What’s in a name?

Or, more precisely, a title.

When I was in journalism school, our program was responsible for putting out a small newspaper in Halifax, called the North End News. We took turns in different roles and I always liked being a reporter – finding and telling stories. I also always liked doing layout – moving type around using Quark on the huge Mac monitors in the lab. What I didn’t like was being an editor and being responsible for photo captions and headlines. Ugh!

Then again, I was never happy with the headlines my stories were given. The one I will never forget, that has scarred me for life, is “More Than Just Spaghetti”. I had written a careful story about a small business selling specialty Italian food, and the lives of the people who ran it, and I was actually pretty happy with my work, and then it was branded “More Than Just Spaghetti”. Not awful, you might think, but far from good. Very bland. A little silly. It made me not want to clip that story for my portfolio.

So, lesson learned. I might not like writing headlines – or titles – but if I didn’t do it, somebody else would, and I might really hate what they came up with.

Now that I write fiction, I also try to come up with my own titles. It’s not a process I enjoy, but I do think it’s important. Why?

(1) It’s part of getting to know your story. This is also true of creating a one or two-line pitch or a one or two-page synopsis. If you can’t write these things, are you really sure you know your story?

(2) It helps other people get a handle on your story. A title gives a story an identity. We ask “Have you read The Hunger Games?”, “Do you watch House of Cards?” We don’t say, “Have you seen that really interesting new, as-yet-untitled show, about power and politics in Washington DC?” If you want to talk about your project, I think it needs a title. I also think – I could be wrong here, but it’s my theory – that when submitting to agents and publishers, having a title to identify your work is helpful in getting them to invest interest in it.

(3) It needs a title, so you might as well get your two cents worth in there. It’s true that, in traditional publishing, you likely won’t have the final say on your title. I’m OK with that. If somebody else has some great, amazing, wonderful idea much better than mine, I’ll take it! However, if nobody is particularly inspired, and they can’t think of a great title, and you haven’t come up with one either, then your poor book, that you worked on for so long, might end up with a very mediocre name.

My experience, so far, has been pretty positive. Especially since I don’t consider myself a title guru. Objects in Mirror was very much, in my mind, a working title. I wasn’t too attached to it. I figured somebody would want to change it someday. So, when I started to realize that was going to be the title of the book, I had to look at it in a new way. And, you know what? I like it. It’s pretty simple and kind of interesting. It relates to the book, and most people have seen the phrase at some point in their lives. It looks good in print. I’m happy with the title of my book.

When working on my second book, I realized it also needed a title. For a while I just called it “Meg”, after the main character (a-ha! Her name is Meg!). But I wanted to start telling people about it. I wanted to apply for grants and submit it and other people needed to be able to relate to it. So I followed Rachelle Gardner’s “How to Title Your Book” post and, voila, Appaloosa Summer was born.

I like it so far. The funny thing is to hear other people using it. “I enjoyed Appaloosa Summer,” or “How is Appaloosa Summer coming along?” It’s like having the title makes it real. And, no, I’m not wedded to it. As above, if an editor has a great, thunderclap idea for a new title, I can roll with that. But, for now, I like APS (I also like having abbreviations for all my titles – OIM, APS).

Some of you will know I’ve started researching a book on the McKellar Train Crash of 1913. Up until now, the file’s been “McKellar”. Again, not that inspiring. So yesterday, I pulled up Rachelle Gardners’ trusty post and, within a few minutes, had come up with Derailed. It works because the train crash sets in motion a whole series of other events which derail the main character’s plans. Still not the only title I’ll ever accept, but I’m happy to have a title. Except I’m still not sure what the abbreviation will be …

So, how about you? Do you struggle with titling your work? Does it come easily? Do you not bother? And how about chapter titles? The chapters in OIM and APS are simply numbered, but I’m finding with Derailed, the chapters come to me with headings. Don’t know why, but I’ll go with it for now …