What makes a good title? What makes a bad one?
And how do you know when you’ve found the right one?
These questions come up occasionally in the creative writing classes I teach, and I’m sorry to say I don’t have any easy answers. The honest truth is I struggle with titles myself. On the one hand, they seem like the least important part of the writing process: Shouldn’t the story or novel speak for itself? On the other, they’re the first words anyone reads, and in some respect the most important words of all—what we sniff before ordering the bottle. I can’t tell you how many times students have thanked me for assigning a short story they wouldn’t have read on their own because they hated the title. “Sea Oak,” by George Saunders, seems to fall into this camp: a fine title, if you’ve read the story, but which in the uninitiated stirs up visions of 17th century frigates.
I once desperately wanted to call a story “Frozen Dog.” I had only the vaguest idea of the plot, based on an anecdote a friend had told me about someone who kept their dead spaniel in the freezer, but I thought the title would catapult me (and the story) to greatness. How could you see a title like that and not put down everything you were doing—ordering a latte, scoring some drugs, operating an air traffic control tower—to read it? Months later, the finished story was accepted by a respected literary magazine, but they demanded I change the title. Since a frozen dog was a central image in the story, both literally and figuratively, they felt it was heavy-handed. I was incensed. The raison d’etre of the story!
They were right, of course, and I eventually came up with another title. The point is, though, when it comes to the writing process, sometimes a bad title can help you more than a good one. In their book Deepening Fiction, Sarah Stone and Ron Nyren talk about the idea of creative beginnings versus actual beginnings: Even if we end up cutting the original “creative beginning” of a novel or short story—the part of the novel or story, often, that we’re most attached to—this doesn’t mean it’s not an essential part of the writing process. In some ways, it’s the most essential. The same goes for titles, I think. I’ve heard students tell me they come up with their titles first, before they have the slightest notion of a plot. I see nothing wrong with this, so long as they’re willing to give up their “creative title” when it no longer serves the story.
Still, the fact remains that there are many more bad titles than good ones. I’ve seen some jaw-droppingly awful titles, often from very gifted writers. And I’m not just talking about my students: The Great Gatsby is an inspired title, one for the ages, but it wasn’t Fitzgerald’s idea. He wanted to call the novel Trimalchio in West Egg, which sounds like something Dr. Seuss might have dreamed up for The Playboy Channel. An early version of Portnoy’s Complaint was called A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis. At various times, Catch-22 was called Catch-18, Catch-11, Catch-14, and Catch-17. And some classic novels have stood the test of time, despite having terrible titles. (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, for example, never fails to make me giggle.)
In short, there seems to be very little correlation between producing something brilliant and the ability to come up with a half-decent name for it. Perhaps it’s a different skill set entirely. I sometimes think there should be professional titlers: Just as we wouldn’t ask a carpenter to tar the roof of our house, we shouldn’t expect writers to work outside their métier. But even if the perfect title is destined to elude us, I do think it’s possible to identify a bad one—even, I think, to lay out some basic ground rules for what to steer clear of.
So, based on years of teaching, I’ve compiled the following list of Titles to Avoid. (Note: Some of the examples below are real titles, from good stories.)
The Faux Poetic but Authentically Meaningless (“Hunt the Mist Slowly”)
The Purely Descriptive (“One Early Morning in Topeka at Dawn”)
The Lofty Abstraction, a.k.a. the Bad Kundera (“The Lonely Shackles of Mortality”)
The Hardy Boys Special (“The Hike from Hell”)
The Grammatically Complete Sentence (“Gladys Pemberton Strikes It Rich”)
The Inspirational Cliché (“Dreams of Rebirth”)
The Uninspirational Cliché (“Losing My Marbles”)
The Alliterative Tongue Twister (“Peripatetic Papa”)
The Allusion to Another, Much More Famous Work of Literature (“The Story of Christ”)
The It-Doesn’t-Get-Any-Cuter-Than-This (“Runaway Grandma”)
The Melodramatic Image (“Blood Dries Brown”)
The My-Life-Changed-Unexpectedly-and-I’m-Going-to-Tell-You-About-It (“Epiphany in a Tattoo Parlor”)
The Bad McSweeney (“How We Lie to the Moon, and How the Moon Lies to Us”)
The Scratch ‘n Sniff, a.k.a. But-It-Will-Make-Such-a-Lovely-Cover-Someday (“In the Valley of the Gardenia Blossoms”)
And a good title? Much harder to quantify, but I have some theories: It doesn’t make a spectacle of itself. It doesn’t try too hard, but is original nonetheless. It makes sense on a literal level but deepens metaphorically as we read—deepens, in the finest cases, our understanding of the story or novel itself. The Remains of the Day, “Good Country People,” Disgrace, “Friend of My Youth.”
A tall order, I know, and I don’t claim to be any better at titles than my students. My novel, for instance, about a downwardly mobile family in Southern California, went through various identities: It was The Cost of Living for a while, and enjoyed a brief stint as This World Is Not Your Home (yes, I know, rule #5). It was a friend who finally suggested its current title, Model Home. It’s not flashy—I would even say it’s humble, the shy title at the dance —but in ways both literal and figurative, it’s perfect.
And yet I didn’t take to it at first. I had a different title in mind, one that seemed to make people either burst out laughing or (worse) gasp over its poetic splendor. The title I had in mind makes no sense whatsoever if you haven’t read the book. It’s trying too hard and probably a bit pretentious. But I’m still attached to it. I’m not quite ready to march it over to the title graveyard, to join the Trimalchios and their Dreams of Rebirth. So I gave it to this essay instead.
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Also by Eric Puchner: I Married a Novelist.
25 responses
great stuff.
Love this piece. There is a group of professional titlers out there–they just happen to work in print journalism instead of publishing. Headline writers, though, are most often noticed when they choose a title for a piece which skews attention away from the content of the piece, and subsequently get lots of readers pissed at a reporter for no reason whatsoever.
A fine piece with good bad examples… but lackluster good examples.
There is one title that I admire for having a literal meaning that deepens metaphorically as the reader progresses through it: The Big Book of Gross Stuff.
I love this essay. Eric, I wrote a little post about it…http://partywithaninfant.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-too-giggle-at-heart-is-lonely-hunter.html
This is pretty great; I’ve been coming up with weird titles for nonexistent works for no reason for quite some time:
http://ferociousj.tumblr.com/tagged/fine_literature
This piece did indeed make me laugh, but it takes nothing to account in terms of genre and marketing to people who like to read in certain channels, who might actually enjoy the lurid, penny-dreadful title. Still, a very enjoyable and engaging essay about something, really, I have never before considered. I will definitely look for a copy of “Model Home.” It sounds like it will be a great read. Thanks!
Years ago, I heard an interview with an editor who was responsible for an overwhelming number of classic titles… e.g., he titled most of Tennessee Williams’ plays. In the course of the interview, he rattled off the various authors’ original titles, most of which were hysterically wrong.
I tried to track that interview down, but never could find it. I think it was done at the time he was retiring.
A young writer once asked Somerset Maugham for advice about what to call his just completed book. “Does it have any drums in it,” Maugham asked. “No.” “Does it have any bugles?” “No.” “Then call it “No Drums, No Bugles.”
I wrote a book a couple of years ago; a collection of my interviews with screenwriters about their experiences writing movies, some good and some bad. I had a cute title for it: “Tentpoles and Train Wrecks.” HarperCollins bought it. They felt readers who didn’t work in the entertainment industry wouldn’t understand the title. Okay, I take that point. They said “We want to call it ‘Screen Plays’” I was puzzled. I asked “Really? Why that? It sounds really boring.” And they said “Because when someone searches on Amazon for ‘creenplays’ your book will come up first.” And I said… “Okay!”
I still don’t love the title but commerce is commerce.
Excellent work. I would like to suggest an additional category: The title about some person’s daughter (“The ________’s Daughter”). Also Wife, Mistress, etc. Please let’s stop this for a few years.
I want to call my next piece No Drums No Bugles
I absolutely hate coming up with titles. They’re normally the very last step in the pre-submission process. One of my books is called “What’s in a Name?” which came into being when I stared at the line on the submission form that said: “Title”. In retrospect, it suited the book, but that moment when I have to change the working title from “protagonist’s book” to something remotely acceptable is agonizing.
Then the worst category of them all; in the form of ‘The Affair’ or ‘The Conspiracy’ which try to conjure complex tales of dread and daring. You know, ‘The Bourne Conspiracy’, ‘The Odessa File’, ‘The Dreyfuss Affair’, ‘the Just-about-anythig affair’.
Side note, while researching this post I found a book on Amazon titled “The Red Wolf Affir, it looks good and I’m going to buy it. Maybe also one called “My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” which probably violates all of the rules.
Here’s another one – The title of Copland’s ballet “Appalachian Spring” is not the brainchild of the composer but the coreographer Martha Graham, who also commissioned the work.
what about the intentional title:
“hello my big big honey!”
its real (a published non-fiction book)
In other news, “The Bad McSweeney” is the name of my next band.
Do these rules apply to non-fiction? Next to me on my desk is a book my daughter brought home from the library for a school project: “Stealing Lincoln’s Body.” I can’t wait to read it!
You definitely should have included the overused “Confessions of a ____” and “The ____ Diaries”
I’d like to propose that we retire “The Girl with (insert provocative/sexualized/infantilized noun here)” as a title-type. I think this one’s past its shelf date, no?
Some of those rules stand, but others have pretty obvious counter-examples:
The Purely Descriptive: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
The Lofty Abstraction: Too many to mention. “Kaddish for an Unborn Child” is the one I read most recently. Surely not all lofty abstractions are bad versions of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”, etc. What about the originals?
The Grammatically Complete Sentence: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
The Allusion to Another, Much More Famous Work of Literature: “Ulysses”
The Melodramatic Image: “As I Lay Dying”
The Scratch ‘n Sniff, a.k.a. But-It-Will-Make-Such-a-Lovely-Cover-Someday: “In the shadow of young girls in flower”, “the garden of forking paths”
Also, why is Catch-17 (etc) a bad title? If the book had been called Catch-17, this would be the name we would have for “catch-22” situations.
Love the Fitzgerald title and your list–thanks!
I agree on the Catch 17 thing. Some titles seem ill advised at the time and then enter public consciousness.
Brought this piece up in two of my writing classes this week. It’s wonderful.
Great article, thanks. It made me laugh. Sadly, it didn’t help me come up with a title for my current book. Not straight away, at least, but give it time.
Maybe ‘Catch 17’ would have sunk without trace.
Joshua, I think the point is that if you can write like Kundera or Joyce, then by all means call your book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” or “Ulysses”.
Mere mortals, on the other hand, just end up falling short and looking stupid.
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