How to Title a Novel

Writing a book has often been compared to childbirth. You fantasize about what it's going to look like, what kind of changes it will go through, and whether everyone will love it as much as you do. During the gestation period, you'll also spend a lot of time trying to decide what to name it. Some people decide this as early as when the seed of inspiration is first planted; others wait until it actually comes out. There are even those who survey their friends and relatives for ideas. Unlike musicians or artists who can get away with obscure monikers such as "Opus 102" or "Untitled," the title of your novel should be catchy enough to intrigue a prospective editor, short enough to not fill up the entire front cover, and memorable enough that your adoring public can enthusiastically chat it up at the water cooler instead of saying, "I forget the title but it was something about mutant lamprey eels."

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• 1 package of index cards
• Pen or pencil
• Thesaurus
• Computer
• Internet access
• Imagination

Choosing a Title for Your Book

1. Think of all the keywords that best describe your novel's content and central theme, Write each one down on its own separate index card. A murder mystery, for example, might include such descriptive tags as "murder," "crime," and "death." A romance novel, on the other hand, will use keywords like "love," "courtship," and "dating." Writing each keyword on its own card will not only allow you plenty of room to jot down notes, but also allow you to move the cards around like a storyboard and experiment with which words suggest a compatible fit.

2. Use a separate index card to record each of the most significant settings in your novel ( Nepal, the Bayou, rural Kansas) and each of the main characters' names (Scooter, Lola, Shinkoskey). As you'll discover if you spend a lot of time in bookstores, the primary locales and characters in novels frequently find their way into titles. Experiment with matching these cards to various theme cards and see what you come up with. For example: "Scooter's Revenge," "Love, Lola" and "Shinkoskey, P.I."

3. Open your thesaurus and look up each of the content keywords. On the same card where each keyword appears, jot down whatever synonyms particularly strike your fancy. A look at "love," for example, will yield "affection," and "adoration." Mix and match these with your existing locales and characters. If you're feeling especially creative, check out the Word Spy website for uncommon but fun words and phrases that just might encapsulate your novel's premise.

4. Consider the use of quotes and proverbs as inspiration for your title. On the Internet, websites such as Quote Land, Quotations Page, Brainy Quote, and Think Exist allow you to perform searches on your content keywords and see what people throughout history have had to say on the topic.

5. Choose a title that is short (preferably six words or less) and easy for regular workaday people to pronounce. Imagine, for instance, that the title of your book is going to appear on freeway billboards. Would a driver going 65+ miles per hour be able to glance over and comfortably read it? Short titles are also easier for people to remember-- and tell their friends about--than titles that are long and involved. It is also important that the title be easy to say. Sometimes in the quest to be clever, aspiring authors will incorporate a foreign word or phrase that has personal meaning to them but will completely baffle a prospective book buyer. The truth is that no one likes to feel stupid. If they have no idea what the title means, they're going to assume that the entire book is beyond their comprehension and go buy something else.

6. Ensure that your proposed book title actually has something to do with what's between the covers. Readers don't like to be tricked.

7. Say your proposed titles out loud. Oftentimes what looks perfectly fine in print will sound laughably terrible when spoken.

Tips & Warnings

• Writers often think it is clever to use an actual line of dialogue from the book as their title. If the title of your book requires insertion in a sentence in order for its meaning to make any sense to the readers, it's probably not one worth hanging onto.

• Song titles can be a great source of inspiration. They're also conveniently short because they have to fit on the back of a CD cover.

• Try not to get too attached to your final choice. If it sounds too similar to something the publisher has already produced, you'll be told to change it.

• Titles cannot be copyrighted. What this means is that even if you come up with the greatest title in the world, you can't lock it down until such time as you actually write the book that goes with it. The other interesting thing about titles is that they get used over and over on books that have absolutely no relationship to one another.

Resources

• Word Spy
• Quote Land
• Quotations Page
• Brainy Quote
• Think Exist