to use and cannot create/request/commission one, then better use none. Blurry photos, pencil sketches on lined or crumpled paper, or images that aren’t related to the story at all seem really amateurish and don’t help to persuade the potential readers to invest their time in what you wrote. Also, stories without cover art aren’t that rare in the Featured Box, so apparently they were able to gather enough interest even without cover art. Still, a good cover helps your story stand out.
Furthermore, don’t go overboard when thinking of all the stuff the cover should feature. Just like with titles, it should ideally be something rather simple and relevant to the story. The latter helps with interest, the former aids the readers in understanding what the cover features even if it’s reduced to a thumbnail. Overly detailed scenes with lots of stuff going on or character line-ups and other pictures featuring larger groups most of the time fail in both simplicity and relevance. ‘Less is more’ is quite a good rule of thumb in this case. On a side note, people who download stories in their e-readers like it when a cover containts the title (and the author’s name), simply because it aids in their orientation. However, if you don’t want the title here for some reason (maybe the cover would be too cluttered then), nobody will bite you head off. But it’s something worth keeping in mind.
Lastly, descriptions. Both the short and long description should—obviously—serve to inform the readers what the story’s about, while not spoiling much and ideally piquing the audience’s interest. Let’s be honest, doing that is not easy, for some it may be actually a lot harder than writing a whole story. I’ve found that getting some outside perspective helps—prereaders are a really useful asset here, since they know what the story’s about, but are also far less biased than the author himself/herself. If you are lucky and more experienced, you may not need anyone to help you come up with the descriptions, but it’s still good to have them looked over (along with story and chapter titles) to make sure there are no errors that could turn away potential readers.
You should also keep in mind that the short and long descriptions serve a slightly different purpose. The short one should brief the readers on the story’s premise. It can be argued that this is the more important one, since it’s the description people see on the front page (unless your story is featured) and in story embeds. It thus shouldn’t be surprising that wording really matters. What I oftentimes find is that people tend to throw in something about they OCs, such as “Sweet Cakes has a bad day.” Such description makes me immediately wonder who is Sweet Cakes and why should I care about his bad day. (After all, everyone has a bad day from time to time and almost nobody gives a flying feather.) Furthermore, the description doesn’t tell me a thing about what should I expect from the story itself, and thus I’ll be quite likely to pass this one. However, if you can tweak the description so that it gives the audience a better idea of what to expect, maybe even so that it ties to canon characters (If they are present in the story, of course. Don’t make up stuff for the sake of a grand description.), the results will be much better. “Celestia’s personal confectioner has a bad day.” already offers a clearer image of the plot that lies ahead, plus it provides some interest.
The long description should ideally expand on what the short description said, for example, it ought to give the readers a better idea of why Sweet Cakes, the royal confectioner, has a bad day. However, don’t let yourself be fooled by the long description being long. An ideal average length is about twice that of the short description—it definitely isn’t a place for info dumps, history lessons, character bios and such. If you want to share some extra info about the story or the characters, do so in your blogs. On a side note, if you feel you have nothing else to add to the short description, you can use it both as a short and long description.
Besides the blurb itself, the long description usually contains a section giving credits to cover artists, editors, and such, ideally with hyperlinks leading to their pages. Also, if the story is a crossover, it’s great to state what the other source material is and if knowledge of it is required to understand the story. The latter also applies to sequels. Additional warnings, such as ‘contains advanced calculus, read at your own discretion’ may also be included.
On the other hand, try to refrain from including stuff like “This is my first story, so please be gentle/post only good comments/don’t downvote.” and “I apologise for the quality, I was depressed when I wrote this.” The part about the first story is usually tolerated (the latter not so much), but it may already raise some red flags about the story’s quality. It’s also quite redundant, since people can see what your first story is, plus a lack of experience is not limited to your first story—hay, it is possible that you’ll start to improve by your tenth story or such. As for the lack of quality due to your mental state, it’s unfortunate, but if you are dealing with something in real life, better push fics to the sidelines and fix what needs to be fixed first. And if you are using writing as a coping mechanism, that’s fine, but consider if you really want to publish it before looking it over once you are in a better state of mind. Readers here are pretty patient and will appreaciate quality over quantity.
Ultimately, all of this boils down to sounding confident. Small remarks such as “I don’t know where to take this story, but you can read it anyway, idk.” or “I’m looking for an editor on this story, please tell me where I can find one.” make for a pretty clear sign that people would be better off reading something else. Better put this in your blogs (the same goes for the first story worries) or just refrain from writing it altogether. If you don’t know where to get an editor and such, you can try searching through the groups on your own or asking around for directions. Most people here are pretty calm and usually try to be helpful, so don’t be afraid to ask around. Most of the time, it’s the best you can do. Also, there's now a group meant to help with titles and such, yay!
This thread has been originally posted in The Writer's Group and Struggling Authors. Reposting here for safekeeping purposes.
You tell me. My Stories have no Cover And little Comments and yet some got well received
5301598
Cool
In the fantasy genre, the 'Kings' is a lot overused like The way of Kings, Clash of Kings, Grade of Kings, Kings of the Wild, etc.
5301603
Indeed. There are many more words that sound interesting, ominous, or whatever, or have some extra meaning tied to them, and so people just like to use them a lot.
5301600
Yeah, but it's strange when it gets well received and you don't know why/don't have comments to know where to improve
5301605
But the problem is that by overusing the ominous and interesting sound became "flavorless" pretty quickly. Names like Game of Thrones or Dance of Dragons have some nice ring to it, but Clash of Kings? Kinda meh.
Or like your example, Voyage. For me, that's just pretty generic term by this point as the titles go.
Now that I think of it, Legio of Doom also sounds kinda generic
, but... whatever.
5301609
Yep, as written above, such titles aren’t going to cut it anymore
Thanks for this information, I think I could benefit from it and I joined the group for the future.
By the way, I'm not quitting on my story, quite the opposite, I'm still writing but I'm just taking a break from editing. I feel overwhelmed by all the changes I need to make but you did a great job and I'm very thankful for it. :) Your tips and the like have helped me improve.
5301619
Great! Thank you both for the heads-up and your kind words
5301630
I hope you're staying safe and well out there.
You're welcome.