Feature: What Do I Title This Effing Story?!
The plot's worked out, you have the ending at last, your characters' voices are coming through clearly, and you feel quite positive about your latest piece of fanfiction/original fiction. There's only one problem.
You have not the slightest idea of what to call your work.
It may seem silly to get so worked up over a title, but truthfully, it's a very important part of your story. The title presents, at a minimum, the first impression that other people will get of your story. In some cases, it may be the only piece of information your potential readers will have. Although most dedicated fiction venues - like Archive of Our Own or fanfiction.net - provide additional information, your story may be referenced by its title alone on people's blogs or other sites. In these cases, especially, a title needs the ability to attract and hold the potential reader's attention.
When to Name Your Story
Like so many things in writing, there's no set rule. You may feel that you can't really get your story moving in the first place until you have a title for it, or you may feel that you can't possibly know what you want to call it until you know exactly how it will turn out. There's also the possibility that you have thought of a really great title and are now writing a story to suit it - but that's an entirely different conversation!
Types of Titles
Take a look at the titles of the books in your bookcase, or a list of short story titles in the contents of an anthology, or titles on a fanfiction listing. You'll find that you can group them into broad categories on the basis of how they were constructed. For example, in an article written for the Science Fiction Writer's Association, Brenda W. Clough lists these groupings:
Character names or attributes: For example, David Copperfield, Doctor Zhivago, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Lord of the Rings.
Place names: Peyton Place, Lord Valentine's Castle, Summerland.
Themes: Pride and Prejudice, The Wind in the Willows, or Stranger in a Strange Land (for the latter, also see Literary allusions, below)
Gobbets: By this, Clough means significant phrases that actually occur in the story. Examples include The King Must Die, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Name of the Rose. (She also suggests that you avoid the reverse gobbet, in which you think of a witty title first and then force it into the plot of your story somehow, even if it doesn't really fit.)
Clough groups together as "miscellaneous" a variety of titles that involve clever uses of words and literature, but in an article for Writing-World.com, John Floyd breaks many of these out in more detail:
Popular or common expressions: Good As Gold, The Usual Suspects.
Plays on words: Clough calls these "twist" titles. Examples: Live and Let Die, The War Between the Tates.
Literary allusions: The Bible and Shakespeare's works are common sources for these - and so are nursery rhymes. Think of The Grapes of Wrath, Something Wicked This Way Comes, or Along Came a Spiider. As Clough notes, however, you can waste hours of time going through Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, finding quotes that would seem to have something to do with the theme of your story and yet make really rotten titles for it.
Titles can also be based on actions (Finding Nemo) or events (Star Wars) or any number of other concepts.
Titles to Avoid?
Some of the articles consulted for this feature had very specific advice about avoiding simple titles made up of very common words or, conversely, longer titles that use unique or difficult words. However, a simple title might be the perfect title for a particular story, and a title that's lengthy or hard to spell may be less of an issue for a story posted and linked online than it is for a traditionally published novel. Take absolutes in this sort of advice with a grain of salt: Reader A may think that a story entitled "The Calling" sounds dull, but Reader B might think it sounds completely intriguing. On the other side of the length issue, titles like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad attract some readers even as they repel others.
Do, however, consider the tone of your story when you're choosing a title. A joking or witty title might not be a good idea for a story about the death of a beloved character, and a grim or dark title attached to a humorous story could leave your reader annoyed, at the very least.
Note that some words may have have become completely overused in titles in a particular genre. Science fiction author John Scalzi used this fact when he played an April Fools Day joke on his blog readership this past year by introducing what purported to be his latest work: an epic fantasy novel, The Shadow War of the Night Dragons. It turned out to be a hoax: he'd titled it from a cumulative list of words commonly used in titles of recent fantasy novels. You might want to avoid this kind of title for your story unless you're also making a joke!
Putting the Pieces Together
"That's all very interesting," you may be saying, "but what should I name my story that I have right here?" If none of this discussion has sparked an inspiration, you might try one or more of the following exercises:
- Clough suggests writing key thematic words from your story on index cards and shuffling them. You can get much the same effect by putting the words onto sticky notes and rearranging them in different patterns on a wall, or putting the words into a list in a word processor or text editor and shuffling them there.
- Although quotations can be a waste of time, they can also be an inspiration. It can't hurt to try looking up some key concept words from your story on one of the many quotations sites available on the Intarwebs.
- Quotations can also come from sources other than literature. Song lyrics and titles can serve the same function as poetry in providing a theme and possibly a title for your work. Is there a particular song that you associate with your story or any of its characters? Can you pick out from the lyrics a phrase that evokes your story?
- Freelance writer Chuck Wendig suggests trying to describe your book (or in this case, your story) to a friend, either in reality or your imagination. Do any of the elements that you feel are essential in getting the point of your story across spark any title ideas?
- He also suggests re-reading your work and seeing whether any particular words or phrases pop out at you this time around.
Finally, if all else fails, Wendig has kindly supplied a link for a random title generator. Now I'm really psyched to write a story called "The Red Legend." Or perhaps "Nothing in the Wind" would be better.